The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized, by Owen Flanagan; Meditating Selflessly: Practical Neural Zen by James H Austin – review

Buddhism has never been more popular in the west. A sceptic's view makes fascinating reading, while a how-to guide makes the usual exaggerated claims

Despite the long-term decline in the west in churchgoing, people's yearning for some kind of transcendence appears as strong as ever, echoed in the common refrain: "I'm not religious but I am spiritual." Buddhism seems well placed to capitalise on this pent-up demand in the spiritual market. It appears to promise all the goodness of religion without the harmful supernatural additives. Even better, scientists in white coats are increasingly being wheeled out to show that it is clinically proven to increase happiness, improve attention and reduce stress. Add a charismatic CEO in the form of the Dalai Lama and you have a brand set not so much to conquer the world as win it over with loving kindness.

But is Buddhism really as amenable to the modern mind as it is claimed? More specifically, asks philosopher Owen Flanagan in his brilliant The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized, can Buddhism be made compatible with a view that posits the existence of nothing other than the natural world, in which objects can be moved by gravitational forces but not karmic ones? Refreshingly, Flanagan accepts that such "naturalised" Buddhism would not be "authentic", not only because, like all religions, it comes in numerous variants anyway, but because historically it has just been too infused with "mind-numbing and wishful hocus pocus". But if you subtract this "superstition and magical thinking", are you left with a valuable, truthful set of practices and beliefs?

What makes this book so important is not so much its cautiously affirmative answer but how it is justified. To make his case, Flanagan has to address issues concerning the nature of self, what recent neurological research tells us about human wellbeing, and what it means to be happy and live a good life. Much has been written about all of these in recent years and almost all of it is confused, misleading, simplistic or all three. Anyone looking for an antidote to this sloppiness will find it in Flanagan, who brings much needed clarity, insight and sophistication to the debate. Flanagan explains why excitable claims that Buddhist practice makes us happy, wealthier and wiser are premature and that research to date is extremely limited both in its sample size and in what conclusions it justifies.

Such sober scepticism cast a dark shadow over my reading of Meditating Selflessly: Practical Neural Zen . In essence it is a how-to guide for Zen meditation, and as such it does its job pretty efficiently. But James H Austin makes just the kind of exaggerated claims that Flanagan deflates. We are told time and again how Buddhist meditation brings incredible mental clarity and insight, but if that's true, why aren't more top scientists and intellectuals Buddhists? The obvious point that is not perceived with much clarity at all by Buddhism's proponents is that only certain types of seeing, if any at all, are improved by meditation, mostly concerning the impermanent nature of self.

The other vice Austin betrays is the liberal use of neurological research where it is inconclusive or irrelevant. Given that no one doubts meditation changes your mental state, pointing out that fMRI scans reveal changes in the brain too is hardly revelatory. This kind of stating the obvious reaches its apotheosis when Austin points to the startling discovery that in research into mindfulness meditation, which is largely about directing attention, data "tend to point" to brain areas that are – guess what – "related to the regulation of attention". To be fair, as I held the book at such moments, the wisdom of another of Austin's repeated recommendations hit me with remarkable clarity: I ought to learn to let go.

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This column will change your life: macho creativity advice

'Does it really make sense to view creative work as a battle?'

The novelist Steven Pressfield's new short book on creativity is entitled, refreshingly, Do The Work. The problem with too many tomes promising advice on "how to be creative" is that they might as well be entitled Rather Than Doing The Work, Distract Yourself By Reading This Book. Pressfield is a former US marine – the militaristic title of his earlier self-help book was The War Of Art – and he's uninterested in providing simpering step-by-step exercises to help you contact the delicate artist within. To bring your nascent screenplay or novel or business idea to life, he insists, what you need is a kick in the pants. "Where butts need to be kicked, we shall kick them," he warns, early on. No ifs, though there are quite a few butts. And asses. "Get to the end as if the devil himself were breathing down your neck and poking you in the butt with his pitchfork." The inner critic? "His ass is not permitted in the building."

Perceptive readers may notice a problem here, which is that if Pressfield thinks "do the work" is all you need to know, it's unclear why he needs a book to say it, unless just to scream it, marine-style, in your face. In fact, he has another important insight, which is that effortlessness is not necessarily a sign that creative work is going well; resistance – or as he always writes it, Resistance – can be proof you're on the right track. He's clearly heavily influenced here by the epic battles he depicts in his novels: he sees Resistance (which includes procrastination, the opposition of family and colleagues, and more) as an actively evil force, hellbent on sabotaging your efforts to pursue your calling. The good-versus-evil language seems unnecessary here, but the basic point is surely sound: work that matters is always going to feel difficult. Or to quote Pressfield: "We will sink our junkyard-dog teeth into Resistance's ass and not let go, no matter how hard he kicks."

Does it really make sense, though, to view creative work – or any work, unless you're a soldier – as a battle? The one obvious truth about Resistance that Pressfield seems to have missed is that if you go searching for it, armed to the teeth and looking for a fight, you'll certainly find it. Or to drop the military imagery: convincing yourself that your work is extremely important, that your life depends on it, is a way to generate fear, not conquer it. Kicking Resistance's butt (or biting it in the ass, though I imagine it might be hard to do both at the same time) frequently isn't half as effective as outwitting it entirely.

