Western interest in Eastern religions, especially Buddhism, historically
coincided with the rise of modern science and the corresponding perceived decline
of religious orthodoxy in the West. Put simply: Modern science initiated a deep
spiritual crisis that led to an unfortunate split between faith and reason-a
split yet to be reconciled. Buddhism was seen as an "alternative altar,"
a bridge that could reunite the estranged worlds of matter and spirit. Thus,
to a large extent Buddhism's flowering in the West during the last century came
about to satisfy post-Darwinian needs to have religious beliefs grounded in
new scientific truth.
As science still constitutes something of a "religion" in the West,
the near-absolute arbiter of truth, considerable cachet still attends the linking
of Buddhism to science. Such comparison and assimilation is inevitable and in
some ways, healthy. At the same time, we need to examine more closely to what
extent the scientific paradigm actually conveys the meaning of Dharma. Perhaps
the resonance between Buddhism and Western science is not as significant as
we think. Ironically, adapting new and unfamiliar Buddhist conceptions to more
ingrained Western thought-ways, like science, renders Buddhism more popular
and less exotic; it also threatens to dilute its impact and distort its content.
Historians since the end of World War II, have suggested that the encounter
between East and West represents the most significant event of the modern era.
Bertrand Russell pointed to this shift at the end of World War II when he wrote,
"If we are to feel at home in the world, we will have to admit Asia to
equality in our thoughts, not only politically, but culturally. What changes
this will bring, I do not know. But I am convinced they will be profound and
of the greatest importance."
More recently, the historian Arthur Versluis, in a new book, American Transcendentalism
and Asian Religions (1993), pieced together five or six major historical views
on this subject, and presented this by way of conclusion:
However much people today realize it, the encounter of Oriental and Occidental
religious and philosophical traditions, of Buddhist and Christian and Hindu
and Islamic perspectives, must be regarded as one of the most extraordinary
meetings of our age. . . . Arnold Toynbee once wrote that of all the historical
changes in the West, the most important-and the one whose effects have been
least understood-is the meeting of Buddhism in the Occident. . . . And when
and if our era is considered in light of larger societal patterns and movements,
there can be no doubt that the meeting of East and West, the mingling of the
most ancient traditions in the modern world, will form a much larger part of
history than we today with our political-economic emphases, may think.
These are not isolated opinions. Many writers, scholars, intellectuals, scientists,
and theologians have proclaimed the importance of the meeting of East and West.
Occidental interest in the Orient predates the modern era. There is evidence
of significant contact between East and West well before the Christian era.
Even in the New World, curiosity and interchange existed right from the beginning,
as early as the 1700s. One can find allusions to Asian religions in Cotton Mather,
Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, and of course, more developed expressions in
Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
By the mid-twentieth century this growing fascination with Asian thought led
Arnold Toynbee to envision a new world civilization emerging from a convergence
of East and West. He anticipated that the spiritual philosophies of Asia would
touch profoundly on the three basic dimensions of human existence: Our relationships
with each other (social); with ourselves (psychological); and, with the physical
world (natural). What is the shape and significance of this encounter? What
does Buddhism contribute to the deeper currents of Western thought; and more
specifically, to our struggle to reconcile faith with reason, religion with
science?
Science was already the ascendant intellectual sovereign when Buddhism made its first serious entry on the American scene in the latter decades of the 19th century. A World's Parliament of Religions, held in conjunction with the 1893 Colombian Exposition in Chicago, brought to America for the first time a large number of Asian representatives of the Buddhist faith. These missionaries actively and impressively participated in an open forum with Western theologians, scientists, ministers, scholars, educators, and reformers. This unprecedented ecumenical event in the American heartland came at a most opportune time. America was ready and eager for a new source of inspiration, ex orient lux, the 'light of Asia.'
By the 1890s America was caught in the throes of a spiritual crisis affecting Christendom worldwide. Modern scientific discoveries had so undermined a literal interpretation of sacred scripture, that for many educated and thoughtful people, it was no longer certain that God was in his heaven and that all was right with the world. These rapid changes and transformations in almost every aspect of traditional faith, had such irreversible corrosive effects on religious orthodoxy, that they were dubbed, "acids of modernity." They ate away at received convictions, and ushered in an unprecedented erosion of belief. People like my grandparents, brought up with rock-solid belief in the infallible word of God, found their faith shaken to its very foundations. It was as if overnight they suddenly awoke to a new world governed not by theological authority but by scientists. New disclosures from the respected disciplines of geology, biology, and astronomy challenged and shattered Biblical accounts of the origins of the natural world and our place and purpose in it. Sigmund Freud captured the spirit of the age well when he said "the self-love of mankind has been three times wounded by science." The Copernican Revolution, continued by Galileo, took our little planet out of the center position in the universe. The Earth, held to be the physical and metaphysical center of the Universe, was reduced to a tiny speck revolving around a sun. Then Darwin all but eliminated the divide between animal and man, and with it the "special creation" status enjoyed by humans. Darwin, moreover, diminished God. The impersonal forces of natural selection kept things going; no divine power was necessary. Nor, from what any competent scientist could demonstrate with any factual certainty, was any Divinity even evident-either at the elusive "creation," or in the empirical present. Karl Marx people portrayed people as economic animals grouped into competing classes driven by material self-interest. Finally, Freud himself characterized religious faith as an evasion of truth, a comforting illusion sustained by impulses and desires beyond the reach of the rational intellect. Nietzsche's famous declaration that "God is Dead" may have seemed extreme, but few would have denied that God was ailing. And certainly the childhood version of a personal, all-powerful God that created the world and ruled over it with justice and omniscience was for many a comforting vision lost forever.
