Buddhism and Science: Probing the Boundaries of Faith and Reason

Dr. Martin J. Verhoeven

Religion East and West, Issue 1, June 2001, pp. 77-97

      Abstract

             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.