Collective Wisdom in the West

Guided by Buddhist teaching, tightly held Enlightenment ideas are considered as sources of suffering. Freedom is seeing where they become dogmas, feeding cultural addiction to certainty and control.

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This book contemplates current crises guided by a core Buddhist teaching: the roots of deepest suffering lie in what we grasp most tightly. Thus, tightly held ideas from 'the enlightenment' – rationality, individuality, equality and secularity – are considered as sources of suffering: technocracy, broken politics and 'moral acrimony'. Freedom lies not in accepting or rejecting these views, but in seeing where they've become dogmas, feeding cultural addiction to certainty and control.



Liam Kavanagh is an embodied cognitive scientist, deeply influenced by Zen, who directs research at Life Itself, a community of people for a wiser, weller world. Past work in development economics convinced him that recognising and unlearning ideology is the most important step towards imagining futures worth creating. He helps create opportunities for this by organising residential learning communities, dialogues between Science and Zen, and contemplative activist groups.