A Single Handful

Tricycle Magazine's Daily Dharma for today quotes from "A Single Handful" by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu

The Buddha refused to deal with those things that don’t lead to the extinction of dukkha [suffering]. He didn’t discuss them. Take the question of whether or not there is rebirth after death. What is reborn? How is it reborn? What is its “karmic inheritance”? These questions don’t aim at the extinction of dukkha. That being so, they are not the Buddha’s teaching nor are they connected with it. They don’t lie within the range of Buddhism. Also, the one who asks about such matters has no choice but to believe indiscriminately any answer that’s given, because the one who answers won’t be able to produce any proofs and will just be speaking according to his own memory and feeling. The listener can’t see for himself and consequently must blindly believe the other’s words. Little by little the subject strays from dharma until it becomes something else altogether, unconnected with the extinction of dukkha.

Buddhism at its essence.

The Nonduality of Good and Evil

From Tricycle Magazine

Because it emphasizes mindfulness of our thought processes, Buddhism encourages us to be wary of antithetical concepts, not only good and evil, but success and failure, rich and poor, even the duality between enlightenment and delusion. We distinguish between the opposing terms because we want one rather than the other, yet the meaning of each depends upon the other. That may sound abstract, but such dualities are actually quite troublesome for us. If, for example, it is important to live a pure life (however I understand purity), then I need to be preoccupied with avoiding impurity. If wealth is important for me, then I am also worried about avoiding poverty. We cannot take one lens without the other, and such pairs of spectacles filter our experience of the world. — David R. Loy

Nice thought.

Ethical behavior

By Andrew Olendzki in Removing the Thorn | Tricycle Magazine.

According to the Buddha, the human world is protected by twin guardians, two forces in the mind that watch over and guide moral behavior. The first guardian of the world is hiri, a word that connotes conscience, moral intuition, and self-respect. It refers to that within the human psyche that knows the difference between right and wrong, between what is noble and ignoble, between what is worthy of respect and what is not. Each of us has within us an innate moral compass, and it is the view of the Buddhist tradition that religion is not the source of this but rather a form by which it is given expression. The second guardian of the world is ottappa, which comprises such notions as social conscience, a cultural or collective sense of morality, and respect for the opinions and the rights of others.

Buddhism teaches that anything we do that is wholesome will be done with the support and guidance of these two inner guardians. Conversely, everything we do that is unwholesome can only be done when these moral guides are disregarded. So if there is something morally reprehensible occurring in an individual or in a society, it means that we lack sufficient clarity of awareness of what we are doing. It means we are temporarily blinded by our greed, hatred, or delusion, or by some combination of the three, such that we refuse to attend openly to the deeds we are committing. When attention has been brought to bear on the matter—in sufficient amounts, with sufficient intensity, and with sufficient honesty—we will naturally shy away from doing harm to ourselves, to others, and to both.

This distinguishes Buddhism from religions that insist that the only reason people behave ethically is fear of God's punishment.

This is also consistent with current theories of evolutionary biology that explain how individual behaviors and societal norms evolve and are maintained.

The Neural Buddhists - New York Times

A nice column by David Brooks

The atheism debate is a textbook example of how a scientific revolution can change public culture. Just as “The Origin of Species reshaped social thinking, just as Einstein’s theory of relativity affected art, so the revolution in neuroscience is having an effect on how people see the world.

And yet my guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.

Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development.

Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.

Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.

This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.

If you survey the literature (and I’d recommend books by Newberg, Daniel J. Siegel, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Jonathan Haidt, Antonio Damasio and Marc D. Hauser if you want to get up to speed), you can see that certain beliefs will spread into the wider discussion.

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.

In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I’m not qualified to take sides, believe me. I’m just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects.

I think Brooks is right that the debate will be between theology and "spirituality." It's been popular for a while for people to describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious."

What Brooks hasn't realized is that spirituality is also a subjective experience; it takes place in one's mind and doesn't necessarily imply anything about the world. "[Feeling] the existence of the sacred," as Brooks put it, doesn't imply the existence of "the sacred," just the ability to have certain feelings.

The realization that these feelings are not necessarily connected to any particular religion is progress—at least in my opinion.