One of the lingering side effects of this loss has been the unfortunate
disjunction of matter and spirit that afflicts the modern age. It can assume
many forms: a split between matter and spirit, a divorce between faith and reason,
a dichotomy between facts and values. At a more personal level, it manifests
as a mind-body dualism. An unwelcome spiritual and psychological legacy from
the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it is still very much with us today,
something that haunts our psyches.
Much of today's near-obsession with therapy in the West, and even the shift
toward psychologizing religion (including the "New Age" phenomenon)
could be seen as attempts to heal this deep sense of alienation. The pragmatic
philosopher, John Dewey, wrote: "The pathological segregation of facts
and value, matter and spirit, or the bifurcation of nature, this integration
[i. e. the problem of integrating this] poses the deepest problem of modern
life." This problem both inspires and confounds contemporary philosophy
and religion. Wholeness eludes us while the split endures; and yet, almost tragically,
the very means we have available to heal it insure its continuation. For, all
of our philosophies, academic disciplines, therapies, and even religious traditions
are informed by and rooted in aspects of this dualism. Perhaps the most visible
expression of this pathological segregation is the gap between science and religion.
Thus, when the eminent philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead
scanned the broad outlines of our time, he wrote: "The future course of
history would center on this generation's resolving the issue of the proper
relationship between science and religion, so fundamental are the religious
symbols through which people give meaning to their lives and so powerful the
scientific knowledge through which we shape and control our lives." And
it is in regard to this troubling issue, I think, that Eastern religions, particularly
Buddhism, are seen to hold out the promise of achieving some resolution. The
idea dates back over a hundred years.
After the 1893 Chicago Parliament of World Religions, one Paul Carus, a Chicago-based
editor of the Open Court Press, invited some of the influential Japanese Buddhist
delegates to a week-long discussion at the home of Carus's father-in-law, Edward
Hegeler. Both deeply felt the spiritual crisis of the times. Both were trying
to reform Christianity to bring it in line with current thought; in short, to
make religion scientific. It occurred to them that Buddhism was already compatible
with science, and could be used to nudge Christianity in the same direction.
Toward this end, Carus wanted to support a Buddhist missionary movement to the
United States from Asia. His thinking was to create something of a level playing
field. Carus had witnessed the most ambitious missionary undertaking in modern
history that send thousands of Protestant missionaries abroad to convert the
people 'sitting in darkness.' He wished to conduct a Darwinian experiment of
'survival of the fittest." His goal: to bring Buddhist missionaries to
America where they could engage in healthy competition with their Christian
counterparts in the East, and thus determine the "fittest" to survive.
With the aid of his wealthy father-in-law who put up money, they sponsored a number of Eastern missionaries to the United States: Anagarika Dharmapala, from what was then Ceylon, now Sri Lanka; Swami Vivekananda, from India representing the Ramakrishna Vedanta movement; and Soyen Shaku, a Japanese Buddhist monk, and Shaku's young disciple D.T. Suzuki. During his stay in the United States in the late 1890s and early 1900s, Suzuki lived in the small town of LaSalle/Peru, Illinois. He was in his twenties then, and for about eleven years he worked closely with Paul Carus translating Buddhist texts into English and putting out inexpensive paperback editions of the Asian classics. Suzuki later became the leading exponent of Zen in the West, when he returned in the 1950s on a Rockefeller grant to lecture extensively at East Coast colleges. He influenced writers and thinkers like Carl Jung, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, Martin Heidegger, Thomas Merton, Alan Watts, and the "beat Buddhists"-Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder. Suzuki died in 1966 in Tokyo. His influence in the West was profound-making Zen an English word, translating Asian texts into English, stimulating a scholarly interest in the Orient among American intellectuals, and deepening American respect and enthusiasm for Buddhism. The historian Lynn White Jr. praised Suzuki as someone who broke through the "shell of the Occident" and made the West's thinking global. His introduction to the West came about through the hands of Paul Carus.
These early missionaries of Buddhism to the West, including Carus himself, all shared the same modern, reformist outlook. They translated Buddhism into a medium and a message compatible and resonant with the scientific and progressive spirit of the Age. They selectived passages of text to favor that slant, and carefully presented the Buddhist teachings in such a way as to appeal to modern sensibilities-empirical, rational, and liberal. Americans wanted religion to "make sense," to accord with conventional wisdom. Then, as now, our primary mode of making sense of things was positivist-reliable knowledge based on natural phenomena as verified by empirical sciences. So firmly entrenched is the scientific outlook that it has for all practical purposes taken on a near-religious authority. Few, then or now, critically question our faith in science; we presume its validity and give it an almost unquestioned place as the arbiter of truth.
Thus, the early missionaries of Buddhism to America purposely stripped Buddhism
of any elements that might appear superstitious, mythological, even mystical.
