Will Science Bring an End to
Buddhism?
September 5,
2016 by Paul
Louis Metzger Patheos
My wife, daughter and I met for dinner recently with a Buddhist
scholar Prof. Shizuka Sasaki and his wife (a fellow scholar and
colleague at Hanazono University) in Kyoto, Japan.
I first met
Prof. Shizuka Sasaki two years ago as a result of a Templeton
science grant initiative on faith and science in the Japanese
context. I was struck by his keen commitment to the historical
Buddha’s teaching on enlightenment, including the emphasis on
non-grasping and non-being. According to Prof. Sasaki, he was
trained in chemistry as a university student, but later made the
switch to Buddhist studies. Still, his interest in science
continues. For example, scientists have been struck by the import
of his Buddhist teaching for constructive dialogue with scientific
explorations. In fact, he is the co-author of a forthcoming book
with a string-theory physicist from California Institute of
Technology; the work is a collection of public lectures they
delivered together in Japan, and which will be published in
Japanese. Prof. Sasaki is also the author
of Kagaku Suru
Buddha (literally translated
as Buddha Engaging in Science; Tokyo:
Kadokawa Bunko, 2006, 2013).
Prof.
Sasaki claims that the historical Buddha’s teaching resonates with
contemporary science given their mutual affirmation and focus on
humanity; in contrast, otherworldly religion with its focus on God
or gods (absolute being) is incompatible with science. I took his
consideration of enlightenment to entail such teachings as the Four
Noble Truths (all life is unsatisfactory/filled with suffering,
which is based on the passionate hold on life; there is an end to
suffering that results from movement to a non-grasping, passionless
state by way of the Eightfold Path involving definitive mental and
physical practices of release). For Prof. Sasaki, the historical
Buddha’s teaching (which he prizes) emphasizes a practical mindset
and self-discipline. Ninety-nine percent of the historical Buddha’s
teaching concerns pragmatic mental training. One percent of this
form of Buddhism involves a sense of mystery regarding the person’s
inner mental world (Kagaku Suru Buddha, page 260). It is
this one percent that makes the historical or original form of
Buddhism a religion for Prof. Sasaki (page 260).[1]
For Prof.
Sasaki, science will eventually be able to provide an updated,
contemporary version of Buddhism’s delineation of the problem of
human existence and the elimination of suffering through
enlightenment in biological and neurological terms. Given this
point of view, would not such completion or fulfillment of the
historical Buddha’s teaching by science bring an end to Buddhism,
as we know it? Yes, but not yet. Science and Buddhism have not yet
become one, but they will at some future point, according to Prof.
Sasaki. He rejects the claims of those groups that assert that
science and Buddhism have already merged in their systems of
thought and practice. For Prof. Sasaki, both science and Buddhism
focus on improving the human condition. If and when science can
explain Buddhist enlightenment biologically and neurologically,
then Buddhism as a religion will no longer exist.
I was
surprised by how quickly Prof. Sasaki responded in the affirmative,
when I asked over dinner if science would indeed complete the
historical Buddha’s teaching, bringing it, in effect, to an end.
One of the questions in my mind in reflecting on Prof. Sasaki’s
claims involved the presumed tension in his thought between his
personal commitment to Buddhism and his confidence in scientific
progress: was his personal commitment to Buddhism simply the result
of upbringing and possibly nostalgia? Though surprised at first by
his answer, I found Prof. Sasaki’s response consistent with his
claims in other contexts: he is willing to abandon or move on from
any position based on what he takes to be the greater explanatory
power of another perspective. Again, for him, there is no conflict
between Buddhism and science; still, the latter will be shown at
some point to be an advance on the former based on physical,
biological and chemical explanations of what the Buddha (Gautama)
had perceived phenomenologically, practiced, and
articulated.
Beyond
resolution of this presumed tension, still another question arises
in my mind: how would natural science lead us toward an ethic
of non-grasping or non-being (non-self) practices apart from
philosophy and religion’s ongoing ethical contributions? For
example, would not Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection
involving the survival of the fittest and also Richard Dawkins’
selfish gene model, if correct, lead us more than ever toward a
state of ultimate grasping? David Hume’s distinction between what
is (which would include scientific deliberations) and what should
be (ethical deliberations) is very important here: even as science
describes the way things often are, that does not require of us
that we simply follow our biological urges and propensities.
Fortunately for us, no doubt, Darwin was careful to discern the
limits of natural science and the need for ethical deliberations
arising from other spheres, such as religion and philosophy (See
for example Darwin’s awareness of the need for reasoning, religion
and the like—beyond biological considerations—for the cultivation
of ethics in his “General Summary” in The
Descent of Man). I appreciate the following assessment of
Darwin’s position on what
is related to natural selection
and what ought to
be related to religious and philosophical
ethical systems:
… since our
human evolution has given us both the sympathy to care for our
fellow humans and the intelligence to institute laws and social
programs to help them, shouldn’t we use those mental capacities to
try to steer human society in the direction of greater equality?
Isn’t that more “natural” to us than unflinching adherence to “the
survival of the fittest”? It would be dangerous, however, to rest
our case on the extremely slippery concept of what is “natural.” It
would be clearer to appeal directly to explicit ethical principles
about human dignity, equality, needs and rights (as in Kant or
Marx, and indeed in the New Testament) that cannot be derived from
any factual statements about evolution (Leslie Stevenson, David L.
Haberman and Peter Matthews Wright, Twelve Theories of
Human Nature, sixth edition {Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2013}, pages 254-255).
To the list
of ethical systems offered in this quotation, I would add Buddhism.
Now even if I were to accept the slow-dying historiographical
conflict thesis involving religion and science presented long ago
by John William Draper and Andrew Dickson
White (which I don’t based on such keen historical studies
as Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about
Science and Religion edited by Ronald L.
Numbers {Harvard University Press, 2009},
and The Territories of Religion and Science
by Peter Harrison {The University of Chicago
Press, 2015}, we can never get away from metaphysical claims that
go beyond empirical data. Contemporary science itself makes all
kinds of claims that cannot be proven empirically, but are
necessary for further explorations. See for example Oxford
University’s Denis Noble’s work, The Music of
Life (Oxford University Press, 2008), in
which he claims that neither Richard Dawkins’ selfish gene
atomistic model nor his own systems biological approach model can
be proven empirically. However, without discounting that there are
merits to Dawkins’ perspective, Noble maintains that his
web-oriented framework has greater explanatory power than Dawkins’
gene-centered paradigm for comprehending biological life (Refer to
Noble’s work, especially pages ix-xi, 11-13, 17,
52-54).
No matter
how far natural science takes us, it will never be natural for it
to try to explain everything. So, will science bring an end to
Buddhism? (Or Christianity, or Islam, or Kantianism, or Marxism,
for that matter?) Never. We will always need ethical and
metaphysical collaborative enquiries, such as can be found among
Buddhist, Christian and Muslim philosophical and religious
scholars, in addition to others, working with scientists, as in the
case of Prof. Sasaki’s robust joint ventures. Only then can we
truly develop systems of thought that pursue models of increasing
explanatory aesthetic, imaginative power for the whole of
life.
_____________________
[1]Even
though he prizes the historical Buddha’s teaching, which requires
renunciation of one’s previous life for a monastic existence, Prof.
Sasaki makes space for Mahayana Buddhism. For those who cannot
commit to the austere life required of monks, the Mahayanan
tradition makes available comfort and peace for the
spiritually-minded who continue to attend to everyday affairs, such
as family and work.