Buddhism and Science

[Burning Dog of Irony (Ken McLeod)]

While I'm usually wary of linking Buddhism and science, an op-ed piece by David Brooks in today's NY Times describes an interesting convergence, in which Buddhism and science challenge the notion of a personal god and associated claims to divine revelation, etc.

Click here for the article.

[Mark Johnson]

A long way back I saw the Power of the Myth with Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers. Campbell was relating a conversation to Moyers the he had with a Catholic priest about the possibility of an impersonal god, which Campbell took as obvious but was just dawning on the priest. I think what's happening is that culturally (in the West) we are starting to jockey around for a better metaphor of our modern experience of divinity. And really that's all we have are metaphors about "It."

I find a lot of these articles are always written from the perspective of separation. One the one hand we have the traditional religionist always talking of God as ultimately separate from the individual; and then, on the other hand, we have the secularist reducing the experience of God to chemistry as if it were just a prank but still perpetuating the idea that the self and the body are separate: the "body" generates some chemicals, and "I" have an experience. I find this too simplistic. It's still a retelling of the Watch and the Watchmaker story just with new technological words. My contention is the Watchmaker is making itself and to even talk of making a Watch is nonsense; but even this is misleading -- because it's a still a metaphor -- it's not It!

Jill Taylor has an interesting (and humorous) presentation on how the two halves of the brain experience reality. She talks of how the right brain experiences itself as immersed and connected to the universe but how the left brain experiences itself as separate and in some respects fearful of the universe. She had a stroke on her left side of the brain which caused it to repeatedly go "offline" and then "online". When was in "offline" mode she described her experience as nirvana, but when the left side kicked back into gear it was the one telling her that something was wrong and she needed help. Really fascinating.

It's fascinating to me that the brain knows how to grow itself but can't tell itself how it works right out of the box -- (yes, another example of separatist writing, ay?).

I can see why the Hindus understand this all as the great Game. There's no figuring it out, there's nothing to figure out, you just play.

[Chou Dog of Dis-illusioned Allegory]

I'm trying to remember where I heard/read someone say that you should approach Jesus as the personal god, rather like a yidam in Tibetan Buddhism, while 'God the Father' is the transcendent principle (impersonal god). I think it was Father Bede Griffith (a Roman Catholic). It was an interesting thought. From how he was talking about 'God the Father', it sounded a lot like Buddha-nature.

[Burning Dog of Irony (Ken McLeod)]

From David Brooks' article, this one paragraph is, I think, quite insightful:
First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

[Mark Johnson]

"God" is such a heavy, loaded pronoun. It will always connote separation. My inclination is to use "divinity" but even that isn't quite right since it conveys the idea of the supernatural and transcendence (unfortunately, not in so much in the gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate... way) but it works better for me for the time being. I think the excerpt from Brooks is spot on. However, my experience is not so much that I am "equipped to experience the sacred," but more that all experience is the sacred (even the crappy stuff) but my ability to sense it, to be available to it, is impeded. It's not so much that I need more generosity, love, and wisdom to "experience the sacred", but rather, I need less greed, hatred, and delusion. In terms of buddha-nature, I am perfect at any given moment -- I have all the generosity, love, and wisdom that I'll ever need -- it's just that I just don't believe it (Mr. Left Brain); it's obscured to me. It's the whole, "the kingdom of God is spread upon the earth and [we] do not see it" and the "be still and know that I am God."

Does anyone agree? I feel like a freak sometimes on these matters...