Dharmapala, Suzuki, and Vivekananda clearly ascertained that Americans measured
truth in science, and science posed little theological threat to a Buddhist
and Hindu worldview. After all, Buddhism had unique advantages for someone who
rejected their faith (Christian) due to its authoritarianism and unscientific
outlook:
1) Buddhism did not assert or depend upon the existence of a God
2) Buddhism was a superstition-free moral ideal; it conformed to the scientific
view of an ordered universe ruled by law (Dharma)-a system both moral and physical
where everything seemed to work itself out inexorably over vast periods of time
without divine intervention (karma)
3) Buddhism posited no belief in gods who could alter the workings of this natural
law
4) Buddhism was a religion of self-help with all depending on the individual
working out his/her own salvation
5) "Original" Buddhism was seen as the "Protestantism of Asia,"
and Buddha as another Luther who swept away the superstitions and rituals of
an older, corrupted form and took religion back to its pure and simple origins
6) Buddhism presented an attractive personal founder who led life of great self-sacrifice;
parallels were drawn between Jesus and Buddha as the inspiration of a personal
figure exerted strong appeal to seekers who had given up on theology and metaphysics.
Thus, Buddhism was packaged and presented in its most favorable light viz a viz the current spiritual crisis in the West; and, not surprisingly, Buddhism seemed immensely reasonable and appealing to Americans. Darwinism might be undermining Biblical Christianity, but it only enhanced Buddhism's standing.
In fact, Darwin's theory of evolution, which struck the most severe blow to the Judaeo-Christian edifice, was taken up as the leading banner for Buddhist propagation. With Darwin the concept of evolution became enshrined in the popular mind. Everything was evolutionary-species, races, nations, economies, religions, the universe-from the micro to the macro. Social Darwinists even saw evolution operating behind the vicissitudes of free-market capitalism. As the constant interaction of stimulus and response in nature, evolution seemed to match nicely with the notion of karma-the cyclical unfolding of events governed by the law of cause and effect. So Anagarika Dharmapala could announce in Chicago to his largely Judaeo-Christian audience that "the theory of evolution was one of the ancient teachings of the Buddha." As it was in nature (at least in the new natural world of Darwin), so it was in the Buddhist universe.
Most people drawn to Eastern religions did not examine very closely the
supposed identity of Darwin's evolution and the Buddhist concept of karma. They
were content, even predisposed, to imagine them the same. Buddhists ardent to
convert Americans to Buddhism, as well as Christians eager to find some correspondence
between modern science and their beleaguered faith, were happy to say, "Yes,
the similarities are close enough; look, how the ancient Eastern religions anticipated
our modern science!" Vivekananda, the charismatic and eloquent Ramakrishna
delegate from India, met only hurrahs of affirmation when he proclaimed to a
Chicago audience that the latest discoveries of science seemed "like the
echoes from the high spiritual flights of Vedantic philosophy."
This facile view that Buddhism and science were cut of the same cloth accorded
nicely with the longing to reconnect the sacred and the secular. It held out
hope that religion could once again assume its rightful place alongside (if
no longer in the lead of) the emerging disciplines of biology, geology, and
physics. It also fit neatly with the presumed "unity of truth" that
Victorians held to so dearly-there could only be one truth, not two. The very
nature of reality demanded that the truths of science and religion be one and
the same. Carus called his new system of thought "the Religion of Science,"
and Max Muller called his new theology "the Science of Religion."
This trend linking Buddhism to science continued, even accelerated, into the
20th century. Einstein's work and further developments in the new cutting-edge
physics seemed to provide even further evidence that science and Buddhism were
merely different rivers leading to the same sea. Where the old theologies crumbled
under the juggernaut of science, Buddhism seemed to hold its own, even thrive.
The early (and even contemporary) exponents of Buddhism pushed this idea. It
remains an area of great promise and interest; but it is not one without difficulties.
One of the first to question this marriage, interestingly, was also one of its
earliest proponents, D.T. Suzuki. When Suzuki came to the United States to collaborate
with Paul Carus, both were outspoken advocates of the link between Buddhism
and science. Suzuki's early writings make virtually no distinction between Buddhism
and science. For Suzuki, Buddhism was eminently modern and progressive, compatible
with the latest discoveries in Western psychology and philosophy. It was, in
a word, scientifically sound.
By the time Suzuki returned to the United States in the 1950s, however,
he had experienced a change of heart. He then wrote that his initial thinking-that
religion must be based on scientific grounds and that Christianity was based
on too much mythology-was a little ill-founded. An older, perhaps wiser Suzuki,
came to doubt the sufficiency of a religion based on science, and even saw the
need for religion to critique science. In 1959, Suzuki wrote that his early
modernist agreement with Hegeler and Carus that "religion must stand on
scientific grounds...Christianity was based too much on mythology," was
ill-founded. "If it were possible for me to talk with them now," he
reflected, "I would tell them that my ideas have changed from theirs somewhat.
I now think that a religion based solely on science is not enough. There are
certain 'mythological' elements in every one of us, which cannot be altogether
lost in favor of science. This is a conviction I have come to."
What had changed? First of all, two world wars. As the contemporary writer Kurt
Vonnegut has wryly observed, "We took scientific truth and dropped it on
the people of Hiroshima." Suzuki was, of course, Japanese; he felt directly
the negative weight of modern science. Having survived the brutal experience
of a war initiated, carried out, and ended with weapons of mass destruction
born of modern science, he was left less sanguine about the idyllic marriage
with religion and science that he had heralded at the turn of the century. Suzuki
was enjoying the wisdom of hindsight; but in fairness to Suzuki, so were many
other people.
Since Suzuki's turnabout in 1959, there have been even further, more fundamental
challenges to the presumed closeness of Buddhism and science. Questions have
arisen in two areas. One, as a society we have come to reassess the blessings
and the promise of modern science in terms of the socio-psychological impact.
