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

by Robert Wright

the main point is just that all kinds of curiosity—ranging from a driving, headlong quest to a pleasant stroll along the byways of speculation—do seem to involve feelings. It’s no surprise, then, that brain scans are showing that a curious state of mind involves activity in the dopamine system, the system involved in motivation and reward, in desire and pleasure. So this is what I take away from many hours of failing to meditate (I mean, many hours of failing to meditate and occasionally succeeding at mindfully observing this failure): thoughts that grab my mind and carry it along with them have feelings attached, however subtle those feelings may be. I’m happy to report that this link between feeling and thought has been observed by people whose powers of meditative introspection are way better developed than mine. In June 2015, shortly after sending a rough draft of this book to my editor, I rewarded myself with a two-week meditation retreat at the Forest Refuge, an appendage of the Insight Meditation Society that is geared toward experienced meditators. The guiding teacher for those two weeks was a psychotherapist and former Buddhist monk named Akincano Marc Weber. One night during a dharma talk, he said, “Every thought has a propellant, and that propellant is emotional.” The word propellant suggests the answer to an important question: When your mind is wandering, when your default mode network is running the show, how does the network decide which module gets to prope...