But distinguishing between subjective experience and external reality is—also in my opinion—the real truth of Buddhism. It's also the fundamental truth of science.

Andrew Sullivan on Faith

I find Andrew Sullivan quite brave in the final post of his debate with Sam Harris. He writes

You then ask why I should find it is so hard to imagine my non-existence? Your good points have made me realize more fully why I feel the way I do. The reason I find it so hard to imagine, I realize, is that I believe that God loves me. …

The reason I cannot conceive of my non-existence is because I have accepted, freely and sanely, the love of Jesus, and I have felt it, heard it, known it. He would never let me go. And by never, I mean eternally. And so I could never not exist and neither could any of the people I have known and loved.

I find it amazing for someone who lives in today's secular society to say something like that — Sullivan especially, who lives by his intellect. Yet there it is. As I said, I think it's quite brave of him to be as open about his faith as he is.

Of course I think he's mistaken. The mistake he makes in my view is quite simple. Sullivan is confusing his subjective experience (of feeling something, which he calls the love of God) with a fact about the world. Subjective experience, and especially our conceptualization of our subjective experience, is just that, subjective experience. It is something that goes on in our minds. This is not to take a dualist position. What goes on in our minds has a physical basis. But it's a level of abstraction above that physical basis. (This is a fairly long discussion. But a fundamental example here is that the software that implements the conceptual models we use to run our lives is a level of abstraction above the electrons flowing in computers. The electrons are required to run the software, but the conceptual models they implement, conceptual models like words on a blog, are not the same thing as electrons. See my papers on emergence for a fuller discussion.)

So the point is that the love that Sullivan feels cannot be taken to imply the existence of a lover. Yet that's exactly what he does. It's such a simple mistake that I'm surprised that neither he nor Harris comments on it. As I quote Richard Feynman as saying,

Science is what we have learned about how not to fool ourselves about the way the world is.

And as I quote myself as saying,

Buddhism and humanistic psychology are what we have learned about how not to fool ourselves about our subjective experience.

We must treasure our subjective experience. That's what makes us human. But we can't automatically turn our subjective experience into beliefs about the world. As Blue says about our species,

Humans: smart enough to have ideas; foolish enough to believe them.

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More from Andrew Sullivan

In The Unclean Glass, Sullivan responds to Harris.

So let me put this in a context that might appeal to you, as a rational, empirical person. How do you explain Christianity's enduring power? Is it all a terrible, ugly blight on the human mind that must be thrown out in favor of "truly honest, fearless inquiry"? But wouldn't "truly honest, fearless inquiry" into religious faith begin by asking how Christianity came to exist at all?

Consider the evidence. I do not believe in a flying spaghetti monster. I believe in Jesus of Nazareth as God Incarnate. We have no evidence of a flying spaghetti monster. But we have solid evidence of Jesus' existence. We have a handful of independent historical artifacts that attest that a minor Jewish rabbi in first century Israel was executed by the Roman authorities. We have many Gospels that date from the period after his death testifying to the power of his message. Purported messiahs and crucifixions were not uncommon at the time. But only one of the thousands of Rome's victims is remembered in this way - and not just remembered but worshiped over two millennia later in the most advanced civilization the world has ever known. Does this not intrigue you? Have you never asked in the spirit of "truly honest, fearless inquiry": How on earth did this happen?

As a simple piece of historical inquiry, it's an astonishingly unlikely turn of events. Within a short period of time, not only was an obscure, failed Jewish rabbi remembered, his teachings became the official religion of the empire that had executed him. In the ensuing centuries, his life and teachings inspired many of the greatest minds, souls and talents humankind has ever produced. The collapse of the empire that elevated him did not lead to the disappearance of Christianity. It led to its eventual re-emergence as a vibrant, beautiful, rich experience for millions. Only Muhammad and the Buddha rival the story of this man - a fact that leads me to ask questions of both (particularly Buddhism), but which prompts you to condemn and anathematize all religious claims of any kind.

I think that Sullivan misunderstand probabilities. This reminds me of the football betting scam.