While people are mesmerized by science and dream about what science can do for
them, they also have nightmares about what science can do to them. This bittersweet
realization lingers in the contemporary psyche: we dream about all the wonderful
things science is going to do for us; at the same time we are haunted by unsettling
specters of the dreadful things science could do to us. This concern and troubling
ambivalence seems to grow, not diminish, with each scientific advance.
At the popular level, movies and television play on variations of the Frankenstein,
Godzilla, the X-Files motif, reflecting anxieties over science-gone-wrong. These
"monsters" give form (albeit imaginary) to some of humanity's deepest
fears. They reflect not only the apprehension of Pandora's box unearthed, but
more significantly, the hubris of human pride and lust for power unrestrained.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the new field of biotechnology-the actual
manipulation of life at the subtle genetic source. Scientists now talk of the
end of evolution, the end of nature, in the sense that humans will soon replace
nature to direct the course of creation themselves. Doctor Panayiotis Zavos,
who is now actively engaged in producing the first human clone, announced proudly,
``Now that we have crossed into the third millennium, we have the technology
to break the rules of nature.''
Thus, the development and unleashing of "advanced" weapons of mass
destruction through two World Wars, the Cold War, and now almost daily in "hot
spots" throughout the world; the unenlightened tampering with nature that
has brought about widespread environmental pollution; the almost cavalier experiments
with human reproduction, cloning, genetically engineered life, chemical-biological
warfare-all threaten to make reality more frightening than fiction.
The second area of doubt regarding modern science arises from within the scientific
community itself. The last decades of the 20th century have seen an internal
reexamination take place within almost every scientific discipline, as each
has been forced to question its own foundations and exclusive claims to truth.
We are in the midst of a major paradigm shift, the outcome of which still remains
unclear. It revolves around a loss of the positivistic certainty that science
once enjoyed and now finds slipping away. Ironically, the scientific "establishment"
finds itself confronting a challenge to its exclusive authority that in many
ways mirrors the spiritual crisis that religious orthodoxy faced with the triumph
of modern science.
Sigmund Freud exemplifies this ironic shift. Perhaps more than any modern thinker, he contributed to the undermining of religious certainty. He stated quite unequivocally that "an illusion would be to suppose that what science would not give us, we can get elsewhere." Elsewhere, of course, refers to religion, as he made clear in his pessimistic indictment of religion in The Future of an Illusion. And yet his own psychoanalytic theory has become a matter of intense debate, and has come under the critical scrutiny of the very scientific system he felt would validate his ideas. But it is in areas other than psychology, most notably in physics, and increasingly in the life sciences, that a growing body of new knowledge is beginning to strain existing models of explanation and understanding.
With the ground-breaking work of Niels Bohr, Heisenberg, and Sir Arthur
Eddington, the rock-solid presupposition central to that classical scientific
thought began to crumble. With the "new science" that started to emerge
in the post-World War II era, the observer and the observed could not be presumed
separate and distinct. Gone too was the neat subject/object distinction that
had come to define classical science. This shift away from the study of the
"outside" objective world of nature to the "inner" subjective
world of the observer is a hallmark of the new science. As Heisenberg observed,
"Even in science, the object of research is no longer nature itself, but
man's investigation of nature."
For example, Heisenberg pointed out that the very act of measurement interfered
with what one was attempting to measure. You cannot separate the subject from
the object of the experiment. So, if the scientist changes the very nature of
the "reality" he or she investigates, then what is truth? What is
purely objective fact? Where does the boundary lie (indeed, if there is one)
between the mind and the external world? Consequently, the quantum theory of
the new physics no longer claims to be describing "reality." It describes
probable realities. The new physics looks for possible realities and finds them
so elusive that no one model can exhaustively account for everything. The indeterminacy
of models has replaced earlier certainties.
Some, like Thomas Kuhn, even questioned the notion of science as an objective progression towards truth. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Kuhn observed that science, like religion, becomes heavily encumbered with its own baggage of non-rational procedures. Science accumulates its peculiar set of presuppositions, doctrines, and even heresies. Kuhn essentially demolished the logical empiricist and purist view that science personified the impartial progression towards a universal truth. Instead, he saw it as a series of shifting "paradigms"-a global way of seeing things which is relatively immune from disconfirmation by experience. One paradigm would hold sway for awhile, only to be displaced in a "revolution" by another conceptual worldview. These paradigms, both self-contained and self-perpetuating, tended to conserve and perpetuate their own ideas, just as religion tends to conserve and perpetuate its own beliefs.
For example, Galileo declared in the early 1600s that Copernicus was correct:
The earth moves, and the sun is the center of our galaxy. The Church denounced
these views as heresies and dangerous to the Faith. They forced Galileo to recant
during a trial under the Inquisition. Although he was publicly compelled to
affirm the existing "scientific" paradigm, Galileo still defied the
authorities. After getting up from his knees, he is said to have mumbled "E
pur si muove" (nevertheless it still moves). Placed under house arrest,
Galileo lived out the rest of his life in seclusion.
The world, of course, shifted paradigms to accept the Copernican worldview.
The Church, however, lagged behind, and only in 1992 did the Vatican lift the
1616 ban on the Copernican teaching. Einstein, whose theory of relativity was
at first met with skepticism and doubt, later became an icon of scientific genius.
And yet, even Einstein found himself resisting the new theories of the quantum
physicists towards the end of his life-once again adding credibility to Kuhn's
thesis.
