The Seven Universal Virtues

Praise for The House We Live In: Virtue, Wisdom, and Pluralism

It would hardly be an exaggeration to call this brilliant and beautiful book one of the most important works of our time. In my view, it should certainly rank as one of the wisest. Looking deeply into today’s social, cultural, and political crises, the author points to the compelling need to re-envision the perennial moral and intellectual virtues as the indispensable key to human flourishing in both the personal and communal dimensions of our lives. His close and careful analysis of these virtues, and their connection with wellbeing, shows us what we must do to emerge intact from the confusion and conflicts of our age.—Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi

Through a rich and rigorous synthesis of flourishing-based ethical perspectives, Seth Zuihō Segall offers insights and inspiration from religious and secular traditions both past and present. To address our increasingly global crisis, we urgently need the kind of globally informed ethics that this book provides.—Stephen Batchelor

Praise for Buddhism and Human Flourishing: A Modern Western Perspective

Seth Zuihō Segall is one of a kind: a Zen Buddhist priest, a hospital chaplain associate, psychotherapist, existentialist, peace activist, and as fluent in recent philosophical debates about the nature of self and consciousness as in the history and philosophy of Buddhism. In this timely, crystal clear book, Segall defends a version of Buddhism modernism attuned to the sensibilities of secular and scientifically minded people. How can people in the lineage of Plato and Aristotle and the Abrahamic traditions adapt and adopt Buddhist beliefs and sensibilities? In this terrific book, Seth Segall shows a way.—Owen Flanagan

Buddhism and Human Flourishing is an admirably thoughtful work of comparative practical philosophy and psychology. It is one of the few books from a modern Buddhist perspective that grapples with the realities of historical and cultural context and with what it means to take up ideas and practices from a very different time and place with nuance and complexity. A rare fusion of erudition and accessibility, it will be of interest to scholars and practitioners alike.—David McMahan

Challenging traditional understandings of rebirth and karma is a hallmark of all emerging modernist Buddhisms. If they’re right, then one question burns: what is enlightenment? Seth Zuihō Segall, Zen priest and psychologist, explores how Aristotle’s eudaimonia may prove the key to a modernist Buddhist path of awakening. This is a compelling book, challenging but also inviting. It’s an important contribution to a growing modernist Buddhist literature. I recommend it to anyone wrestling with the great questions of who are we and how can we live lives of value and meaning.—James Ishmael Ford

Contemporary Western Buddhism has become a process, not of the extinction of the self and desire, but of their transformation in the service of human flourishing. Seth Zuihō Segall, with a creative synthesis of contemporary psychology and Aristotelean virtue ethics, has formulated a new "eudaemonic Buddhism" that is both relevant to our times, while preserving the essential teachings of traditional Buddhism.—Barry Magid