More on the Conspiracy to Create an Unnatural Buddhism

Here's a spot-on blog in Tricycle from Lama Jampa Thaye described as "a scholar, author, and meditation master from the UK, trained in both the Karma Kagyu and Sakya traditions of Tibetan Buddhism." We Are Not Kind Machines: A Radical Rejection of Scientific Buddhism

 

This is welcomed push back to the widening conspiracy of the so-called "naturalizing Buddhism" movement that sees itself as the White Knight rescuing Buddha Dharma from superstition and supernaturalism.

 

Lama Jampa opens with the observation:

Science seems omnipresent in the modern world, and its explanatory force and benefits are hard to deny. Indeed, its success has even led some, including a number of well-regarded figures in the contemporary Buddhist world, to argue that the dharma itself must be made more “scientific” if it is to survive.

What this is responding to is the false thinking that (1) the Buddha Dharma needs protection to survive, and (2) that somehow making Buddha Dharma more scientific is the path to its survival. Both points are wrong. The question "on the ground," so to speak, is not about survival but about transplantation and acculturation. It is a given that as the Buddha Dharma comes to "the West" to be transplanted here, there must be some kind of acculturation of conceptualization so that people in the West can have the conceptual bridges to understand what the Buddha Dharma is talking about. Building the conceptual bridges is what is called the "accommodation" phase by Peter D. Hershock in his book Chan Buddhism .

 

Hershock points out that every culture has its generalized worldview and every worldview is based on polarizations which characterize the contours of the natural tensions in that society. To become transplanted and acculturated, the Buddha Dharma must address the particular and specific features of each cultural configuration with which it comes into contact.  For example, ideas about what is a person and what is death are central themes and axes of polarization in every culture, but the ideas are polarized in specific configurations somewhat differently in each culture.

 

To Hershock the process of assimilation is a two way street, the Buddha Dharma brings changes to the culture and the culture brings changes to how the Buddha Dharma is conceptualized.  The process of assimilation and acculturation takes place in two phases of accommodation and advocacy. Hershock notes that he is not proposing the two phases are strictly linear, but may be occurring simultaneously or in rhythm.  I would point out that as a precondition phase we can speak of the initial introduction phase before either accommodation or advocacy has occurred.

 

The accommodation phase requires that the strangeness of the worldview of the Buddha Dharma be made familiar in some basic ways so that the worldview of the new context can relate.  In this way, the Buddha Dharma accommodates itself to the indigenous cultural framework.  A past example of this was when the Buddha Dharma came to China, the word Tao was taken up and used as a bridge to explain certain features of the Buddha Dharma.  Some people mistake this aspect of accommodation, where the Buddha Dharma is accommodating itself to indigenous concepts, as being "influenced by" those concepts. In this way it is often said that Buddhism in China was "influenced by" Taoism. However, this is not actually the case. The use of the indigenous cultural terminology and frameworks does not mean that the Buddha Dharma has changed, because the Buddha Dharma is not dependent or established on words or cultural concepts. 

 

The second phase is the advocacy phase which begins after some measure of accommodation has occurred.  In the advocacy phase the now somewhat accommodated and familiarized concepts are reviewed with an eye to how they are actually distinguishable from the indigenous conceptual frame.  Using the example of the Tao in China, the goal is to show how the Buddha Dharma view of the Tao is distinguishable from the indigenous view of the Tao.

 

Here in the West we have two competing frameworks of worldview, religion (primarily Christian) and science.  So it is not at all unusual for the propagation of Buddha Dharma to begin by accommodating itself to these two worldviews.  This is analogous to the Buddha Dharma coming to China and having to accommodate itself to the two competing worldviews of Taoism and Confucianism. This puts us in the middle between the two contending worldviews where if we are perceived as being too close to one framework then the other framework will write off the Buddha Dharma with the same critique that it uses against the other.

 

For instance, followers of the Buddha Dharma, when speaking to Christians, may use the word God to explain that the Buddha Dharma does recognize a transcendent awareness. But in the advocacy phase, it is made clear that the Buddha Dharma does not look at God with an anthropomorphic eye. Then with a bit more accommodation we can explain that the Buddha Dharma conception of God is more like the Christian mystics' view of God as the infinite Godhead, or source of all reality, etc. Then with another turn at advocacy the conception of God is related to the Buddha Dharma conceptions of emptiness, Dharmakaya, True Suchness, etc. Likewise, in accommodating to the Christian idea of life after death, the Buddha Dharma says, "Yes there is life after death," but then in the advocacy phase, the Buddha Dharma distinguishes what it means by life after death as a cyclic process involving karma and rebirth and not the eternal cul-de-sac of either heaven or hell. This is a lively process, but if the life is removed then the propagation devolves into mere propaganda. 