Whether Kuhn is correct or not is beside the point. His critique illustrates
a larger trend: the suspicion that science does not have absolute answers, nor
even ultimate authority. Thus, modern science presents less of a unified front,
less of a final bastion of truth. Certainly many people still see themselves
as living in a black and white world. But, in general, many scientists are coming
to define their discipline in a more humble and tentative way. Science, for
people at the turn of the century, stood for absolute, fixed truths and principles
that held good forever; it embraced and explained an unchanging reality, or
at least a reality that was changing according to constant and predictable laws.
Today we are more modest, less presumptuous. A better working definition of
science now might be "a form of inquiry into natural phenomena; a consensus
of information held at any one time and all of which may be modified by new
discoveries and new interpretations at any moment." In contemporary science,
uncertainty seems to be the rule.
Thus, it grows increasingly difficult to believe in an external world governed
by mechanisms that science discloses once and for all. Thoughtful people find
themselves hesitant, unmoored, with an up-in-the-air kind of feeling regarding
the most basic facts of life. It is said that "we live in an age when anything
is possible and nothing is certain." This post-modern dilemma highlights
the felt need to reconcile facts and values, morals and machines, science with
spirituality. And while traditional Judaeo-Christian theologies struggle to
address this particularly contemporary malaise, Buddhism maneuvers this tricky
terrain with apparent ease and finds itself sought after with renewed interest
and popularity.
Moreover, some observers have puzzled over this anomaly: Asia accelerates
in its secular and material modernization (read "Westernization"),
while the West shows signs of a spiritual revitalization drawing on largely
Asian sources-especially Buddhism. Buddhism is being 'Westernized' to be seen
as a teaching that can mesh with both the good life and mitigate the stress
of the faith/reason divide. Part of Buddhism's immense appeal lies in its analysis
of the mind, the subject/self-exactly the area where modern science now senses
the next breakthroughs are to be made.
The Buddha, well before Aquinas or Heisenberg, stressed the primacy of the mind
in the perception and even "creation" of reality. A central concept
of Buddhism is the idea that "everything is made from the mind." Any
distinction between subject and object is false, imagined, at best an expedient
nod to demands of conventional language. In the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Buddha
uses metaphor to elucidate: "The mind is like an artist/It can paint an
entire world. . . If a person knows the workings of the mind/As it universally
creates the world/This person then sees the Buddha/And understands the Buddha's
true and actual nature." (Chap. 20) We think we are observing nature, but
what we are observing is our own mind at work. We are the subject and object
of our own methodology. Moreover, this mind encompasses the entirety of the
universe; there is nothing outside of it, nothing it does not contain, according
to the Buddha.
Such insights early on intrigued Western thinkers, as Buddhism hinted of a new
avenues of travel through the mind/matter maze. It led scientists like Albert
Einstein to declare:
The religion of the future will be cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal
God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual,
it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things,
natural and spiritual and a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description.
. . If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs, it
would be Buddhism.
The Nobel Prize winner was not alone in his positive assessment of the Buddhism's
potential for going beyond the boundaries of Western thought. The British mathematician,
philosopher Alfred North Whitehead declared, "Buddhism is the most colossal
example in the history of applied metaphysics." His contemporary Bertrand
Russell, another Nobel Prize winner, found in Buddhism the greatest religion
in history because "it has had the smallest element of persecution."
But beyond the freedom of inquiry he attributed to the Buddha's teaching, Russell
discovered a superior scientific method-one that reconciled the speculative
and the rational while investigating the ultimate questions of life:
Buddhism is a combination of both speculative and scientific philosophy. It
advocates the scientific method and pursues that to a finality that may be called
Rationalistic. In it are to be found answers to such questions of interest as:
'What is mind and matter? Of them, which is of greater importance? Is the universe
moving towards a goal? What is man's position? Is there living that is noble?'
It takes up where science cannot lead because of the limitations of the latter's
instruments. Its conquests are those of the mind.
As early as the 1940's, the pioneering physicist Niels Bohr sensed this congruence
between modern science and what he called "Eastern mysticism." As
he investigated atomic physics and searched for a unified field of reality,
he often used the Buddha and Lao Tzu in his discussions on physics in his classes.
He made up his own coat of arms with the yin/yang symbol on it. The American
physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer also saw in Buddhism a scientific parallel to
the puzzling riddles of modern physics; his cutting-edge discoveries seemed
to echo the enigmatic wisdom of the ancient sage. Wrote Oppeheimer:
If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains the same,
we must say 'no;' if we ask whether the electron's position changes with time,
we must say 'no;' if we ask whether the electron is at rest, we must say 'no;'
if we ask whether it is in motion, we must say 'no.' The Buddha has given such
answers when interrogated as to the conditions of man's self after his death;
but they are not familiar answers for the tradition of seventeenth and eighteenth-century
science.
In the 1970s, in The Tao Of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between
Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism, Fritjof Capra expanded on some of Bohr's
and Oppenheimer's tentative impressions. He argued that modern science and Eastern
mysticism offer parallel insights into the ultimate nature of reality. But,
beyond this, Capra suggested that the profound harmony between these concepts
as expressed in systems language and the corresponding ideas of Eastern mysticism
was impressive evidence for a remarkable claim: That mystical philosophy offers
the most consistent background to our modern scientific theories.
In the 1970s this notion came as something of a bombshell. Suddenly religion
and science reunited-though in a rather unexpected way-Eastern religion and
Western science. This echoed the excitement of a hundred years previous that
Carus and other late Victorians sensed in Buddhism's potential. Then, however,
the emphasis was on how Buddhism could help establish religion on a more scientific
basis; now, it seems the other way around-that science is seeking Buddhism to
stake out its spiritual or metaphysical claims.