On the first weekend of the football season the scam artist sends out email messages to millions of people predicting the results of one of the games. In half the messages, he predicts team A will win. In the other half he predicts team A will not win.

On the second weekend, he send out messages to those who got the correct message the previous weekend.

He repeats this weekend after weekend until after a string of "correct predictions" he proposes to sell his final prediction to his remaining message recipients. Of course these people, having received a string of correct predictions will be hard pressed to resist.

One can make a similar case for Sullivan's story. As he points out, "Purported messiahs and crucifixions were not uncommon at the time. But only one of the thousands of Rome's victims is remembered in this way." Given the human inclination to believe, it's not unlikely that humanity will have adopted some religion. The particular religion it adopted (and it adopted a number of them) does not argue for the correctness of that religion. It does argue for a propensity of human beings to adopt beliefs. But that's not Sullivan's argument.

Elsewhere in the same piece, Sullivan attacks science as follows.

Science, your preferred mode of human understanding, is not contingency-free either. I know of no scientist who would claim so. It is shot through with contingency. It is the consequence of millennia of human thought, logic, experiment, argument, discovery, thesis, antithesis, synthesis - propelled by human curiosity, pride, obsession, and error. What science knows at any given moment is a function of everything it has ever known. And it is built and unbuilt by human minds with human weaknesses.

Of course he's right. As Richard Feynman, has said, "Science is what we have learned about how not to fool ourselves about the way the world is." Science is not a doctrine, it is a search for understanding. It is a significant misunderstanding of science to portray it as comparable to religion as a way of viewing the world. Science is a commitment to do the best we can to understand the world, wherever that journey leads. Sullivan's religion appears to be a decision not to ask certain questions but to accept certain positions "on faith." These are not different doctrines or different bodies of knowledge, they are different kinds of approaches to examining one's life and one's understanding of nature.

Of course Sullivan may reply that his religion does not deny the truths of science. (He has said something like that elsewhere.) But in that case what is he claiming other than that the truths he argues for are beyond the scope of human reason and understanding. (He has said something like that elsewhere also.) But that brings us back to the position that everyone can accept. Sullivan is arguing for a position that has no intellectual consequences for the world in which we live. The only real consequences for religious beliefs with no implications about the natural world are the actions taken by believers as a result of holding those beliefs. Sullivan and Harris can then argue about the overall positive or negative effect on the world of religion.

It seems to me still open to debate whether religion has been a force for good or ill in the world. It's unlikely that this will be settled soon. To settle this question we will have to identify the distinct effects of religion and separate them from the way that human beings act without religion. Since we human beings seem to be built to construct and hang onto religious beliefs, I suspect that it will be extraordinarily difficult to characterize what a fully non-religious human being would act like. Perhaps it is a person who is open to questioning everything, if that is possible. Since there have probably been very few such human beings, a study of their effect on the world vs. the effect of everyone else is unlikely to yield much insight. The Buddha may be taken as prototypical of the person who is willing to question everything. How would one compare the effect of Buddhism to the effect of faith-oriented religions? Even that isn't a fair comparison since many Buddhist traditions have developed their own faith-like belief doctrines.

But all that is a completely different argument from one about whether religion includes anything comparable to what we would normally refer to as facts about nature. If both sides agree that religion does not assert any claimed facts about nature, then the two sides can agree on this common position. Those who find comfort in holding such beliefs may do so. Those who don't need not. Let there be peace among them.

We Will Soon Devise a Scientific Theory for the Perennial Mind-Body Problem

Tat's what Donald Hoffman (Cognitive Scientist, UC, Irvine) is optimistic, bout. He concludes his relatively long explanation of the reasons for his optimism as follows.

Here are some obvious truths that guide current attempts to solve the mind-body problem: Physical objects have causal powers. Neural activity can cause conscious experiences. The brain exists whether or not it is observed. So too does the moon, and all other physical objects. Consciousness is a relative latecomer in the evolution of the universe. Conscious sensory experiences resemble, or approximate, true properties of an independently existing physical world.

