You don't have to be religious to think that there are some glorious things in the world that have nothing to do with natural selection um You know our love of uh our love of beauty it's hard to understand. I sometimes wonder just to your cosmic and whether appreciation Of things is almost the default state of consciousness for most people. It gets kind of warped in a certain sense in the normal In its normal everyday workings, but I certainly I certainly do not believe that consciousness per se is adequately understood.
Robert Wright, author of Why Buddhism Is True, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the psychotherapeutic insights of Buddhism and the benefits of meditation and mindfulness. Wright argues our evolutionary past has endowed us with a mind that can be ill-suited to the stress of the present. He argues that meditation and the non-religious aspects of Buddhism can reduce suffering and are consistent with recent psychological research.