Regardless, those familiar with Buddhist texts immediately saw (or thought
they saw) the correctness of Capra's revelation. Certain Buddhist scriptures
in fact seemed most solidly to confirm the linking of science and Dharma. The
most oft-quoted is the famous teaching called the Kalama Sutta.
In this short discourse, we find the Buddha in his wanderings coming upon the
village of the Kalamas. Religious seekers themselves, the Kalamas were bewildered
by the plethora of divergent philosophies and teachers vying for their attention.
They proceeded to ask the Buddha a series of questions. Here is the relevant
portion of the text:
The Buddha once visited a small town called Kesaputta in the kingdom of Kosala.
The inhabitants of this town were known by the common name Kalama. When they
heard that the Buddha was in their town, the Kalamas paid him a visit, and told
him:
"Sir, there are some recluses and brahmanas who visit Kesaputta. They explain
and illumine only their own doctrines, and despise, condemn and spurn others'
doctrines. Then come other recluses and brahmanas, and they, too, in their turn,
explain and illumine only their own doctrines, and despise, condemn and spurn
others' doctrines. But, for us, Sir, we have always doubt and perplexity as
to who among these venerable recluses and brahmanas spoke the truth, and who
spoke falsehood."
"Yes, Kalamas, it is proper that you have doubt, that you have perplexity,
for a doubt has arisen in a matter which is doubtful. Now, look you Kalamas,
do not be led by reports, or tradition, or hearsay. Be not led by the authority
of religious texts, not by mere logic or inference, nor by considering appearances,
nor by the delight in speculative opinions, nor by seeming possibilities, nor
by the idea: 'this is our teacher'. But O Kalamas, when you know for yourselves
that certain things are unwholesome (akusala), and wrong, and bad, then give
them up...And when you know for yourselves that certain things are wholesome
(kusala) and good, then accept them and follow them."
The Kalamas voiced their doubts, their perplexity in determining truth or falsehood,
as a result of having been exposed to all the competing teachers and doctrines
of India at the time: not unlike our modern world today. Each teacher, each
school, expounded different and often conflicting notions of the truth. The
Buddha's response was to set down a methodology that was in many ways ahead
of its time in anticipating the skeptical empiricism of the modern scientific
method.
He said, "Do not be led by reports, or tradition, or hearsay. Don't be
led by the authority even of religious texts, nor by mere logic or inference,
nor by considering appearances"-all of which eliminate exclusive reliance
on cultural convention, received tradition, and deductive speculation, as well
as mere sense impressions. Also rejected were opinions and "seeming possibilities"-the
stuff of preconceived bias and subjective imagination and fancy. (Some might
argue that being "led by appearances" would include a narrow scientific
method, at least as it has come to be popularly understood-i.e. an exaggerated
reliance on natural phenomena as the only basis of what is true or real. It
would also dismiss the equally exaggerated claim that scientific knowledge is
the only valid kind of knowledge.The Buddha even discounts blind faith in one's
teacher.
So what's left? Here the Buddha lays out a subtle and quite unique epistemology:
"Oh Kalamas, when you know for yourselves that certain things are unwholesome
and wrong and bad, then give them up. And when you know that certain things
are wholesome and good, then accept them and follow them." But how to interpret
this key passage?
Many scholars and believers, both recently and at the turn of the century, jumped at this passage as confirmation that ancient Buddhist wisdom validates modern science. Early popularizers of Eastern religions in America like Anagarika Dharmapala, D. T. Suzuki, Paul Carus, and even Vedantists like Vivekananda, generally waxed enthusiastic about the compatibility of Eastern spirituality and Western science. They saw in passages like the Kalama Sutta proof positive that the Buddha prefigured the modern scientific outlook. Buddhism seemed eminently scientific: detached skeptical investigation of empirically testable phenomena; no faith, no dogma, no revelation. Experiments carried out by and confirmed by individuals regardless of time or place suggested "intersubjective testability"-one of the hallmarks of the scientific method. I do it, you do it; anyone can do it and obtain the same results. That Buddhism and science should be so nearly identical was understandably immensely appealing; it is also misleading.
While American thinkers and newly converted Western Buddhists thought they
saw a natural fit between Buddhism and science, Buddhist teachers more steeped
in the traditional discipline were less apologetic and often more critical of
such facile comparisons. Two notable contemporary examples come to mind: Master
Hsuan Hua, from the Mahayana tradition, and Wapola Rahula, a Theravada scholar-monk,
both threw cold water on this notion.
The Venerable Hsuan Hua, a Ch'an and Tripitika master from China, arrived in
America in the early 1960s to propagate the Dharma in the West. As he observed
and studied the trends and currents of contemporary thought, he showed little
enthusiasm for what seemed to him the exaggerated claims of modern science-theoretical
or applied. He said, "Within the limited world of the relative, that is
where science is. It's not an absolute Dharma. Science absolutely cannot bring
true and ultimate happiness to people, neither spiritually nor materially."
This is strong criticism that portrays science as a discipline limited to relative
truths, and as an unsatisfactory way of life. In another essay, he wrote:
Look at modern science. Military weapons are modernized every day and are more
and more novel every month. Although we call this progress, it's nothing more
than progressive cruelty. Science takes human life as an experiment, as child's
play, as it fulfills its desires through force and oppression.
