Buddhists are not the only people searching for truth. Countless scientific, religious, and philosophical groups throughout history have sought a higher meaning to our time on earth. Our exploration of philosophy, the love of truth, is something that binds us all, when we are not trapped in our more mundane pastimes. This activity links so much of our rich history in the wars and struggles humankind has endured. Our current wonderful health and lifestyles are the fruit of the pursuit of truth through modern scientific and medical methods.
The search for truth has been hugely varied. When flicking through The Joy of Sects by Peter Occhiogrosso, my favorite sect is a 19th-century Russian group that found a very special way to liberation through tickling, with some even dying in the fervor. While this is an amusing story to us, the people involved clearly believed in the goals of their tradition. To them, it was more than just a pastime; it was a complete reality.
In search of truth, people do all sorts of activities, from the completely bizarre to the awe-inspiring. There is a Japanese Buddhist school that sees running marathon-length quests every day to pray at 300 temples as their main path to enlightenment. But can anyone objectively say which paths are more meaningful than others? Though some say it is politically incorrect to make these judgments, there is no doubt that developed cultures do compare and contrast the options that are available, whether in public or in private. Yet some feel threatened by other traditions. Out of fear and confusion they resort, variously, to using blind faith, proselytizing, propaganda, absolute rule, aggression, and in extreme cases even violence to make their ideas dominant. Critical clarity, therefore, is encouraged in the search for truth.
How We Know What We Know
There are only three ways of knowing something: direct experience, logical explanations, and what others tell us. The way we interpret the knowledge we get from these three sources is key to our being able to question the relative benefit of different traditions. Here I include everything that can be learned, from the stories our old grandma used to tell to the scientific experiments in space.
First, there is what we experience directly. With our eyes, ears, nose, body, and tongue we get a constant stream of impressions that are shaped by our sense organs. This information is interpreted by an awareness, which in Buddhism is called mind. In the teachings explaining the 3rd Karmapa Ranjung Dorje’s text on the discrimination of wisdom and consciousness, each sense organ or faculty is described as having a corresponding consciousness. The moment that one sense experiences the objects of knowledge, one sees them exactly as they are. This non-conceptual moment can, however, be mistaken. For instance, if one wears blue sunglasses, one’s eye cannot see things how they are, but sees them in an altered hue. In this way, one can see that an experience is not absolute, but rather relative. Similarly, our senses of smell are poor compared to that of dogs, some of which can reportedly smell ten thousand times more intensely than humans. Our impressions are quickly colored by our previous experiences, likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, collectively called our disturbing emotions.
What we experience directly, however, cannot be denied. Assuming we are not hallucinating and all our faculties are in good working order, what we experience cannot be taken away from us and is believed to be real. The moment we start interpreting our experiences and calling them names or putting them in categories (conceptualization), we start removing the true nature of the experience. In Tibet, they say the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon, meaning that we limit things once we start interpreting them. If we name an object a cup, then it is immediately not thought to have the potential to be used as a pot, bowl, toilet, shovel, weapon, or countless other things. Furthermore, while our direct experiences cannot be denied, our explanations of what we experience are on much shakier ground. For centuries the earth was believed to be flat and the sun seemed to be eaten by various gods every night because we had limited abilities to explain what we experienced.
There is a way to build trusted understanding in the world around us. This is the second type of knowledge, that of logic. If we have had a bad experience of eating blue cheese, for example, we know very well that other cheeses with thin threads of blue and green mold going through them are likely to be just as pungent. Now, this interpretation isn’t based on experience of all cheeses, but uses a basic reasoning. Indeed if we had first tasted a fully ripened English Stilton, but then taste a delicate and creamy Italian Dolce Latte, our interpretations could be quite misguided. Still in general, we will make more sense of the world around us based on our experiences and an ounce of good logic. On top of this, if the experience and logic are correct, when based on a proper reason as it is explained in Buddhism, then we can have an “ah-ha” moment, a direct experience where the truth becomes clear.
Logical reasoning can be developed to an amazing degree. The results of basing an understanding on a correct interpretation of another’s experience can lead to great towers of realization and meaning. As Isaac Newton explained, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Modern science has enabled incredible levels of understanding, to the degree that modern theories of the universe often suggest what should be tested and experienced directly to prove or disprove the theories. Science, however, is not truly science if a theory can not be tested in the realm of experience. It then belongs in the realm of philosophy, faiths, and religion.