 

Similarly, in the West we who are followers of the Buddha Dharma must accommodate to the framework of the worldview of science.  It is when trying to accommodate to the polarized framing of the scientific worldview that we are seeing the "naturalizing of Buddhism" idea come to the forefront.  However, followers of the Buddha Dharma need to be most vigilant at this point in order to remain centered in the Buddha Dharma for the purpose of accommodation and not become co-opted by the scientific worldview and lose touch with the Buddha Dharma. Lama Jampa's blog post is on this concern.

 

Too many people, even some who have more than a passing introduction to Buddha Dharma, have become confused and conflate the Science Dharma with the Buddha Dharma.  In both Dharmas, there is reason, inquiry, a basic acknowledgement of the value of empirical experience, but how these polarized issues are dealt with is importantly distinguished. The Buddhists who are involved in the so-called naturalization movement are lost in the accommodation phase and have lost sight of the advocacy phase. The naturalization movement has two general proponents, those who are advocates of science and those who are Buddhists. The advocates of science are not interested in the Buddha Dharma per se, and instead they want to incorporate Buddhism into a subservient branch of science. It is from this point of view that the naturalization movement wants to alter Buddha Dharma to meet its own criteria. Followers of the Buddha Dharma need to be most aware of this. It is for this reason that Lama Jampa  writes,

 

While science itself is not dangerous to the dharma, the appeal for a “scientific Buddhism,” an insistence that Buddhism must accord with the materialist propositions often paired with scientism, most definitely is. Such a Buddhism is not the dharma.

 

The followers of the Buddha Dharma who think that they are helping the Buddha Dharma be transplanted to the West by being co-opted into the naturalization movement are simply being duped and pulled away from the Buddha Dharma. Many, if not most of them, do not understand what is transpiring in the Science Dharma itself and do not perceive the fight about materialism that is taking place among the followers of the Science Dharma.  Instead of aligning themselves with the materialists wing of the Science Dharma, the followers of the Buddha Dharma who want to engage in the legitimate accommodation with the Science Dharma must do so with full understanding of the polarizations and the framework of those polarizations that are within the Science Dharma itself, and chief of these is the question of materialism. 

 

Materialism affects (infects?) both science and religion.  Both scientism and creationism are materialist.  Buddha Dharma is not materialist. In the accommodation phase, Buddha Dharma must speak to both religion and science in terms that are not materialistic in order to speak in their own terms to those who are within the religious and scientific worldviews without being materialistic.   In the field of religion this means speaking to the contemplative practitioners of religion and not buying into the materialistic doctrines of religion. In the field of science this means speaking to those who value the scientific method of inquiry and hypothesis and not buying into the materialistic doctrines of the philosophy of science, or those of pseudo-science.   

 

One example is the subject of Lama Jampa's blog: the neuro-science of meditation.  To study meditation from the perspective of measuring brain activity is a science that is usurped by materialistic view of the psyche that only sees mind as physical brain activity.

 

Lama Jampa writes,

 

Now, it may very well be that brain activity changes during meditation. But it's difficult to see how knowing this could contribute anything significant to the process of dissolving the twin obscurations of disturbing emotions and nescience, a dissolution that alone brings about enlightenment. Would, for instance, Jetsun Milarepa have achieved decisive realization more swiftly if he had possessed a knowledge of neurology? The plain unvarnished truth is that while a variety of physical effects—from the modification of pulse rate to altered frequency of brain waves—may accompany meditation, these effects are not the source of the experience of the meditating mind any more than a lessening of indigestion.

 

 

 

This paragraph makes a point that is very important. It is the essential difference between neuro-physiological science and psychological science. Today, we have mostly lost this distinction and mistake neuro-physiological science as if it is psychological science, which it is definitely not. The physical sciences may approach the physical world and study it, but that is not the same thing as approaching and scientifically studying the psychological world. Those who have lost this distinction I would put into the camp of scientism. I have nothing directly against neuro-physiological science in itself, except that it has usurped the field of psychological science by calling neuro-physiology the real psychology and denigrating real psychology by calling it "subjective" or even worse, such as "mysticism."

I take Lama Jampa to be saying that the study of brain activity should not be confused with the study of the psychological activity of mind. To view the world as if the brain is the ground for explaining the world is the physiological leaning view that is all too often stained by materialism.  To view the world as if the mind is the ground for explaining the world is the psychological view. Brain activity is an objectification of mind activity. To the extent that the objectification of mind activity is taken literally and mind is being explained by the activity of brain physiology, then to that extent the view is materialistic. Objectification is to mind what literalization and materialization is to the practice of the Buddha Dharma, i.e. false thinking about mind.

