HITECH KHADI
Assistant Prof. Dr. Pornchai Pacharin-tanakun http://DrPornchai.com
Freelance Academic
Guest Lecturer at Chulalongkorn Univ., Mahamakut Univ. and Mahachulalongkorn Univ.
Science is Buddhistic!: How and Why
When people talk about Buddhism and Science they often notice that Buddhism is science-like, though their understanding of Buddhism and Science might be wrong.
(Buddhism is “scientific”, of course, but “science-like” is another matter.) Anyhow, they might not be aware that in no way is Buddhism science-like, on the contrary it is Science that is Buddhistic! (Buddhism-like.) Why? There are two reasons for this, a simple one and a complex one. The simple reason is chronology, i.e., if anything (call it A) is another-thing- like (call it B-like) then the thing (A) must be in existence after the other thing (B), or A must appear after B, or B must have been existing before A materializes.
In this case, A is Science and B is Buddhism. Everybody knows that Buddhism was born before Science. (At least Science in the meaning of modern times, which is the currently accepted meaning.) Therefore if Science and Buddhism are somehow related then Science has to be Buddhistic and Buddhism cannot be science-like.
Now, I have said about “Science in the meaning of modern times.” By that phrase I mean Science as an experiment-and-observation-based discipline, which just sprang into being in Galileo’s time about 400 years ago. “Science” before that time was based only on thought and philosophizing. “Scientists” just speculated that nature had to be so and so without doing any experimentation or observation to see if nature conformed to their thought.
In fact, “Science” in those ancient eras was not Science at all, but rather was “Natural Philosophy” as academics rightly call it.
Afore-mentioned is the simple reason as to why it is that Science is Buddhistic, i.e., Buddhism was born before modern Science. Now we come to the second reason which is the complex one. It is that the principles and methods, or properties, or ideals of Science are like those of Buddhism even though Buddhism had been existing long before Science came to the scene. The ideals are three: (1) Self-helping (do-it-yourself, DIY) irrespective of God and/or devas; (2) Collection of fact in the study by observation and/or experimentation without speculation; and (3) Control of behaviors of anyone practicing the discipline.
(1) Self-helping Irrespective of God and/or Devas.
Before the rise of Buddhism in India there had been many religions there, especially Brahmanism which was the oldest and greatest religion occupying the whole subcontinent.
Those religions are all theistic. They all teach people to pay respect to God and devas in order to gain what they want. Paying respect can be done in many ways such as prayers for praising the God/devas, prayers for asking what one wants from God/devas and when the wish is granted one will offer something back, (This practice is still alive and well in modern Thai society!) sacrificing animals and even children to God/devas!, offering foods and theatrical plays to God/devas, etc. Then some time before the Buddha’s era, there occurred a spiritual revolution by a group of people who called themselves “samanas.” The samanas had established the “samana movement” which called for independence from God/devas.
The movement teaches human to help himself by his own effort it he wants anything.
God/devas has/have nothing to do with man, be He/they existing or not. Even if God/devas exists/exist, He/they can’t be of any real help. The movement, in a way, does not negate the existence of God the creator or devas the residents of heavens but asserts that man help himself without regard to God or devas, though it is highly likely that most in the movement totally leave God and/or devas out of the picture. The movement gave birth to atheistic religions. (As you can see by now, atheists may or may not accept the existence of God/devas though it is likely that they dump God but still keep devas in their respective heavens. They just want to help themselves to their own destinies with or without God/devas.) It turns out that nowadays we have only two major atheist religions left over from those old days. These are Buddhism and Shainism. Then recently modern science happened on the scene with the same ideal, i.e., self-helping. But science takes a different
track in totally eliminating God and devas out of the picture. God and devas do not exist as far as science is concerned. Science only accepts self-help through experimentation and observation.
Since their ideal is to fight for what they want, not accepting any help from outside agents, the samanic religion practitioners, especially Buddhists, must find out what they have to do and how to do it if they want some particular things. Take a look at these examples: If they want to be rich, be intelligent and be pretty, etc. then they have to find out how to proceed. They have to find the processes by collections of data in the doing of experimentation and observation. (In the religious or spiritual cases, observation is employed more than experimentation because of the nature of the cases which are mentally and/or spiritually oriented. Besides, observation is easier to do than experimentation in mental and spiritual realms.) In these examples, the solutions happen to be that if one wants something good one has to do good and if one wants something evil one has to do evil. This is the law of kamma. The translation of the law is thus: If one wants to be rich one has to be generous; If one wants to be intelligent one has to study dhamma; If one wants to be pretty one has to be not angry; If one wants to die young one has to kill (others); If one wants to be poor one has to be stingy; Etc. (Even one does not want to die young, but if he kills it’s inevitable that he will die young anyway. And even one does not want to be poor, but if he is stingy he has no choice but to be poor accordingly!)