What the Neighbors Say
The third source of experience is information that we learn, not through direct participation or rational reasoning, but from books, the scriptures of religions, the internet, TV news, and anecdotal stories like what our great Aunt Molly said was good for colds. A lot of this information is incredibly useful and meaningful, like a recipe to bake a delicious chocolate cake. While this is based on another’s experience and understanding, we can quickly gain the direct and mouth-watering experience ourselves. Then we can make a host of logical conclusions about the relative benefit of tasty but fattening cakes on our mental and physical health.
All of this information, however, is not personally tested or tried and is inevitably more unreliable than our direct experience or understanding. But life would also be awfully slow if we had to work out everything for ourselves. So we build up experience, confidence, and trust in certain sources and certain people. We do need to maintain a certain healthy skepticism, though, if we really aim to find the truth and meaning in our lives. Absolute faith and belief in the words and writings of others is nonsensical in the modern world and doesn’t fit with our contemporary scientific societies.
Question Question Question
So why don’t we question our own faiths and beliefs more often? Naturally, we don’t like the feeling of floating in space without guidance, unless our minds are full of a lot of richness. We lack confidence in our own abilities and experiences, feeling them to be less meaningful or of less value than others. Intellectually we can also be undermined by others who are more adept and run rings around us with their logical arguments.
There are many tricks and pitfalls in using rational logic. Sometimes we can simply feel safer by either using a book to tell us what we should do or relying on others to take the intellectual and emotional risk in finding a new truth. The sheer desire to have richness and qualities beyond our current experience can also lead to the adoption of irrational practices, which lead to further confusion. Keeping up with the Joneses is quite a motivation.
Chicken or Egg? Where Science and Buddhism Meet
For critical thinkers, fun starts once we start looking at how different philosophical and religious traditions value these three different sources of information. Clearly, some religions hold the written word above anything an individual can experience or rationally explain. Indeed the written word can be directly at odds with our experience, which puts an individual in a difficult position. Here we have little option but to try and convince others of our truth in a somewhat desperate attempt to convince ourselves of the leaky holes in our own arguments.
Experience is king in our scientific Western cultures, where our amazing abilities for rational thinking are based on methods developed by the ancient Greeks. In this system, anything written down can be disproved by clear reasonable thought and direct observations of our world. Experience exposes where our rational thinking is mistaken. This open-minded but critical, skeptical, and rational position has allowed the West to extend the life expectancy of hundreds of millions of people and has enabled whole civilizations to reach new heights of quality of life.
The modern Western worldview is really very similar to Buddhism, where what is clearly experienced is more directly true than what is written in all of the sutras, tantras, and their commentaries. Lama Ole Nydahl often says, “Highest truth is highest joy.” In this way, our search for truth by being present in the moment should bring the greatest happiness. Indeed in 1981, the year before the 16th Karmapa died, he said, “The nowness of the mind is the practice that should be developed by you all.”
Great Buddhist masters, from Lama Ole Nydahl to H.H. Dalai Lama, have also made a stunning call; Where science really proves Buddhism wrong, we should trust science. In his recent book, The Universe in a Single Atom, the Dalai Lama calls for the Buddhist explanations of the size and shape of the universe to be re-examined, given the amazing results from the Hubble Space Telescope. The nature of the observed universe cannot be denied.
The Role of Compassion
The four Tibetan Buddhist schools emphasize different aspects of the path to enlightenment. In the Kagyu and Nyingma schools, practice is key. In the Gelupa and, to some extent, the Sakya traditions, rational debate and analysis is primary. So how should we balance the different aspects of practice within our own lives? In the end, no amount of studying will on its own bring about liberation and enlightenment.
We need to meditate to be able to clarify our perceptions of what is experienced. Beyond anything we can read pointing out the nature of mind, in the end it is up to us to realize it. The purpose of Buddhism is to bring permanent happiness. While wisdom teachings point to the nature of reality and truth, or the lack of it, they are also felt to be dry, dogmatic, and uncompassionate. Indeed they can stir some quite angry reactions. To some, they fail to see the meaning and happiness that some people derive from their tickling festivities and dream catchers.
