Eric-Jorgenson The-Almanack-of-Naval-Ravikant indd

You’ve called your philosophy Rational Buddhism. How does 
it differ from traditional Buddhism? What type of explora-
tion did you go through?
The rational part means I have to reconcile with science and 
evolution. I have to reject all the pieces I can’t verify for myself. 
For example, is meditation good for you? Yes. Is clearing your 
mind a good thing? Yes. Is there a base layer of awareness 
below your monkey mind? Yes. All these things I’ve verified 
for myself.
Some beliefs from Buddhism I believe and follow because, 
again, I’ve verified or reasoned with thought experiments 
myself. What I will not accept is things like, “There’s a past 
life you’re paying off the karma for.” I haven’t seen it. I don’t 
remember any past lives. I don’t have any memory. I just have 
to not believe that.
When people say your third chakra is opening, etc.—I don’t 
know—that’s just fancy nomenclature. I have not been able to 
verify or confirm any of that on my own. If I can’t verify it on 
my own or if I cannot get there through science, then it may 
be true, it may be false, but it’s not falsifiable, so I cannot view 
it as a fundamental truth.
On the other side, I do know evolution is true. I do know we 
are evolved as survival and replication machines. I do know we 
have an ego, so we get up off the ground and worms don’t eat us 
and we actually take action. Rational Buddhism, to me, means 
understanding the internal work Buddhism espouses to make 
yourself happier, better off, more present and in control of 
your emotions—being a better human being.

---

200 · T H E A L M A N A C K O F N A V A L R A V I K A N T
I don’t subscribe to anything fanciful because it was written 
down in a book. I don’t think I can levitate. I don’t think medi-
tation will give me superpowers and those kinds of things. Try 
everything, test it for yourself, be skeptical, keep what’s useful, 
and discard what’s not.
I would say my philosophy falls down to this—on one pole is 
evolution as a binding principle because it explains so much 
about humans, on the other is Buddhism, which is the oldest, 
most time-tested spiritual philosophy regarding the internal 
state of each of us.
I think those are absolutely reconcilable. I actually want to 
write a blog post at some point about how you can map the 
tenants of Buddhism, especially the non-fanciful ones, directly 
into a virtual reality simulation. [4]
Everyone starts out innocent. Everyone is corrupted. Wisdom 
is the discarding of vices and the return to virtue, by way of 
knowledge.