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Arri Eisen is a professor at Emery University who has traveled to
Dharamsala, India, to teach science to Tibetan Buddhist monks. He
writes about his experiences at Religion Dispatches. In "Teaching
the Dalai Lama’s Monks: Better Religion Through Science," Eisen
writes that a monk told him “I am studying modern science because I
believe it can help me understand my Buddhism better.” It was a
statement, Eisen says, that turned his worldview on its head.
In an earlier article, "Creationism
v. Integrationism," Eisen brought up the famous remark of His
Holiness the Dalai Lama about science and sutras:
"Buddhism turns modern Judeo-Christian ideas on their heads. In
Buddhism, experience and reasoning come first, and then scripture.
As we wandered down the path of broken rock fragments, Dhondup told
me that when he encounters something that disagrees with his
beliefs, he tests the new idea with logical evidence and
approaches, and then if it holds up, he accepts it. This is what
the Dalai Lama means when he says that if modern science presents
good evidence that a Buddhist idea is wrong, he will accept the
modern science (he gives the example of the Earth moving around the
sun, which runs counter to Buddhist scripture)."
Western non-Buddhists react to His Holiness's attitude toward
science and scripture as if it were some kind of revolutionary
breakthrough. But within Buddhism, it isn't all that
revolutionary.
For the most part, Buddhists do not relate to the sutras in
the same way people of the Abrahamic religions relate to the Bible,
the Torah, or the Quran. The sutras are not the revealed words of a
God who cannot be questioned, nor are they compilations of claims
about the physical or spiritual worlds to be accepted on faith.
Rather, they are pointers to an ineffable reality beyond the reach
of ordinary cognition and senses.
Although one may have faith that the sutras are pointing to truth,
merely "believing in" what they say is of no particular value. The
religious practice of Buddhism is not based on fidelity to
doctrines, but on the very personal, very intimate process of realizing the truth of
the doctrines for oneself. It is realization, not belief, that is
transformative.
The sutras do sometimes speak of the physical world, but they do so
to clarify spiritual teaching. For example, the early Pali texts
describe the physical world as being made up of Four Great Elements
-- solidity, fluidity, heat, and motion. What do we make of that
today?
I sometimes do reflect on how early Buddhists might have understood
the physical world based on the "science" of their time. But
"believing in" the Four Great Elements is never the point, and I
know of no way that knowledge of modern earth science or physics
would conflict with the teachings. Most of us, I suspect, in our
own heads automatically interpret and "update" the ancient texts to
match our knowledge of earth science. The nature of what we are
trying to understand does not depend on believing in Four Great
Elements rather than atoms and molecules.
Indeed, if there is an article of faith among many present-day
Buddhists, it's that the more science discovers, the better
scientific knowledge harmonizes with Buddhism. For example, it
appears that teachings on evolution and ecology -- that nothing is
immutable; that life forms exist, adapt and change because they are
conditioned by environment and other life forms -- fits nicely with
the Buddha's teaching on Dependent
Origination.
Many of us also are intrigued by contemporary study into the nature
of consciousness and how our brains work to create an idea of
"self," in light of Buddhist teaching on anatta.
Nope, there's no ghost
in the machine, so to speak, and we're OK with that.
I do worry a bit about interpreting 2,000-year-old mystical texts
as quantum mechanics, which seems to be something of a fad. I'm not
saying that's incorrect -- I don't know quantum
mechanics from spinach, so I wouldn't know -- but without advanced
knowledge of physics and Buddhism such a pursuit could result in
junk science and, well, junk Buddhism. I understand there are a few
advanced physicists who also practice Buddhism who have turned
their attention to this issue, and I will leave it to them to
figure out the physics-dharma connection and whether making it is
useful. In the meantime, the rest of us probably would do well not
to attach to it.
It's a mistake, I think, to "sell" Buddhism to a skeptical public
by playing up its apparent agreements with science, as I have seen
some Buddhists try to do. This plays into an idea that Buddhism
must be validated by science to be "true," which is not at all the
case. I think we would do well to remember that Buddhism does not
require validation by science any more than science requires
validation by Buddhism. After all, the historical Buddha realized
enlightenment without knowledge of string theory.
Zen teacher John
Daido Loori said, "When science goes deeper than the
superficial qualities -- and these days science does go much deeper
-- it remains constrained to a study of the aggregates. From tree
morphology -- trunk, bark, branches, leaves, fruit, seeds -- we dip
into tree chemistry, then tree physics; from molecules of cellulose
to atoms, electrons, protons." However, "When the true eye
functions, it goes beyond looking and enters the realm of seeing.
Looking speaks to what things are. Seeing reveals what else things
are, the hidden aspect of reality, the reality of a rock, a tree, a
mountain, a dog or a person."
For the most part the disciplines of science and Buddhism work on
entirely different planes that touch each other only lightly. I
can't imagine how science and Buddhism could conflict with each
other significantly even if they tried. At the same time, there's
no reason science and Buddhism can't peacefully co-exist and even,
sometimes, illuminate each other. His Holiness the Dalai Lama seems
to have seen the possibilities of such illumination.