In 1989, Venerable Walpola Rahula, a Theravadin monk from Sri Lanka, also warned
that daily life is being permeated by science. He cautioned, "We have almost
become slaves of science and technology; soon we shall be worshipping it."
His comments come well into the final decades of the twentieth century, when
many people had in effect turned science into a religious surrogate. The Venerable
monk observed, "Early symptoms are that they tend to seek support from
science to prove the validity of our religions." Walpola Rahula elaborated
on this point:
We justify them [i.e. religions] and make them modern, up-to-date, respectable,
and accessible. Although this is somewhat well intentioned, it is ill-advised.
While there are some similarities and parallel truths, such as the nature of
the atom, the relativity of time and space, or the quantum view of the interdependent,
interrelated whole, all these things were developed by insight and purified
by meditation.
Rahula's critique goes to the heart of the matter: the capitulation of religion
to scientific positivism; the yielding of almost all competing schemes of values
to the scientific juggernaut. Huston Smith, the eminent scholar on the worlds
religions, recently said that the weakness of modern religions in the West stems
from their successful accommodation to culture. The contribution that Buddhism
and other religions can make to the spiritual crisis facing modern society,
therefore, may not lie in their compatibility with science, but in their ability
to offer something that science cannot.
More importantly, as Rahula argues, Dharma, or abiding spiritual truths, were
discovered without the help of any external instrument. Rahula concluded, "It
is fruitless, meaningless to seek support from science to prove religious truth.
It is incongruous and preposterous to depend on changing scientific concepts
to prove and support perennial religious truths." Moreover, he echoes the
deeper moral concerns expressed by Master Hua regarding the unexamined aims
and consequences of the scientific endeavor:
Science is interested in the precise analysis and study of the material world,
and it has no heart. It knows nothing about love or compassion or righteousness
or purity of mind. It doesn't know the inner world of humankind. It only knows
the external, material world that surrounds us.
Rahula then suggests that the value of Buddhism redoubles, not as it can be
made to seem more scientific, but in its reaffirming a different sensibility,
an overarching and unyielding vision of humanity's higher potential. He concludes
emphatically:
On the contrary, religion, particularly Buddhism, aims at the discovery and
the study of humankind's inner world: ethical, spiritual, psychological, and
intellectual. Buddhism is a spiritual and psychological discipline that deals
with humanity in total. It is a way of life. It is a path to follow and practice.
It teaches man how to develop his moral and ethical character, which in Sanskrit
is sila, and to cultivate his mind, samadhi, and to realize the ultimate truth,
prajna wisdom, Nirvana.
Both of these eminent monks pre-date and, in many ways, stand outside the
popularization and "Westernization" of Buddhism. Unlike the Western-leaning
translators of Buddhism Carus, Suzuki, Dharmapala, et al., they emerged from
a monastic discipline grounded in a more traditional understanding, one less
enamored of modern science and more critical of Western philosophy. They would
not so readily concur with Sir Edwin Arnold, who wrote in his best-selling Light
of Asia (1879) that "between Buddhism and modern science there exists a
close intellectual bond."
With this in mind, it would do well to take another look at the passage quoted
above from the Kalama Sutta:
But O Kalamas, when you know for yourselves that certain things are unwholesome
(akusala), and wrong, and bad, then give them up...And when you know for yourselves
that certain things are wholesome (kusala) and good, then accept them and follow
them.
These lines, I believe, hold the key to understanding the difference between
Buddhism and modern science. The passage needs to be understood not simply as
a nod to Western empiricism, but within a specific context of moral inquiry.
This "knowing for yourself" locates knowledge ('scientia') firmly
within the moral sphere, both in its aims and its outcomes. It employs a meditative
form of insight to penetrate the ultimate nature of reality. It implies a concept
quite foreign to modern science: that the knower and what is known, the subject
and object, fact and value, are not merely non-dual, but that knowledge itself
is inescapably influenced by our moral and ethical being. Perhaps this is exactly
what Suzuki intuited was lacking in modern science when he wrote in 1959, "I
now think that a religion based solely on science is not enough. There are certain
'mythological' elements in every one of us, which cannot be altogether lost
in favor of science."
Regardless, none of this critical reassessment should come as a surprise to
thoughtful Buddhists. The Shurangama Sutra clearly notes, "when the seed
planted is crooked, the fruit will be distorted." The close link between
intention and result, cause and effect, is central to all Buddhist philosophy.
It should be obvious and expected that the very fabric of modern science, lacking
as it does a firm grounding in the moral sphere, would result in deleterious
discoveries and incomplete uses. Tragic examples abound attesting to the ill-fated
marriage of scientific technology and human ignorance.
Nor, from a Buddhist perspective, can these examples be seen as unintended
consequences or accidents-they are, rather, unavoidable and logical outcomes
of a partial though powerful system of thought. There is nothing in science
per se that would lead one to equate its advancement with increased social benefits
and enhanced human values. And certainly the absence of ethical imperatives
should alert any knowledgeable Buddhist to a fundamental flaw in equating the
Eightfold Way with the practice of science. In fact, a close reading of the
Buddhist sources, it seems, would lead one to question: Is science in itself
sufficient for describing reality? Is it capable of meeting human needs?
Thus, the aforementioned Kalamas passage, depending on one's frame of reference,
could be seen more as a critique of than a correspondence with modern science.
The key to understanding this difference lies in a correct Buddhist interpretation
of "know for yourselves," "wholesome," and "unwholesome."