Will we soon be forced to relinquish some of these truths? Probably. If so, the current ontological predilections of science will require dramatic revision. Could science survive? Of course. The fundamental commitments of science are methodological, not ontological. What is essential is the process of constructing rigorous explanatory theories, testing them with careful experiments, and revising them in light of new data. Ontologies can come and go. One might endure sufficiently long that it is taken for a sine qua non of science. But it is not. An ontology breathed into life by the method of science can later be slain by that same method. Therein lies the novel power of science. And therein lies my optimism that science will soon succeed in fashioning its first theory of the mind-body problem. But at the feet of that theory will probably lie the slain carcass of an effete ontology.

I like this quotation because it illustrates how science is at least a partial antidote to idea anthropocentrism as discussed earlier. As humans we can't create a theory of how nature works that isn't our theory. But at least we can switch ontologies. That's one of the strengths of science — and one of the weaknesses of non-scientific ways of viewing the world. Buddhism warns against clinging. Science takes that warning seriously and by its very methodology enables and in some cases forces us to give up ideas we once cherished as obviously true. As Feynman has said, "Science is what we have learned about how not to fool ourselves about the way the world is."

Piet Hut (Professor of Astrophysics, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) says that it's also misleading to hold up "the scientific method" as the one true path.

Purified from goals, the scientific method is held up as the beacon to follow. But I think this story is still misleading. The greatest breakthroughs have come from a doubly pure science, purified from goals and methods alike. In small and large ways, each major breakthrough was exactly a breakthrough because it literally broke the rules, the rules of the scientific method as it had been understood so far. The most spectacular example has been quantum mechanics, which changed dramatically even the notion of experimental verification.

I am optimistic that all areas of human activities can be inspired by the example of science, which has continued to thrive for more than four centuries, without relying on goals, and without even relying on methods. The key ingredients are hyper-critical but non-dogmatic conservatism, combined with wildly unconventional but well-motivated progressiveness. Insofar as there is any meta-method, it is to allow those ingredients to be played off against each other in the enactments of scientific controversies, until consensus is reached.

Perfect freedom, peace, tranquility, and happiness?

I sometimes quote from Tricycle's Daily Dharma. Realism is fine, but perfect freedom, peace, tranquility, and happiness? That seems to be promising a bit more than realism is likely to deliver.

Buddhism is neither pessimistic nor optimistic. If anything at all, it is realistic, for it takes a realistic view of life and of the world. It looks at things objectively. It does not falsely lull you into living in a fool's paradise, nor does it frighten and agonize you with all kinds of imaginary fears and sins. It tells you exactly and objectively what you are and what the world around you is, and shows you the way to perfect freedom, peace, tranquility and happiness.
— Walpola Rahula

"What we have learned about how not to fool ourselves."

Bob Parks of What's New quoted Richard Feynman as having said that this is what science is all about.

Although I like this quotation, I think it leaves out a lot. Science doesn't help us in not fooling ourselves about our own subjective experience. Feynman enjoyed playing the bongo drums and being around naked women. His ability to be aware of and take pleasure in these experiences was one of his charms. He knew he liked them; he wasn't obsessed by them; he enjoyed them when the situation was appropriate.

We don't (at least so far) have a science that helps us work with (and keep us from fooling ourselves about) our subjective experience. What we've learned about not fooling ourselves in this domain is that we fool ourselves when we lose self-awareness. (Can that be made into scientific statement?) The best science-like disciplines we've developed along these lines are humanistic psychology and Buddhism. Neither would qualify as a traditional science. So I'd put it this way.

Science is what we have learned about how not to fool ourselves about the way the world is. Buddhism and humanistic psychology are what we have learned about how not to fool ourselves about our subjective experience.

Stop Pretending

Tricycle's Daily Dharma for today is from Josh Baran.

The great teachings unanimously emphasize that all the peace, wisdom, and joy in the universe are already within us; we don't have to gain, develop, or attain them. Like a child standing in a beautiful park with his eyes shut tight, there's no need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds and sky; we merely need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, who we already are—as soon as we stop pretending we're small or unholy. I could characterize nearly any spiritual practice as simply being: identify and stop, identify and stop, identify and stop. Identify the myriad forms of delusion we place upon ourselves, and muster the courage to stop each one. Little by little deep inside us, the diamond shines, the eyes open, the dawn rises, we become what we already are. Tat Twam Asi (Thou Art That). —Bo Lozoff, from 365 Nirvana, Here and Now by Josh Baran.