An example from my line of work: one of the most useful books I've read about writing is Paul Silvia's How To Write A Lot, which is aimed specifically at writers in academia, but which has relevance far beyond. Silvia's primary recommendation is to stick to a writing schedule. He offers a few other tips for keeping quality and quantity high. And that's about it. No warnings that you'll need "balls of steel" (Pressfield) in order to finish your project. To be honest, How To Write A Lot is pretty dull. But that's exactly as it should be: it makes creativity non-intimidating, and thus it makes creativity actually happen. Resistance slinks away, bored by your down-to-earth persistence, baffled by its unbruised buttocks.

oliver.burkeman@guardian.co.uk; twitter.com/oliverburkeman

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Is reading on the loo bad for you?

Filthy habit or blameless bliss? A public health study by Ron Shaoul lifts the lid on toilet reading once and for all

From the moment Ron Shaoul took it upon himself to investigate the practice of reading on the toilet, scouring medical literature and turning up nothing of note as to its public health consequences, the situation became clear that here, on his hands, was a big job.

Shaoul's curiosity was driven by his work as a doctor specialising in paediatric gastroenterology. He mustered some colleagues, drew up a questionnaire and had hundreds of people of all shapes and sizes complete it. What resulted was perhaps the most scientific attempt yet to shine light on a habit that rustles unseen behind closed doors.

Shaoul, who published his study in 2009, lamented that toilet reading was woefully neglected by scientists, considering the habit probably dated back to the emergence of printed books. Writers, on the other hand, have shown no such aversion. For some, their authority on the matter has bordered on the connoisseur.

The anonymous author of The Life of St Gregory couldn't help but notice that the toilet of the middle ages, high up in a castle turret, offered the perfect solitude for "uninterrupted reading"; Lord Chesterfield too saluted the benefits, recounting the tale of a man who used his time wisely in the "necessary house" to work his way through Horace. This was but the beginning.

No writer owned the arena of toilet reading more than Henry Miller. He read truly great books on the lavatory, and maintained that some, Ulysses for instance, could not be fully appreciated elsewhere. The environment was one that enriched substantial works – extracted their flavour, as he put it – while lesser books and magazines suffered. He singled out Atlantic Monthly.

Miller went so far as to recommend toilets for individual authors. To enjoy Rabelais, he advised a plain country toilet, "a little outhouse in the corn patch, with a crescent sliver of light coming through the door". Better still, he said, take a friend along, to sit with you for half an hour of minor bliss.

From a medical standpoint, there are plenty of questions to ask of toilet reading. Most can be worded in vague, euphemistic terms that convey the gist without delving into coprological detail. Does reading material become irreversibly infused with nasty contaminants when carried into the toilet? How long can unpleasant microbes live on glossy magazine covers or, for that matter, the pages of a newspaper? And what does the straightforward act of reading on the toilet do for bowel movements?

Val Curtis, director of the Hygiene Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is a self-confessed toilet reader. There is, she says, a theoretical risk. To be blunt, bugs in your poo can get on your hands, be transferred to your reading material, and on to the hands of some other unfortunate. That risk is quite slim though. As Curtis says, "we don't need to get anal about it".

"The important thing is to wash your hands with soap after using the loo to get the bugs off," Curtis says. This way, even if you flicked through a shit-smeared copy of the Metro left on the toilet floor at Reading station, washing your hands before leaving should keep you quite safe. Of course, if you ran your hands over the most soiled pages, picked your nose and rubbed your fingers in your eyes, you might well get an infection. For the determined, there is always a way.

Microbes don't fare too well on absorbent surfaces, and might survive only minutes on newspaper. But plastic book covers and those shiny, smooth surfaces of Kindles, iPhones and iPads are more accommodating, and it's likely bugs can live on those for hours. A recent study by Curtis suggests that in Britain one in six mobile phones is contaminated with faecal matter, largely because people fail to wash their hands after going to the toilet.

Curtis, who is writing a book on disgust, says evolution has honed our sense of infectious risk. Hence our revulsion of bodily fluids and all things excremental, particularly when they are other people's. But a squeamishness of reading in the toilet is probably our primitive selves making us over-sensitive. "Disgust helps us avoid the bugs that make us sick," she says, "but it evolved in ancient times. We now have this psychological tendency to over-detect contagion."

Shaoul, who works at the Bnai Zion Medical Centre in Haifa, Israel, agrees that there is little to fear from unpleasant bugs when reading in the toilet. Most people who indulge in the habit – and his questionnaire pointed to more men and more educated, white-collar workers – do so at home or at work with their own material, rather than in random excrement-spattered lavatories.

More interesting to Shaoul is whether the simple act of reading on the toilet has an impact on bowel movements. "We thought sitting and reading while you were on the toilet might be relaxing and make things go better," Shaoul says. "We thought we might cure the world of constipation with our research."

Shaoul cast his net wide. He received completed questionnaires from 499 men and women, aged 18 to over 65 – some unemployed or students, others builders and academics; some from rural villages, others from the city. More than half of the men (64%) and 41% of the women confessed to being regular toilet readers. More often than not, they described their reading material as "whatever is around". In practice, this usually meant newspapers.

It transpires that toilet readers spend more time on the loo and consider themselves less constipated than non-toilet readers, but other measures of their defecation habits show the two groups hardly differ. Shaoul's work hints that toilet readers suffer more haemorrhoids – something that made for cautionary news stories around the world – but the effect is neglible.

Finally, Shaoul concluded that reading on the toilet is widespread, alleviates boredom, and is ultimately harmless. This rings true to Curtis. "I always have New Scientist by the toilet. I use it as distraction therapy. I don't particularly want to think about crapping."

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