As Walpola Rahula indicates, these concepts are part of a specific and disciplined
form or methodology of self-cultivation which, when diligently practiced, leads
to true knowledge and wisdom. This method is referred to in Buddhism as the
"three non-outflow science" (san wu lou xue), and consists of morality,
concentration, and wisdom (Sanskrit: sila, samadhi, prajna).
The ethical component cannot be overemphasized, as "seeing things as they
really are" entails an indispensable preliminary: "purification of
the mind." This clarity of mind and concentrated awareness in turn begins
with and must be sustained by moral conduct. The Visuddhimagga (Path of Purification),
an early Buddhist manual compiled in the 4th century by Buddhagosha, lists the
Buddha's "science" of inquiry as an interrelated three-step exercise
of virtue, meditation, and insight. This is quite a different approach to knowledge
than a modern-day scientist would presume or pursue. It is interesting that
these ancient wisdom traditions considered moral purity as the absolute prerequisite
of true knowledge, and that we today regard it as immaterial, if not downright
irrelevant. Thus, fundamental and qualitatively different views of what constitutes
knowledge and the acquisition of knowledge separate Buddhism and science.
Aspects of the above epistemological formula appear throughout the Asian
religious traditions. For example, Taoism speaks of cultivating the mind (hsin),
regarding it as the repository of perceptions and knowledge-it rules the body,
it is spiritual and like a divinity that will abide "only where all is
clean." Thus the Kuan Tzu (4 to 3rd century B.C.) cautions that "All
people desire to know, but they do not inquire into that whereby one knows."
It specifies:
What all people desire to know is that (i.e., the external world),
But their means of knowing is this (i.e. oneself);
How can we know that?
Only by the perfection of this. 1
Are we studying ourselves when we think we are studying nature? Will the "new
science" eventually come to Kuan Tzu's conclusion that only "by perfecting
this," can we truly know that? These ancient writings raise an interesting
question: How accurate and objective can be the observation if the observer
is flawed and imperfect? Is the relationship between "consciousness"
and matter as distinct as we are inclined to believe?
The "perfection" mentioned above refers to the cultivation of moral qualities and in Buddhist terminology, the elimination of "afflictions" (klesa) such as greed, anger, ignorance, pride, selfishness, and emotional extremes. It seems less an alteration of consciousness than a purification and quieting of the mind. Mencius talks of obtaining an "unmoving mind" at age forty, again referring to the cultivation of an equanimity resulting from the exercise of moral sense. He distinguished between knowledge acquired from mental activity and knowledge gained from intuitive insight. This latter knowledge he considered superior as it gives noumenal as well as phenomenal understanding. Advaita Vedanta, the philosophical teaching of Hinduism, as well emphasizes that jnana (knowledge) requires a solid basis in ethics (Dharma). Chuang Tzu, spoke of acquiring knowledge of "the ten thousand things" (i.e., of all nature) through virtuous living and practicing stillness: "to a mind that is 'still' the whole universe surrenders." 2 Even Confucius's famous passage concerning the highest learning (da xue) connects utmost knowledge of the universe to the cultivation of one's person and the rectification of one's mind. 3
The challenge from these eminent Buddhist teachers to the nearly ex cathedra
authority generally accorded to science should give pause to anyone attempting
a facile identification of Buddhism with science. Their aims and methods, though
tantalizingly parallel, upon closer analysis diverge. Correspondences do exist,
but fundamental differences inhere as well. To gloss over them not only encourages
sloppy thinking, but approaches hubris. So we must ask: to what extent is our
conception of science as the arbiter of knowledge culture-bound, even myopic?
Could our near total faith in science blind us to an inherent bias in such a
stance: we presume that the logic, norms, and procedures of the scientific method
are universally applicable and their findings are universally valid. Science
may not only have limited relevance for interpreting Buddhism, but may distort
our very understanding of its meaning.
Thus, in a quest to reach an easy and elegant reconciliation of faith and reason,
we may unwittingly fall prey to "selective perception"-noticing and
embracing only those elements of Buddhism that seem consonant with our way of
thinking and giving short shrift to the rest. Overplaying the similarities between
science and Buddhism can lead into a similar trap, where our dominant Western
thought-way (science) handicaps rather than helps us to understand another worldview.
In Buddhism, this is called "the impediment of what is known."
It may prove more salutary to allow Buddhism to "rub us the wrong way"
- to challenge our preconceptions and habitual ways, to remain strange and different
from anything to which we have been accustomed. To borrow a metaphor from Henry
Clarke Warren, we might enjoy a "walking in Fairyland" in shoes that
do not quite fit:
A large part of the pleasure that I have experienced in the study of Buddhism
has arisen from what I may call the strangeness of the intellectual landscape.
All the ideas, the modes of argument, even the postulates assumed and not argued
about, have always seemed so strange, so different from anything to which I
have been accustomed, that I felt all the time as though walking in Fairyland.
Much of the charm that the Oriental thoughts and ideas have for me appears to
be because they so seldom fit into Western categories. 4
1 ArthurWaley, The Way And Its Power: A Study of the Tao Te Ching and Its Place
in Chinese Thought (New York: Grove Press, 1958), 47.
2 ibid, 58.
3 James Legge, Confucius: Confucian Analects, The Great Learning, and The Doctrine
of the Mean [Translated by James Legge], (New York: Dover, 1893, 1971), 4-7.
4 Henry Clarke Warren, Buddhism In Translations (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1896), 283-84.