I think that's fine. But I also think it's confusingly poetic and etherial. What he's really talking about in my opinion is the simple fact that all subjective experience is just that: subjective experience. By its very definition, every subjective experience—peace, wisdom, joy, etc.— happens inside ourselves.

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When looking for a picture of Josh Baran, I found this profile.

Josh Baran is a former Zen priest, a contributor to Tricycle: the Buddhist Review, and currently a strategic communications consultant in New York City. His clients have included Amnesty International, Earth Day, Rock the Vote, the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, Special Olympics, Universal Pictures, Miramax Films, Time Magazine, Warner Records, Oracle and Microsoft. For many years, he has managed media relations for the Dalai Lama's visits to the Eastern United States. In addition, he is a longtime student of the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and now works closely with Byron Katie.

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I gather that the extract above is really Baran quoting Lazoff. In fact, I found it on this page. Here's a more complete (and more meaningful) extract.

In fact, most of the great spiritual commandments, precepts and teachings throughout history have been merely guidelines for what we should stop doing. Most of the ten commandments start with "Thou Shalt Not…"; the Buddhist precepts and Hindu Yamas and Niyamas start with "Non…," as in "non-killing, non-stealing, non-lying," etc. Many contemporary people have complained about such overwhelmingly negative wording in the ancient teachings, but there is a good reason for it: There really isn’t anything to do in order to realize the Divine Presence, the natural Holiness which life offers. We have merely to stop thinking and acting in ways which are harmful or selfish. Think about your own life for a moment, and the main improvements you would like to make: Don’t most of them involve stopping — smoking, drinking, drug use, uncontrolled lust, anger, fear, self-hatred, etc.; just stopping what keeps you bound?

The Great Teachings unanimously emphasize that all the peace, wisdom and joy in the universe are already within us; we don’t have to gain, develop, or attain them. Like a child standing in a beautiful park with his eyes shut tight, there’s no need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds and sky, we merely need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, whom we already are — as soon as we stop pretending we’re small or unholy. This is not a philosophy; this is the way things are.

I could characterize nearly any spiritual practice as simply being: Identify and Stop. Identify the myriad forms of limitation and delusion we place upon ourselves, and muster the courage to stop perpetuating each one. Little by little, deep inside of us, the diamond shines, the eyes open, the dawn rises, we become what we already are. Tat Twam Asi — Thou Art That (as soon as Thou stops pretending otherwise).

The final invitation from the saints and sages is to stop even the last sense of self — true ego-death, to leap into the volcano as a human sacrifice, followed by a resurrection from the ashes as a Perfect One. The BIG Stopping! The consequence of this ultimate stopping is pithily described in a little story by Father Theophane in his book, Tales of a Magic Monastery:

I sat there in awe as the old monk answered our questions. Though I’m usually shy, I felt so comfortable in his presence that I found myself raising my hand. "Father, could you tell us something about yourself? He leaned back. "Myself?" He mused. There was a long pause. "My name … used to be … Me. But now … it’s you."

The crisp simplicity of the moment

The Daily Dharma for Feb 26 from Tricycle.

It is often the case that whatever we are doing, be it sitting, walking, standing, or lying, the mind is frequently disengaged from the immediate reality and is instead absorbed in compulsive conceptualization about the future or past.

• While we are walking, we think about arriving, and when we arrive, we think about leaving.


• When we are eating, we think about the dishes and as we do the dishes, we think about watching television.

This is a weird way to run a mind. We are not connected with the present situation, but we are always thinking about something else. Too often we are consumed with anxiety and cravings, regrets about the past and anticipation for the future, completely missing the crisp simplicity of the moment.

— B. Alan Wallace, Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground Up

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There is a review in this week's New Yorker of two books that review the history of Happiness. It refers to Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi's fairly old study that

showed that people were most content when they were experiencing what Csikzentmihalyi called “flow”—in Haidt’s definition, “the state of total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one’s abilities.” [Jonathan Haidt is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia.] We are at our happiest when we are absorbed in what we are doing; the most useful way of regarding happiness is, to borrow a phrase of Clive James’s, as “a by-product of absorption.”

