Although there may be correlation between a measurable activity
in part of the brain and a mental impression, such co-occurrence
doesn't always imply that one is the cause of the other. For
instance, some years ago, research showed a clear correlation
between cigarette smoking and the non-occurrence of Alzheimer's
disease. It was not that smoking cigarettes somehow caused immunity
from Alzheimer's, as much as the tobacco companies might have
wished, it was only that many smokers did not live long enough to
get Alzheimer's disease! Thus a co-incidence of two phenomena, even
when repeated, does not mean that one phenomenon is the cause of
the other. To claim that activity in the brain causes awareness, or
mind, is plainly unscientific.
Buddhism is more scientific than modern science. Like science,
Buddhism is based on verifiable cause-and-effect relationships. But
unlike science, Buddhism challenges with thoroughness every belief.
The famous Kalama Sutta of Buddhism states that one cannot believe
fully in "what one is taught, tradition, hearsay, scripture, logic,
inference, appearance, agreement with established opinion, the
seeming competence of a teacher, or even in one's own teacher". How
many scientists are as rigorous in their thinking as this? Buddhism
challenges everything, including logic.
It is worth noting that Quantum Theory appeared quite illogical,
even to such great scientists as Einstein, when it was first
proposed. It is yet to be disproved. Logic is only as reliable as
the assumptions on which it is based. Buddhism trusts only clear
and objective experience.
Clear experience occurs when one's measuring instruments, one's
senses, are bright and undisturbed. In Buddhism, this happens when
the hindrances of sloth-and-torpor and restlessness-and-remorse are
both overcome. Objective experience is that which is free from all
bias. In Buddhism, the three types of bias are desire, ill will and
sceptical doubt. Desire makes one see only what one wants to see,
it bends the truth to fit one's preferences. Ill will makes one
blind to whatever is disturbing or disconcerting to one's views and
it distorts the truth by denial. Sceptical doubt stubbornly refuses
to accept those truths, like rebirth, that are plainly valid but
which fall outside of one's comforting worldview. In summary, clear
and objective experience only happens when the Buddhist 'Five
Hindrances' have been overcome. Only then can one trust the data
arriving through one's senses.
Because scientists are not free of these five hindrances, they are
rarely clear and objective. It is common, for example, for
scientists to ignore annoying data, which do not fit their
cherished theories, or else confine such evidence to oblivion by
filing it away as an 'anomaly'. Even most Buddhists aren't clear
and objective. One has to have recent experience of Jhana to
effectively put aside these five hindrances (according to the
Nalakapana Sutta , Majjhima No. 6
. So only
accomplished meditators can claim to be real scientists, that is,
clear and objective.
Science claims to rely not only on clear and objective observation,
but also on measurement. But what is measurement in science? To
measure something, according to the pure science of Quantum Theory,
is to collapse the Schroedinger Wave Equation through an act of
observation. Moreover, the "un-collapsed" form of the Schroedinger
Wave Equation, that is before any measurement is made, is, perhaps,
science's most perfect description of the world. That description
is weird! Reality, according to pure science, does not consist of
well ordered matter with precise massed, energies and positions in
space, all just waiting to be measured. Reality is the broadest of
smudges of all possibilities, only some being more probable than
others. Even basic 'measurable' qualities as 'alive' or 'dead' have
been demonstrated by science to be invalid sometimes. In the
notorious 'Schroedinger's Cat' thought experiment, Prof.
Schroedinger's cat was ingeniously placed in a real situation where
it was neither dead nor alive, where such measurements became
meaningless. Reality, according to Quantum Theory, is beyond
measurements. Measuring disturbs reality, it never describes it
perfectly. It was Heisenberg's famous 'Uncertainty Principle' that
showed the inevitable error between the real Quantum world and the
measured world of pseudo-science.
Anyway, how can anyone measure the measurer, the mind? At a recent
seminar on Science and Religion, at which I was a speaker, a
Catholic in the audience bravely announced that whenever she looks
through a telescope at the stars, she feels uncomfortable because
her religion is threatened. I commented that whenever a scientist
looks the other way round through a telescope, to observe the one
who is watching, then they feel uncomfortable because their science
is threatened by what is doing the seeing! So what is doing the
seeing, what is this mind that eludes modern science?
A Grade-One teacher once asked her class "What is the biggest thing
in the world?" One little girl answered "My daddy". A little boy
said "An elephant", since he'd recently been to the zoo. Another
girl suggested "A mountain". The six-year-old daughter of a close
friend of mine replied, "My eye is the biggest thing in the world"!
The class stopped. Even the teacher didn't understand her answer.
So the little philosopher explained "Well, my eye can see her
daddy, an elephant, and a mountain too. It can also see so much
else. If all of that can fit into my eye, then my eye must be the
biggest thing in the world"! Brilliant.
However, she was not quite right. The mind can see everything that
one's eye can see, and it can also imagine so much more. It can
also hear, smell, taste and touch, as well as think. In fact,
everything that can be known can fit into the mind. Therefore, the
mind must be the biggest thing in the world. Science's mistake is
obvious now. The mind is not in the brain, nor in the body. The
brain, the body and the rest of the world, are in the mind!
Mind is the sixth sense in Buddhism, it is that which encompasses
the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, and
transcends them with its own domain. It corresponds loosely to
Aristotle's "common sense" that is distinct from the five senses.
Indeed, ancient Greek philosophy, from where science is said to
have its origins, taught six senses just like Buddhism. Somewhere
along the historical journey of European thinking, they lost their
mind! Or, as Aristotle would put it, they somehow discarded their
"common sense"! And thus we got science. We got materialism without
any heart. One can accurately say that Buddhism is science that has
kept its heart, and which hasn't lost its mind!
Thus Buddhism is not a belief system. It is a science founded on
objective observation, i.e. meditation, ever careful not to disturb
the reality through imposing artificial measurements, and it is
evidently repeatable. People have been re-creating the experimental
conditions, known as establishing the factors of the Noble
Eightfold Path, for over twenty-six centuries now, much longer than
science. And those renowned Professors of Meditation, the male and
female Arahants, have all arrived at the same conclusion as the
Buddha. They verified the timeless Law of Dhamma, otherwise known
as Buddhism. So Buddhism is the only real science, and I'm happy to
say that I'm still a scientist at heart, only a much better
scientist than I ever could have been at Cambridge.
Ajahn Brahmavamso
8th February 2004