Besides the law of kamma, dhamma practicing in any form is an expression of self help according to the Buddha’s saying, “One is the refuge of oneself.” Examples follow:
Generosity or giving away of possession, be it material or dhammic, must be done by oneself, one cannot plead to devas to do it in one’s name, dana (generosity) leads to minimization of materialism and to helping of each other in society; One has to practice one’s own sila, he cannot pray to or hire devas to practice it for him, sila will lead to good human behavior and peace in society; One has to sit practicing one’s own mindfulness and mental concentration (samadhi), he cannot ask devas to do it instead, one who sits for samadhi will gain wisdom and contribute to society’s spiritual progress and development.
These self-help activities show the greatness of the samana movement in the sphere of religions.
The principle of self-help has been adopted by modern science whole-heartedly.
Once science doesn’t believe in the existence of God and devas, it remains only oneself available to rely upon. So man has to do everything himself. And science does help itself in order to develop material progress of every kind imaginable, from matches all the way through navy fleets. Science helps itself by doing observation and experimentation on nature and gains information and knowledge. Scientific knowledge leads to construction and production technologies to create and produce whatever man wants for consumption.
Science and technology provide for comfort and convenience of every kind man can imagine, together with those he can’t even imagine! For examples: Knowledge of the working of matter and energy leads to the creation of every kind of machine, from steam engine to gasoline to diesel to jet and to rocket engines including machine in factories for the production of every piece of consumer goods available all over the world; Knowledge of electricity and electronics leads to productions of light bulbs, radios, televisions, computers, mobile phones, refrigerators, washers, etc.; Knowledge of chemistry provides for productions of medicines, cosmetics, food preservatives, antique preservation and even archeological site preservation, etc. These self-help activities show the greatness of the samana movement in the sphere of science.
Since Buddhism and Science are both self-help (DIY) disciplines, they are of the same kind, i.e., the samana (or shaman) kind. Buddhists are samanas, scientists are also samanas. We are all the same. We can identify with one another. This fact is becoming more and more obvious in the modern times. It is apparent that scientists and westerners who are predisposed toward science are showing more interest in Buddhism. Buddhist monks’ brains have been scanned by scientists while the monks are in Samadhi.
Mindfulness has been paid attention to and practiced by lay westerners. And conclusions have been reached by modern science that Samadhi can change the brain mechanism to work better. Etc. Innumerable westerners have been converted to Buddhism, they have been visiting Buddhist sacred sites in Thailand and many have even been ordained, becoming Buddhist monks. Now Thailand is almost a super power in Buddhism and it will become one in no time. All these great changes in the western minds come about for only one reason, that we buddhists and scientists are all of the same samanic kind.
(2) Observation and Experimentation.
Since the samana movement promotes self reliance, when the samanas want to know anything well they have to do their own study without asking davas or God. In the old days, this so called “study” was just speculation. They just speculated what should be the nature of this and that. Followings are examples of the speculation: If one wants to get rid of dukkha then he has to fast or has to over indulge in sex; If one wants to be rich then he has to spend little and be stingy as much as possible; If one wants to be pretty then she has to walk raising up her chin; Etc. Then later on the samanas realized that their speculation could be right as well as wrong and a better way to gain knowledge was through observation and experimentation.
It happened that when the samanas, especially Buddhist samanas led by the Buddha, got to do observation and experimentation, they used observation more than experimentation and found that most of the speculation was wrong but if the speculative idea was supported by observation and experimentation then it was usually right. As last they found the way to the truth and collected what they found into laws, such as the law of kamma, the law of dependent origination (paticcasmuppada), the law of three charisteristics (ti lakkhana) and the law of four noble truths. These laws have been proved right all the times till today and will never cease to be right.
Now at this point of your reading you may wonder that what buddhists observe so that they have discovered these laws. The short and concise answer is, “They observe the working of the mind using mindfulness.” In this article I don’t have space to discuss the details of the mental observation and don’t have time to demonstrate how this observation leads to the establishment of these four laws. It suffices to say that the observation of the mind is the means to develop mindfulness and mental concentration. The most important methods of mental observation are the followings: “The Four Foundations of Mindfulness”
which is the observation of the mind when it contemplates the body, the feeling, the mind itself and the objects of the mind; “The Breath Watching” which is the observation of the mind when it contemplates the in-and-out breath; And “The Buddha Watching” which is the observation of the mind when it contemplates the Buddha. While observing the mind to see its working, one has to behave as if one is a third person outside oneself and that third person is watching at one’s mind and observing it with neutrality and without any judgment.
