Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment

by Robert Wright

some scholars will tell you that there is little or nothing in these texts that we can confidently attribute to him. Like the “historical Jesus,” the “historical Buddha” is hard to discern through the mists of history. Just as the gospel accounts of Jesus are products of evolution, of oral and textual accretion over time, so are ancient accounts of the Buddha’s utterances. Even assuming that most of these accounts were originally grounded in things he actually said, they were subject to amendment, intentional or not, as they passed through the generations. In this light, it’s hardly surprising that there should be inconsistencies and outright contradictions within the Buddhist canon. Still, amid all the disagreement over what the Buddha said and what the Buddha meant, there are some themes that everyone agrees are part of the Buddhist tradition from early on. And one of these is that our conception of our selves is, at best, wildly off the mark. We associate the self with control and with firm persistence through time, but on close inspection we turn out to be much less under control, and much more fluid, with a much less fixed identity, than we think.