 

Dharma Currents #1: Introduction to the Middle Way

With the new year, I want to start blogging, hopefully more consistently at regular intervals, on a recurring theme that may be broadly characterized as "Buddhism in the Current Age of Scientism" or "Dharma Currents" for short to play on the stream imagery. The idea is to explore how Buddha Dharma is relevant to today's world, including the political landscape, that is, a world that seems too fixated and caught between the horns of the polarity of religious theism and scientist athesim.

I see Buddhism as the third way in its traditional sense of the Middle Way as the path of synthetic resolution of the polarized mindset that forces our thinking about life into an either-or frame work. The human mind every where is subject to the mind's inherently polarizing influence in the very structure and function of consciousness, but the Western World's frame of reference, of Greco-Roman-European derivation, for religion and philosophy is bound up in the historically relevant context of the structures of opposition that have grown out of the theism-monotheism-atheism streams of thought. Today the West is still under the spell of theism so that people like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris are viewed as "the three horsemen of atheism" traveling widely to preach the virtues of atheism and the vices of theism.

There are many people, and I am one, who feel dissatisfied with the dialogue as it is framed and see the debate as caught between a rock and a hard place. Buddhism, however, naturally flows between the rock of theism and the hard place of atheism, and for those in Western culture who see the barrenness and inadequacy of both theism and atheism, Buddhism is the natural solution to rescue spirituality from the theism of modern religions and to rescue rationality from the atheism of scientism. It is this recognition of the position that Buddhism takes in this debate that led Albert Einstein, the preemeninant physical scientist of the 20th century, to declare that Buddhism is the historically closest religion to his conception of the cosmic relition that humankind is yearning for.

There is a frequently cited quote attributed to Einstein that says,

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense of arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. . . Buddhism answers this description. . . If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism.

This quote is found in several slight variations and is sometimes challenged as legitimate because its source has not been identified. However, if it is not a direct quote, then I take it as an accurate paraphrase at least, based on the following excerpt taken from Einstein's article printed in the New York Times Magazine on November 9, 1930 pp 1-4 which contains all the important particulars of the condensed quote:

"Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.
"The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear at an early stage of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this.
“The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man’s image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another."

The essential points of Einstein's view of a science that has not left spiritual values or appreciation behind include (1) no dogma, (2) no anthropomorphic God, (3) a cosmic religious feeling, (4) experiencing the universe as a single significant whole or meaningful unity, (5) leading to freedom from the prison of individualism.

It should be clear to the honest observer that neither modern theistic religions nor modern atheistic scientism fit this bill of particulars. However, Zen Buddhism does fit Einstein's bill in every particular.

Similarly, Carl G. Jung, the Einstein of Psychology in the 20th century, also found kindred spirit with Zen in his scientific inquiry of the mind in which he discovered again and again that any attempt to remove the spiritual values from science were bound to fail and create only a dead dogma. When Jung was near death he was reading Charles Luk's Ch'an and Zen Teachings: First Series in which the first section presents discourses of Zen Master Hsu Yun (Empty Cloud). Jung directed his personal assistant and friend Dr. Marie-Louse von Aranz to write to the author. In the letter (dated September 12, 1961) von Aranz wrote

"He was enthusiastic.... When he read what Hsu Yun said, he sometimes felt as if he himself could have said exactly this! It was just it!."

Buddhism, and most essentially Zen Buddhism, is "just it!" when it comes to expressing the comprehension of the reality of life and death in a manner that is not inconsistent with the most insightful scientists of the physical and psychological sciences of the 20th century. However, in the later half of the 20th century, science itslef has become entraped in a form of dogma that has become scientism as expressed through the anti-theist preaching of the above name three horsemen of atheism, Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris. This view of scientism is scientific materialism in which the literalized objectification of the material world is taken to a limit of phyical appearances but no further. There are, to be sure, still scientists today who, like Einstein and Jung, do not subscribe to this atheistic scientism, however, they are hard pressed to get recognition beyond the walls of their academic towers, while the mainstream media and popular culture claim for their own a scientism of physical things sanitized of all spiritual or psychological dimension.

For people of the West who see the superstious silliness of anthropomorphic gods and their dogmas, yet who also sense the irrationality of an anti-spiritual scientism with its dogma of atheistic materialism, Zen Buddhism provides a context and method for discovering the real and profound dimension of a religion of meaningful unity liberating us from the prison of our individual and separate existence.