This is where compassion is key and must grow in equal measure with wisdom, so we can develop the skills to help others see meaning beyond what is experienced. If what people do is not directly damaging to themselves or others, this already a wonderful step in the right direction. If we are to wake up from the dream of irrational explanations of our wonderful world, we need to make it a happy dream. Perhaps a little more humor and like our Russian friends, moderate tickling would be as good as any a place to start.
I Don’t Mind if You Don’t Matter
Buddhism is particularly concerned with understanding consciousness. Science has also turned a keen eye to this pursuit. As pointed out in the introduction to The Road to Reality – A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe by Roger Perose, the so-called mind-body problem is the key to all our philosophy. The body and outer world are physical, having all sorts of qualities that can be measured, like weight, color, and energy. The mind is clear and aware, experiencing everything that happens but having no measurable qualities. Indeed, even though mind is experiencing, it can be seen to be completely empty. Mind and matter are so different from each other; it’s clear that they can’t interact. But as I type a few more words on this keyboard that follow my thoughts, I can see that they clearly do.
The solution to this conundrum in Buddhism comes in the four main Buddhist philosophical schools: Vaibhasika, Sautrantika, Cittamatra, and Madhyamaka. The first two correspond closely to the traditional scientific view: that everything is said to be real, made of particles, and moving all the time. Mind is also made of the smallest real moments. Unfortunately, this doesn’t help to explain how mind and matter communicate. The Cittamatra is the famous mind-only school, saying that we can only overcome the mind-body problem if we say that everything is mind, but the moments of that mind are also real. In the Madhyamaka, we can see that this is a limited view and we need to go beyond, where form and emptiness are seen as inseparable. The great Kagyu master Saraha summed this up when he said, “Grasping existence is like cattle. Grasping non-existence is even more stupid!”
These differing viewpoints help us to explain the experiences we have and can also, somewhat slowly, lead to a realization of the true nature of reality. Science, at this time, is reluctant to examine the possibility that mind and matter may be intimately linked, although there are hints and suggestions from fields as diverse as string theory, quantum computing, and neuropsychology. The view that the brain generates mind, with no direct evidence to date that supports this, is an assumption where science seems to have a blind spot. There will no doubt be large developments in the future.
The Search for Meaning—Old Traditions and the New Age
So where does that leave the huge array of traditional religions and the various more recent practices that are lumped together into the category of New Age beliefs? Certainly, a clear explanation of our experiences and the mind-matter problem is needed by any complete system to be credible.
There are many New Age practices that seek not to explain anything but to gain particular experiences, be they spiritual insights or special abilities, like using spirit guides to know the past or the future, insightful dreams, repositioning ley lines, and so on. While these may produce interesting results, they point to what mind can experience, rather than what mind is in itself. In this way, Buddhism would be skeptical of anything that offers a permanent refuge in the conditioned world, as it won’t last. Science requires rational logical explanations that can be independently verified before an agreed truth is found.
The Buddhist view of other traditions is rather compassionate and pragmatic. Where they are humanistic in their approach, other traditions are beneficial. Buddhism certainly doesn’t seek to convert others. It sees benefit in people being true to their own culture. Buddhists should not take it upon themselves to undermine other people’s confidence in their gods if adherents are generally happy and not overtly harming others.
In Buddhism, all the traditional 360 non-Buddhist schools are said to hold wrong views, as the great Kagyu-Nyingma teacher Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche explained in The Bardo Guidebook, “Their tenets cannot ultimately withstand the scrutiny of reasoning and logic. Wrong views are incorrect in the sense of not being in accord with the nature of things.” This means that we should apply a strong rational basis to all the offerings that we see at the spiritual fair.
A student in Buddhism needs many qualities, including enthusiasm, to learn and especially to use the teachings, test them in the world, and to make them a part of one’s experience. This takes a lot of effort to really engage one’s brain and think, “Is this right? Does it fit with my experience? How are these teachings relevant in the 21st century?” In the end, even with the warm glow of confidence a teacher gives us, it still depends on each of us to realize where truth lies.
Buddhism isn’t science. It describes a path to realization and concludes things about the nature of reality that are beyond the current realm of scientific method. While scientific theories apparently become more Buddhist, this doesn’t mean that science will eventually become Buddhism. There is a meeting point between the two traditions, where Buddhism can help science to develop objective methods for the study of consciousness and expand its view of what is possible. Science can verify that Buddhist methods and philosophy are true in all times and places, and then help to make these methods for happiness accessible to all.
