Buddha's Nature: Evolution As a Practical Guide to Enlightenment - Hardcover

Nisker, Wes

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553106015 ISBN 13: 9780553106015

Verlag: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1998

Inhaltsangabe

The author of Crazy Wisdom outlines a program of meditations and exercises designed to show readers the connection between their bodies and the evolution of the natural universe, and help them use it to further their spiritual evolution.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Wes Nisker is the bestselling author of Crazy Wisdom and a renowned lecturer who has taught courses on Buddhist meditation at the Esalen Institute, the University of California, and Spirit Rock Buddhist Meditation Center. He is the founder and co-editor of the international Buddhist journal, Inquiring Mind.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The Buddha Was a Biologist

It is our contention that the rediscovery of Asian philosophy, particularly of the Buddhist tradition, is a second renaissance in the cultural history of the West, with the potential to be equally important as the discovery of Greek thought in the European renaissance. [Asian philosophy] never became a purely abstract occupation. It was tied to specific disciplined methods for knowing--different methods of meditation.
--Francisco Varela, The Embodied Mind
Combining Buddhist meditation practices with current scientific knowledge  seems a wise use of human resources. Generally speaking, Buddhism and  science represent the respective genius of Asian and Western  civilizations. In comparing the two ways of knowing, one might conclude  that the planet was somehow divided along the lines of the two hemispheres  of the brain. In the West we looked outside of ourselves for truth,  dividing up the world with our intellect and reason to see if reality's  secrets were hiding inside of things. Meanwhile, the genius of Asia was  directed inward, relying more on intuition and experiential knowing,  seeking to resolve the questions themselves in the realization of  nonduality and the great mystery of consciousness.

In recent decades, through modern communications and travel, a bridge  has been built between the two civilizations, a kind of corpus  callosum connecting the two hemispheres of the world brain. Perhaps  out of the confluence, some tools and techniques will be discovered that  will nurture a more awakened and satisfied human existence.

As they compare notes, scientists and Buddhist scholars alike have been  astounded by the fact that the two ways of knowing have arrived at so many  similar conclusions. Physics is one arena where the two have found  agreement. As impossible as it must seem to physicists who use  sophisticated bubble chambers and laser photography to study subatomic  events, Buddhists have uncovered at least the basic principles of  subatomic physics through their meditation practices. Meditation can  reveal that there is no solidity anywhere, that the observer cannot be  separated from what is observed, that phenomena seem to appear out of  emptiness, and that everything affects everything else in a co-emergent  system that scientists have only recently acknowledged and named  "nonlocality." These truths have been discovered by many people who have  simply focused their attention inward.

Although the agreement between Buddhism and modern physics has been given  wide attention, I believe that what will become even more significant in  coming years is the sharing of information between Buddhist meditators and  biologists, in particular neuroscientists. The Buddhist and scientific  maps of mind and cognition are strikingly similar. Furthermore, the  Buddhists have for centuries been studying the elusive nature of "self"  and consciousness, concepts that are currently befuddling the  neuroscientists. Many Buddhists have even resolved these puzzles, at least  to the individual meditator's satisfaction.

Buddhist meditation itself could be understood as a form of scientific  research. Meditators try to maintain the scientific attitude of  objectivity while investigating themselves. They too want to look at life  without prejudicing the study with personal desires or preset theories.  "Just the facts, ma'am."

A scientist might argue that his findings are objective because they can  be verified by someone replicating the experiments or redoing the  mathematical equations. However, every Buddhist meditator who undertakes a  specific path of inquiry is, in a sense, redoing the experiment, and most  will arrive at similar conclusions about the nature of self and reality.  In mindfulness meditation, what is known as "the progress of insight"  unfolds in a relatively standard fashion for most people.

The Buddha wants each of us to become a scientist, using ourself as the  subject. He recommends a careful deconstruction of the seemingly solid  realities of mind and body as a way to explore their sources, and thus  reveal our oneness with the world. As it says in the Abhidhamma, an early  Buddhist text, "the first task of insight (vipassana) meditation is  . . . the dissecting of an apparently compact mass."

Modern science also set about the task of disassembling reality, and has  found--miracle of miracles--that oneness is right there, in reality's very  core. If it has proven anything, Western science has validated the  mystical vision as the ultimate truth. Nothing can be separated  from anything else. The scientists attempt to express this oneness by  inserting the connector: wave-particle, space-time, matter-energy.

Although modern science has helped humanity achieve new levels of  material comfort, its greatest gift may yet turn out to be spiritual--a  more accurate and satisfying way of understanding ourselves. Instead of  reducing humans to material processes, as some critics assert, scientists  are simply showing us the specific threads that connect us to all of life  and the universe. Most scientists would not deny that there may be other  factors at work in our creation (gods, spirits, souls), and at least they  are proving that we are not separate and alone. After all, every time they  find another cause they also find another connection.  A single protein molecule or a single finger  print, a single syllable on the radio or a single idea of yours, implies  the whole historical reach of stellar and organic evolution. It is enough  to make you tingle all the time.
--John Platt, The Steps to Man  The Buddha was a great scientist of the self. It is clear in the Pali  Canon that he was not much concerned with cosmic consciousness, and there  is no evidence that he believed in any god or goddess. He was also silent  on the question of a first cause, saying it would be impossible to trace  the karmic source of either an individual or the universe. Instead,  throughout his discourses we find the Buddha emphasizing what I would call  "biological consciousness."

The Buddha's meditation instructions in the Pali Canon are almost  exclusively focused on the natural processes of our physical and mental  life. He tells us to meditate on our skin and bones, our nervous system,  the processes of walking, hearing, seeing, and thinking. According to the  Buddha, everything we need to know about life and reality can be found  inside "this fathom-long body."

Throughout his teachings, for instance, the Buddha emphasizes the  impermanent nature of all phenomena. Remembering this universal truth  (documented from Heraclitus to Heisenberg) is critical to our personal  happiness, because the fact that everything is in transition means that we  can't hold on to any object or experience, nor to life itself. If we forget about impermanence and try to grasp or hold on to things, we will  inevitably create suffering...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1998
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0553106015
• ISBN 13: 9780553106015
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 242
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar