Modern science as we know it began in the 17th century with the words of Descartes : ‘I think therefore I am’. This began a whole trajectory of study into the natural world as a materialist phenomenon, whilst the rational mind of man [sic] was given by God. Gradually, over time, God became lost from the equation, and man[sic] predominated in his understanding of the world. The West was set on a long journey of individualisation that has ended with the fragmented post-modern psyche, where every individual stands, as it were, at the pinnacle of evolution in a universe that has no meaning or connection ( Tarnas, 1991) It is this individuated psyche that has become a consumer, satisfying wants and desires through the technologies that have been created as a result of modern science.
Underpinning science, and most important to it, is the so-called ‘scientific method’ which proceeds by experiment to verify and cumulate knowledge. At a simple level, its ontological status can be said to be that of ‘materialist’ with the emphasis, through scientific method on measurement and the collection of quantifiable statistical data. In the social sciences, which developed in the wake of the French and American revolutions, social changes became realities, and sociology, through the work of the French philosophers, Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte began. This was understood in the positivistic spirit of science, and society could be understood as a developing organism that could be understood in terms of sociological laws, which could then be used to control social behaviour. In the related disciplines of economics and psychology, the scientific method reigned supreme with materialism as an epistemological given.
Another strand of thinking developed alongside this from the work of philosophers such as Heidegger, and Husserl who developed a phenomenological view of the world which was less readily reduced to the mechanistic vision of the materialist view. This has emerged into the development of new methods where the phenomenological accounts of the self are of more importance than measurement of materialist phenomena.
Out of both of these approaches has emerged some fascinating findings and developments that point to an ontological reality that is radically different from that envisaged by the materialists. In radical physics. David Bohm builds on the discoveries of Einstein and general theory of relativity and those of quantum realities to posit the dual existence of a reality that is both ‘explicate’ and ‘implicate’ – both are folded within one another. Molecular biologists such as Sheldrake point to an evolutionary world which co-evolves with the universe – both are living entities and interdependent (Sheldrake, 1989). The universe is not made of matter, but of memory, created by habit, and carried through morphic fields and triggered by morphic resonance. In such a universe, the synchronistic events that were the object of fascination of the depth psychologist Jung, can be explained through morphic resonance, which in itself, since it is both past and present, suggest a view of time and space that is of a different dimension than the four-dimensions of Newtonian physics. In the meantime, neuroscientists are discovering that the seat of consciousness is not merely the brain, but that it exists in other parts of the body, and acts with it (Damasio, 2006). Varela and show that behaviour emerges from a relationship with the environment, and not simply as a deterministic function of the brain, thus illuminating Sheldrake’s hypothesis of formative causation (Sheldrake, 1989).
From the phenomenological schools, an emphasis on the ‘felt sense’ develops which entails listening to the body rather than simply the mental /rational perceptions which seem to arise in the brain. Phenomenological accounts of experience are privileged, and with it new qualitative methods such as hermeneutics, narrative and heuristics. For example, Phenomenological Inquiry (Merleau-Ponty, 1969) attends to the arising material within the ‘here and now’ of a given contextual setting and hermeneutics form a platform for Action Research methodologies (McNiff and Whitehead 2001) which have the possibility of combining discourse-based data with collaborative experimental and experiential feed-forward loops.These approaches are primarily developed in the educational and social fields.
In the meantime, however, classic science and the scientific method with its positivist underpinnings dominate all of the Western education, which has since spread globally over the past decade. There is a radical shift that is taking place but which is not yet fully recognised.
Resonances with Buddhist teaching and view of reality
Paradoxically, these discoveries have resonance with the views of reality that have been developed over a period of 2500 years in Buddhism. Buddhism has a different ontological and epistemological starting point however. It begins with the Buddha’s insight into the nature of reality, variously termed interdependent origination, conditioned co-production or in the Sanskrit pratitya samutpada. It is said that on the night of his enlightenment, the Buddha saw into the conditioned nature of reality formulated as:
This being, that becomes, from the arising of this, that arises; this not being, that does not become;from the ceasing of this, that ceases
Majjhima-Nikaya, II.32: Samyutta Nikaya, II. 28
It is the profundity of this statement that in a way can be said to be the basis of Buddhist exploration of the mind. According to the Buddhist teachings and this view of reality, it is our ignorance of the nature of reality and ourselves that causes us suffering. One formulation of this is the three characteristics – life is dissatisfactory, impermanent, and there is no fixed self. Life is dissatisfactory because we are endlessly craving a sense of self that is fixed and permanent, so we move towards that which we desire, and away from that which we do not want. However, because everything is impermanent, our desire is never met. So we begin once again on an endless cycle of seeking fulfilment in a material universe that cannot satisfy us.
Whilst on the one hand, this can be seen as nihilistic, there is a positive counterpart, and to describe this I draw upon the metaphor of Indra’s net from Chinese Hua-yen school. Imagine a huge net stretching in all directions, as far as the eye can see, the heart can embrace, linked everywhere by glittering jewels. The feeling is one of spaciousness, yet familiarity. If we arbitrarily select one of the jewels for inspection, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.
Here the mind is becoming aware of itself. Awareness is a mind that is learning how to know itself. And in knowing itself lies stillness. Stillness is a mind that is not grasping after experience, but is open to what is present. What is present, without grasping, is a bare and loving connectedness. This is an image that spontaneously presented itself to me in meditation. As it presented itself to me, the jewels were not literally jewels, but the thousands of people that I have met this lifetime ( and maybe others). The connecting material was a loving recognition of the human dilemma: making connections through separateness.
The metaphor of Indra's net points to the understanding that 'awareness', is not merely 'awareness' of oneself, but awareness of how one is constructed, and constructs oneself in relationship to others and the world around. In the existential understanding that underlies the image, each individual is the cause of the whole and the whole acts as a cause for the individual in question, for the individual only exists or functions within the total environment; an individual is at once the cause of the whole and is caused by the whole ( Rees, Atula and Danavira 2002). Indra's net ‘symbolises a cosmos in which there is an infinitely repeated relationship among all members of the cosmos. This relationship is said to be one of simultaneous mutual identity and mutual inter-causality.’ ( Cooke, 1977, his italics). This implies an ethical dimension. A vibration in one area of the net will have ripples and repercussions throughout it.
What is called the universe is a vast body made up of an infinity of individuals all sustaining each other and defining each other. The Hua Yen universe is not familiar to Western people, where the universe has been, and to some extent still is, a universe that must be explained or perceived as a materialistic resource which humans can exploit for their own development. The Hua-yen world is completely non-teleological. The universe is taken as a given, a vast fact which can be explained only in terms of its own dynamism. Just as the 'mind' is a vast fact that can be explained only in terms of its own dynamism.
Indra's net, too, points to awareness that arises not simply through heightened use of the senses (although these are fundamental to that arising) but that it includes an existential view of 'how things are' – an aspirational and inspirational context in which to apply concentrated effort (both in the moment, and over countless lifetimes). This moves the isolated individual away from the patterns of craving, aversion and ignorance which are based on a false view of reality. In other words, it may lead to deeper and multi-levelled insights into the Buddha's insight into conditioned co-production.
Modern science and Buddhist views of reality
Despite coming from very different ontological and epistemological backgrounds both these systems of understanding can be said to point towards a similar view of reality. The evolving universe of Sheldrake, with habits forming its memory, have a resonance with Indra’s net. In each moment, there is a possibility for a resonance with experience of the past. The universe is a vast jostling of energetic forms; each arises in the moment as a result of all the separate conditions in time and space, and then pass away. Here it is impermanent, but also resonant, crossing time and space. Bohm’s assertion that the tangible reality of our lives is really a kind of illusion, like a holographic image pointed to a deeper order of existence, a vast and more primary level of reality that gives birth to all the objects and appearances of our physical world in much the same way as a piece of holographic film gives birth to a hologram (Talbot 1981).This deeper view of reality he called the ‘implicate’ ( enfolded) and the mundae level the ‘explicate’ or unfolded order. There is a constant and flowing movement between both orders. This is in accord with the Buddhist understandig that nirvana is to be found in samsara. According to Bohm, both aspects are within a quantum’s ensemble, but that which is seen at any one time is no different than a jeweller manipulating a gem where only one facet is visible at any one time. So, just as the Buddha saw into the countless unfoldings of the universe on the night of his enlightenment, so modern science has reached a similar cosmological and quantum understanding.
These just skim the surface of some of the radical and profound interconnections that can be found between a Buddhist view of reality, gained through the constant and sustained exploration of the mind that the Buddha undertook before he reached his insight, and through the physicists’, biologists’, neuroscientists’ and psychologists’ view of science as expressed by the radical thinkers outlined above. In a way, this is not surprising – both views begin with exploration of human’s relationship to the world in which we are as, Heidegger would have put it, ‘thrown’, and it is an exciting time to be able to draw on both of these traditions in an effort to find ways that can help us restore harmony and balance on a planet that is undergoing the most profound change.
References
Bhikkhu Nanamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi. ( 1995) The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha. A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya. Wisdom Publications: Boston US
Cooke. F. Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra. University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press
Damasio, A. ( 2006) Descartes Error, Vintage: London
Jung, C. (1972). Synchronicity — An Acausal Connecting Principle. London ;Routledge and Kegan Paul.
McNiff, J. and Whitehead, A. (2005) All You Need to Know about Action Research. Sage. UK
Merleau-Ponty (1969) The Visible and the Invisible (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) Northwestern University Press
Rees, B., Atula and Danavira ( 2002)'Unity in Diversity and Diversity in Unity: Consciousness and Myth in Organisational Life. Paper presented at the Workshop on a New Agenda for Organisation Theory in the 21st Century, Brussels, Belgium, February, 7-8
Sheldrake, R. ( 1988) The Presence of the Past, London: Harper Collins
Talbot , M. ( 1991) The Holographic Universe, London: Harper Collins
Varela, F. Thompson, E., Rosch, E.( 1991) The Embodied Mind, MIT Press Cambirdge: Mass
Tarnas, R. (1991) The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View; Ballantine