The third person just keeps observing the thought and the feeling of the mind without comment. The person is not supposed to judge the thought as to good or bad, pretty or ugly, true of false, etc. Buddhism employs the observation of the mind so that it has accumulated a lot of information and knowledge about the mind and used this information to overcome and command the mind in any way we like.
Science, like Buddhism, is also based on observation and experimentation. The difference lies in what they deal with. Buddhism mostly deals with the mind whereas science mostly deals with matter. Science has likewise collected a lot of information and knowledge about matter and used this information to overcome and command matter in any way we desire. Science is applied as technology to create material progress. In science, as opposed to Buddhism, we do experimentation more than observation. Nevertheless, there are some branches of science in which observation is done more frequently than experimentation, just like buddhism. It all depends on the nature of the scientific endeavor:
Astronomy, geology and meteorology usually do observation more than experimentation whereas chemistry, physics and biology usually do the opposite. Science can be divided into two major branches, observational and experimental, depending on the importance it gives to either observation or experimentation. In this sense we may define Buddhism as an observational science.
(3) Behavior of the Practitioner.
“Practitioners” in Buddhism mean all Buddhists, monastics and laymen, and
“behavior” means silas or vinaya (precepts) appropriate to the practitioner concerned. We have five silas for laymen, eight silas for anagarikas, ten silas for novices and two hundred and twenty seven silas for monks. Precepts are designed for the dhammic advancement of the individual and also for the progress of the religion. That is because precepts are the basis for the practice of mental concentration (Samadhi) in order for wisdom (panna) to develop until salvation (nibbana) is gained. One who keeps precepts will practice mental concentration and develop wisdom easily. When the majority of people can keep their precepts there will be peace in society. People will not take advantage of one another and will attain high standard of living. This means progress of the religion.
“Practitioners” in Science mean only scientists and “behavior” means ethics of the scientists. This ethics is in the same sense as any professional ethics such as the press’
ethics and physicians’ ethics. Scientists’ ethics is for the progress of science. These ethical rules are: (1) A scientist has to be true to the truth of science. He can’t tell lies or provide false information. This corresponds to the fourth precept of Buddhism. (2) A scientist must be true to other scientists. He can’t steal others’ intellectual work or discovery. He can’t copy the work of others and claim it to be his own. This corresponds to the second precept of Buddhism. (3) A scientist has to accept and praise others when they have worked hard and produced valuable work. He can’t be jealous. This corresponds to mudita in Buddhism. And (4) A scientist has to communicate what he finds to other scientists and the public. He can’t keep it as a secret to himself. This corresponds to caga (relinquishing) and dhamma dana (giving of dhamma) in Buddhism.
I don’t have much space here to expound the details of each and every ethical point.
It is enough to summarize that if scientists don’t follow these ethical rules science will abruptly destroy itself in no time at all. Scientific progress will screech to a halt and there will not be anymore innovation for the world to enjoy. We will have and will consume the same old things that exist at the time of the halt. It is like if today’s biggest TV is measured at 52”
then TV will just stop growing at that size, there will not be anything bigger. If now an automobile can run the fastest at 200 kilometers per hour then there will not be any car running faster in the future. If today we don’t have medicine for curing cancer then the right medicine will certainly not appear forever. This may be hard to understand and I must apologize not to be able here and now to trace the detailed relationship between each ethical rule of science, when practiced well, and the scientific progress it brings about.
If Buddhists do not follow the precepts or follow them erratically or not perfectly then Buddhism will come to an end. Likewise, if scientists are not ethical, i.e., do not follow the four ethical rules, then science will also meet its demise.
By now you must have realized that science has been copying Buddhism on the three important ideals: (1) Self-help or the samana movement; (2) Observation and experimentation; and (3) Appropriate behavior in deed and speech. If Buddhists don’t rely on themselves or don’t practice dhamma by themselves but look up to devas or sacred
objects for help, or don’t observe their own minds’ thoughts and workings, or don’t practice silas, then Buddhism is sure to disintegrate. Likewise, if scientists don’t do research by themselves but wait for God to reveal the truth, or don’t experiment and observe but just speculate about the nature of things, or aren’t ethical, then science will be dead certainly.
Buddhism and science exist on these three ideals or, look at it another way, buddhism and science will collapse without these ideals.
So, science is like a son of Buddhism though the son is more than 2,000 years younger than the father! This great son always plays tricks with Buddhists and others in order to get them fall into materialism. Dear son, we know you well and have caught you tight. You will not be able to play your tricks anymore. We are not to fall into your trap. Please come and cooperate with your father, working for the balance between the spiritual progress and the material one without paying attention to the devil of materialism.
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Buddhists observe the working of the mind. Americans are observing the working of their minds by practicing mindfulness and mental concentration on the lawn in front of the Capitol in Washington, DC.
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มงคลมิติไฮเทคคดี\Science is Buddhistic!: How and Why
