{"id":62548,"date":"2017-01-19T10:19:34","date_gmt":"2017-01-19T17:19:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=62548"},"modified":"2017-01-19T10:19:34","modified_gmt":"2017-01-19T17:19:34","slug":"can-the-science-of-the-west-be-ignored-in-contemporary-buddhist-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/01\/19\/can-the-science-of-the-west-be-ignored-in-contemporary-buddhist-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"Can the Science of the West be ignored in contemporary Buddhist thinking?"},"content":{"rendered":"

R Chandrasoma<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

This question is asked because the expositions and exegeses of learned Buddhists \u2013 chiefly the Bikkshus \u2013 are time-shifted in the illustrative paradigms employed to bring out a religious truth.<\/p>\n

Thus India at the time of a great spiritual efflorescence about two and a half thousand years ago is the favoured background for the illustration equally of moral perfidy and spiritual grace in mankind.<\/p>\n

These \u2018stories\u2019 are invariably magical to those whose science and cosmology reflect the contemporary idiom in the elucidation of Nature\u2019s mysteries. To declare that Hells and Torture-chambers lie below our feet seem grossly offensive to children of our age.<\/p>\n

The concept of \u2018punishment\u2019 is, itself, a left over from mankind\u2019s first attempts at establishing a moral order in society. Equally, the \u2018reward\u2019 of heavenly status to \u2018do-gooders\u2019 smacks of deals in a market-place.<\/p>\n

The devas<\/em> and pretheyas<\/em> that haunt these \u2018abodes\u2019 do not have a recognizable natural history nor do they conform to those physical laws that tightly define the limits of viability of living systems.<\/p>\n

They are fictions \u2013 but why is this fiction made an indispensable part of a religion that has lofty spiritual goals? Must arahats<\/em> fly through the air like giant condors as evidence of their greatness?\u00a0 Can beings other than us \u2013 alien beings in today\u2019s terminology \u2013 be part of any serious religious discourse given our advanced knowledge of life and matter \u2013 a knowledge recently and painfully acquired by a conquest of the impositions of a wildly wayward religious tradition?<\/p>\n

Let me conclude these brief observations by noting that the brain is the \u2018organ of mentality\u2019 and all scientific attempts to understand our relationsip with the externality which we call our \u2018world\u2019 is based on a comprehensive understanding of how our brain works.<\/p>\n

Alas, the ancients knew nothing of that great organ within our head and\u00a0 built up a phony system rooted in Galenic medical lore and the \u2018elements\u2019 and \u2018essences\u2019 of Late Hellenistic Science.<\/p>\n

It is this ancient rubbish that Buddhist monks of our Fair Isle have joined to spiritual truths that are only muddied by such associations. We have a new generation of educated young people who are Buddhists by descent bur are repelled by a crude folk-Buddhism that is forced on them as the genuine article. Not surprisingly, elderly women alone listen to the monks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

R Chandrasoma This question is asked because the expositions and exegeses of learned Buddhists \u2013 chiefly the Bikkshus \u2013 are time-shifted in the illustrative paradigms employed to bring out a religious truth. Thus India at the time of a great spiritual efflorescence about two and a half thousand years ago is the favoured background for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-r-chandrasoma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}