Buddhism and Human Flourishing A Modern Western Perspective

The Buddha and Aristotle offer competing visions of the best possible life to which human beings can aspire. In this volume, Seth Zuiho Segall compares Theravada and Mahayana accounts of enlightenment with Aristotelian and neo-Aristotelian accounts of eudaimonia, and proposes a syncretic model of eudaimonic enlightenment that, given prevalent Western beliefs about well-being and human flourishing, provides a credible new end-goal for modern Western Buddhist practice. He then demonstrates how this proposed synthesis is already deeply reflected in contemporary Western Buddhist rhetoric. Segall re-evaluates traditional Buddhist teachings on desire, attachment, aversion, nirva?a, and selfhood from the eudaimonic enlightenment perspective, and explores the perspective’s ethical and metaphysical implications. 

Chapter 1 The Changing Nature of Buddhism

Chapter 2 What is Enlightenment?

Chapter 3 What is Eudaimonia?

Chapter 4 The Fate of Traditional Enlightenment in the West

Chapter 5 Suffering and the Cessation of Suffering 

Chapter 6 Self and Self-Transcendence

Chapter 7 Buddhist Ethics and Eudaimonic Enlightenment

Chapter 8 Metaphysical Humility: The Eudaimonic Enlightenment Model and Beyond

Seth Zuiho Segall is a Zen Buddhist priest and clinical psychologist who served for nearly three decades on the clinical faculty of Yale University School of Medicine. He is currently the science writer for the Mindfulness Research Monthly and a chaplain associate at White Plains Hospital.