The Buddha was Scientific

What the Buddha taught was not based upon divine revelation or some other source of superior authority. All his teachings derived directly from his own personal experience that arose from his compassionate efforts to relieve the sufferings of beings. During the years of his meditation and reflection, he directly observed his own mind with the precision and objective exactness that we have now come to associate with scientific research. He witnessed and described the origin and functions of his own consciousness, and explained in detail how he transcended it to discover what lies beyond its limitations. The state he experienced is of course indescribable because it is beyond concept, but the Buddha nevertheless did his best to guide beings towards it. In doing this he constantly stressed that his teachings were not to be taken as words of authority to be propagated as beliefs; they were offered as practical guidelines to be studied, tested and applied, on the basis that what worked for him could work for all of us.

If we look for example at the Kalama Sutta, we find an instance of the Buddha’s insistence on scientific investigation, rather than a reliance on faith, authority or speculation:

Do not believe just because wise men say so. Do not believe just because it has always been that way. Do not believe just because others may believe so. Examine and experience yourself.

We could say that the Buddha was a pragmatic scientist who developed a compassionate science of the mind, based not upon measurements of external phenomena or mathematical equations, but upon direct observation of his own experience. In view of this it is not surprising that Albert Einstein commented:

“If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism.”

It is becoming increasingly clear that Buddhist and scientists have much in common – particularly their search for the truth of how things really are1. What is interesting is that they approach this question from opposite perspectives. Buddhists, we could say, do it from the inside moving out, because they begin with direct observation of the mind and its workings, and then describe what this reveals about the reality of the external world we seem to see and experience in common. Scientists on the other hand begin with this “obvious” world and subject it to scrutiny by various means. Within the last century, scientific methods of investigation have started on the “outside” and move inwards to the realms of the mind, consciousness and the structure of what we call reality – that is, the world we see that seems so solid and stable but turns out upon analysis to be nothing of the sort. So science has moved progressively closer to Buddhism, rather than away from it, and in doing so has presented the world with similar insights to those of the Buddha, but in different language.

There are two areas in particular which are of interest:

First, the nature of the physical reality we perceive, and second, the functioning of consciousness in relation to the brain, and the potential for positive transformation.

1 One translation of the term “Buddha Dharma” is “the way things are according to the Buddha”.

The Nature of Physical Reality

Are things what they seem?

The Buddha discovered that things are not always the way they seem to be. The universe, he said, is a projection of the mind – at the collective and individual level. At first glance this statement does not make sense because what we see and experience seems to contradict it. But a parallel from scientific discovery might help us to take a first step towards understanding what the Buddha meant.

All matter, we are told, regardless of how solid and substantial it looks, is actually more than 99% space. It is made up of molecules that exist in relation to one another, but do not even touch. In fact they are about as widely spaced as the suns and planets of our Milky Way. If this is the case, how is it that things look so solid and dense?

The answer seems too be that the aspect of our consciousness mediated by the left hemisphere of the brain causes us to perceive what is there as solid and clearly defined, even though that is not so. If the left hemisphere stops functioning – for example in the event of a massive stroke – our perception of the world around us changes radically because we experience only that aspect of consciousness mediated by the right hemisphere. This was described by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor who had such a stroke1.

…….I was aware that I could no longer clearly discern the physical boundaries of where I began and where I ended. I sensed the composition of my being as that of a fluid rather than that of a solid. I no longer perceived myself as a whole object separate from everything; instead, I now blended in with the space and flow around me….. (p42)

…….the boundaries of my earthly body dissolved and I melted into the universe….my perception was released from its attachment to categorization and detail (p49)…my brain could no longer distinguish writing as writing, instead, the card looked like an abstract tapestry of pixels. (p.57)