It seems to me that the Buddhist advice quoted above is to be in such a state of absorption no matter what one is doing.

On the other hand, it also seems to me that the examples given in the advice quoted above, although very widely used in Buddhist writings, are too simplistic. After all, when Csikzentmihalyi refers to flow, he is referring to the state one is in when one is absorbed in whatever it is that one is doing. But that includes thinking. Csikzentmihalyi studied creativity, and creativity is often quite conceptual. When one is writing (words, software, music, whatever), one may be completely absorbed in the process. (I can find myself completely absorbed when writing software.) But at those times, I'm not particularly aware of the motion of my fingers or the inflow and the outflow of my breath. So one may be walking and thinking at the same time—and the thinking may be very absorbing. One may be in a state of flow even though one is not aware of walking.

What the advice above was really about was to avoid obsessing about events that one can't control. Worrying about what might happen when one arrives at one's destination is not worth the brain power devoted to it. Just walk—or invent something while walking.

And now that I'm thinking about it, even absorption in physical activities is different from awareness of the mechanics of those activities. When one is deeply absorbed in playing music, one isn't aware the motion of one's fingers. When one is deeply absorbed in playing tennis, or running a race, or skiing, or virtually any sporting activity, one isn't aware of the mechanics of how one is performing the activity. In general, absorption brings one to a state of concentration on the activity itself—the music, or the tennis, or the basketball game, etc.—and not to the individual actions that make it up.

Is this really going on in our Air Force Academy

A NY Times editorial discusses proselytizing of academy students.

An authorized investigation by the Yale Divinity School and local news reports documented numerous instances of pressure on cadets to adopt Christian beliefs and practices. Such pressure came from dozens of faculty members and chaplains, and even the football coach, with his 'Team Jesus Christ' banner.

One chaplain instructed 600 cadets to warn their comrades who had not been born again that "the fires of hell" were waiting. Pressure to view "The Passion of the Christ" was reported, extending to "official" invitations at every cadet's seat in the dining hall. Nonevangelicals complained of bias in the granting of cadet privileges and of hazing by upper-class superiors, who made those who declined to attend chapel march in "heathen flights." …

[T]he academy's remedial program of religious toleration is running into resistance. … [The Air Force's chief chaplain] had segments [of a multidenominational educational videotape] cut out on such non-Christian religions as Buddhism, Judaism and Native American spirituality.

Capt. MeLinda Morton, a campus chaplain charged with helping to fix the problem, was thoroughly disheartened by the response. She warned that the altered video program would do little to cure what remained "systemic and pervasive" proselytizing. The captain, a Lutheran minister, was removed last week as executive officer of the chaplain office.

Here's the NY Times news story. And here's the USA today news story.

Science and Consciousness

An article in the current issue of Turning Wheel, published by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, argued against the possibility (liklihood?) that science, and in particular artificial intelligence, would ever explain consciousness. (I regret that the article itself is not available online so that it can speak for itself.)

Here is my reply.

I enjoyed the "Hungry Ghosts of the West" article in the Summer 2004 issue of Turning Wheel, and I agree that consciousness is one of the last remaining mysteries. I suspect, however, that the author would resist my referring to it that way--as if consciousness too may sooner or later be resolved and no longer remain a mystery.

The same issue of Turning Wheel repeats a quote from the Dalai Lama to the effect that if science should disprove any aspect of Buddhist cosmology, Buddhism must change.

I don't expect science to "disprove" consciousness. There is nothing to disprove. But I do expect science to be able to say more about how it works. When that happens, I don't want to see Buddhists disappointed because they were hoping that science will fail. That would put us on the wrong side of awareness.

Science has seen many revolutions, most of which have corrected our sense of ourselves as being the center of the universe. Understanding consciousness will simply be another step in that realization.

Whether or not we understand how sentience works, we will remain sentient beings. As the Buddha said, it's all in our heads, and knowing how our heads work won't make it less so. It will simply make it less grandiose, which will be good for us.

-- Russ Abbott