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

by Robert Wright

As with my burst of compassion for Larry, my sense of kinship with this lizard didn’t require loving-kindness meditation. Mindfulness meditation itself, practiced diligently, tends to expand your understanding of other organisms. And I mean “understanding” not just in the mushy sense of peace, love, and understanding but also—in fact, mainly—in the sense of having a clearer comprehension of the organism. I was looking at that lizard the way a visitor from Mars might look at it: with interest and curiosity and fewer distorting preconceptions than I normally bring to such things. I think the reason I could look at that lizard with so little in the way of preconceptions is because I didn’t see essence-of-lizard—or, at least, didn’t see as much of it as I usually see. In fact, you might say that not seeing essence and not having preconceptions are one and the same, because the essence we perceive in things is a preconception about them that has been programmed