Dhamma, Religion
and Science
None of the above is
infallible.
This word is often
used to describe human capacity for error — no one is infallible.
In that context only
science accept capacity to error.
Neither Dhamma nor
religion accepts that they are prone to error.
It is easy to
dispense orthodox Church's dogma that god is the creator and the
essence of the beginning.
If God created the
world, who created God is the next pertinent question in science.
This was the
question I used to pose as a kid when not even 7 years old.
I have not found an
answer to this question all my life.
So my mind worked
itself to science without any hindrance.
I was good at asking
the most demanding question, in the class and I was thrown out of the
class by my Christian rather the Catholic teacher.
He did not realize
that I made my fellow mates to ask even more probing questions in my
absence.
The end result was that
all the so called Buddhists by descent were thrown out eventually.
We enjoyed games
while my fellow Christian mates were indoctrinated with the dogma or
the current expression “God Delusion”.
I subsequently
stopped going to this school (there were many other reason including
not teaching elementary science) to my father's annoyance.
To my disgust I
never found a good science teacher in the city school, I subsequently
joined.
I was born with
scientific thinking and that was not a problem, thanks to books from
the British Council Library.
I was reading
Scientific American very early in my life.
Coming to Dhamma, I
never had a teacher who could make interesting introduction to its basics.
Jataka Katha was an
antithesis to me.
I should relate a
particular incident.
We had a Poya Dasa
Sil program in my village school as an antidote to our rebelliousness in
the Christian school.
One of my mates
asked a simple question from the Buddhist monk.
His question was
(based on merit and demerit principle or the good and the bad moral
principle) related to Buddhist decorations with Buddha's image
littered all over the streets soon after Wesak Poya.
Is it good or bad to litter the streets with Buddha images?
The monk did not
answer that question to my satisfaction.
I do not know what
my mate's gut feeling was and I never discussed it with him.
This had a
remarkable impression on me.
It seeded the interest in environment at a very early age.
Live and let live principle and do not litter the mother earth.
Our capital city Colombo is a classic example of living every day with litter.
The recent floods had made the city fathers to wake up from slumber.
Even the Colombo crows (cravens) decimated due to garbage menace and polythene (cause intestinal obstruction and death).
The crows did a better service than our city fathers and mothers.
I never liked any religion including Buddhism.
I never declared my inner feeling to anybody including my parents but pretended to be a very religious person (which was trues as far as good habits were concerned and I was a visible conformist from outside).
I probed into Dhamma
well past my adulthood.
I found Dhamma very
tricky especially the Rebirth.
However,
Kamma was not my bete noire, in the way of cause
and effect.
Buddha deliberately avoided controversy.
He strictly forbade the inquiry into the universe and the world of
science.
He said they were the deterrent and superfluous to the eightfold
pathway he preached.
Kalama Sutta was the red herring which later scholars got hold of it
by the wrong end or the tail of it, to say Dhamma is scientific.
He used his qualifications for systematic inquiry in Kalama Sutta to
verify his basic teaching of Eightfold Pathway of life.
His Dhamma was a way of life and a mental culture in pristine form.
There is no science in Buddha's teaching.
Any rendering outside his teaching is a viscous dogma (science included) which he
specifically forbade.
What he tried to convey is that “the universe is within you” and
not from outside or any alien forces.
Nibbana or the four sublime forms were the goals to target and not scientific methodology.
The bottom line is I am yet to find a Buddhist monk or layperson who
reached these goals.
In my case, I am not at all interested in those targets and in that
sense I am not a Buddhist, at all.
I am very much happy with what I am and my goals are very simple and
mundane like, good night sleep, good holiday, bit of wine, a piece of
cupcake with some chocolate chips, a good science book to read or
detective story to ponder and never a melodrama.
If one has not
worked out who one is, it is simply a burden to the mother earth,
which gives oxygen to breath, water to drink, fruits (food) to eat and
gravity to pull oneself into an erect homo sapien who has not evolved
to his full potential, yet.
