Book 126 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: Taking the Red Pill

Book – Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment by Robert Wright

Book Description: In Why Buddhism is True, Wright leads readers on a journey through psychology, philosophy, and a great many silent retreats to show how and why meditation can serve as the foundation for a spiritual life in a secular age. At once excitingly ambitious and wittily accessible, this is the first book to combine evolutionary psychology with cutting-edge neuroscience to defend the radical claims at the heart of Buddhist philosophy. With bracing honesty and fierce wisdom, it will persuade you not just that Buddhism is true—which is to say, a way out of our delusion—but that it can ultimately save us from ourselves, as individuals and as a species.

Reflection:

“Taking the Red Pill” refers to a classic scene from the 1999 movie, The Matrix. In the movie, the main character Neo is offered the choice between a red pill and a blue pill by rebel leader Morpheus. The terms "red pill" and "blue pill" refer to a choice between the willingness to learn a potentially unsettling or life-changing truth by taking the red pill or remaining in contented ignorance with the blue pill.

If you’ve seen the movie, you know that Neo takes the Red Pill and they dive into an adventure that unlocks seemingly a whole new world that was hidden in plain sight.

The author, Robert Wright, starts off this book about Buddhism by creating the analogy that meditation and the philosophy of Buddhism is akin to a real life taking of the Red Pill. Learning and practicing Buddhism has the potential to unlock a whole new reality that has always been around you by helping you to see the world through a different lens, changing paradigms in your mind, and breaking free from the “what you see is all there” is modern day world of humanity and society.

I can’t disagree much with the author on this idea. The concepts, teachings, and philosophies of Buddhism are a wild ride and thought experiment in your mind. It opens up a whole new world of interesting questions to explore. Buddhists sometimes spend a lifetime in their minds in thought and reflection without ever speaking a word.

Just imagine what kinds of incredible new worlds and universes you might create if you spent all your time in thought and challenging the world around you. It would leave a crater in your mind the size of the one that the asteroid created when it slammed into the Earth and killed off all the dinosaurs.

Buddhists are truly living in a whole different universe than you and I…and I don’t mean that in a negative way.

Is their view of the world and how they live their life better or “true” as the title of the book eludes? I have no idea, and I think if you asked anyone that honestly practices Buddhism that they would probably say the same thing.

Buddhist thought isn’t a rabbit hole of questioning that generally appeals to me. I respect what the practice is doing though for anyone that does want to go down that rabbit hole. Buddhism is a lifelong pursuit of questioning, being curious, reflecting, and challenging the world around you. These underlying principles of Buddhism is something I can definitely get behind.

In a lot of ways, the journey of the year of magical learning is based on similar principles.

I was unceremoniously offered the choice between my own red pill or blue pill the day after my daughter passed away. I don’t think I even thought twice. I owed it to my daughter to take the red pill and find a way to still live my life with her by my side and honoring her by living the way she showed me how to live during her fight for a chance at life.

Our journey is all about the same things as the Buddhists. It is about exploring the world, asking new questions, understanding myself, living my values, learning something new every day, being curious, and always trying to remember that I don’t know anything along the way.

In doing my best to Live for 2 for my daughter, I’ve never felt more alive in my entire life! Every day is something new and exciting to explore together and I’m only just beginning. Think about all the places we’ll go in the next 60 years of living our life filled with wonder, imagination, and new questions to explore. It is going to be a wild ride and I can’t wait.  

If this is what taking the red pill get you, count me all the way in!

Question: Which are you choosing, the red pill or the blue pill?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment by Robert Wright