Celebrating Spring's Beginning - Floriade, South Australia

Science and the Teachings of the Buddha

PART THREE

“Mind over Genes”

Changing our Perceptions

  Recently, the Complete Health Chiropractic website published an article written by Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. © 2003: “Mind Over Genes: Nature and Nurture Revisited.“

  “. . . consider the consequences of world changes that were brought about by civilization’s last paradigm upheaval. This occurred around 1925 when physi­cists left behind the dated concept of a Newtonian material-based universe and recognized the energy-based reality revealed in Quantum Physics.

  “Well, brace yourselves! for we are in for a wild ride. Frantic research in cell biology has finally acknowledged the mechanisms by which perception controls behavior, selects genes, and can even lead to a rewriting of the genome. Rather than being the victim of our genes we have been the victim of our perceptions. . . We are on the verge of a most radical and most wonderful upheaval of human civiliza­tion. . .

  “As we become more conscious and rely less on automated subconscious programs, we become the masters of our fates rather the victims of our programs. Conscious awareness can actively transform the character of our lives into ones filled with love, health, and prosperity by its ability to rewrite limiting perceptions and beliefs. . .”

  In “We Are Meant to be Here” found at Salon.com/books website, Steve Paulson interviews physicist Paul Davies:

  “More and more physicists point to various laws of nature that have to be calibrated just right for stars and planets to form and for life to appear. For instance, if gravity were just slightly stronger, the universe would have collapsed long before life evolved. But if gravity were a tiny bit weaker, no galaxies or stars could have formed. If the strong nuclear force had been slightly different, red giant stars would never produce the fusion needed to form heavier atoms like carbon, and the universe would be a vast, lifeless desert. Are these just happy coincidences? The late cosmologist Fred Hoyle called the universe “a put-up job.” Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson has suggested that the universe, in some sense, “knew we were coming.” British-born cosmologist Paul Davies, “argues for a grand cosmic plan. The universe, he believes, is filled with meaning and purpose. . .”

  Words above clearly resonate with teachings of the Buddha. Now indeed is the very time to transform our perceptions—of who we really are, to realize “in some sense, the universe knew we were coming.” The greatest heresy is to believe we are separate from one another. We and the whole “organism” of life—the earth and all that evolves with the earth—are interconnected and interdependent. Opening heart and mind each moment of our lives, responding to others free of our own ego’s demands, being alive and contributing to the advance of the human condition—is not this our ultimate destiny?

  The Buddha teaches us how to respect one another, to celebrate life with intent to continue. We all are caused to live by the great life-force of the universe. The “great perfection,” the enlightened nature, exists within all living beings. Hidden perhaps, but here, and thus we all are equal in terms of the value of our existence.

  When Shakyamuni Buddha in ch. 2 of the Lotus Sutra sees his “sons and daughters” with reverent hearts draw near to him, seeking the Buddha-way, he conceives this thought – “the reason why the Buddha appears in the world is for preaching the Buddha-wisdom – now is the very time.”

The World of Learning

and the World of Compassion

Written especially for Blaine Smith in response to his comment about past experiences with religion: “This is the topic I’d like to learn! Cosmology & religion. I was literally "attacked" by a pastor when I told him I believe the big bang actually happened. He never let me go until I said, "God created the universe as it is written in Genesis." so, Buddha's teaching and his points of view of the universe are an eye-opener to me.” Also from Blaine – “I studied, or "was forced to study", Christian apologetics. I’m afraid I was trained so well that almost automatically I’m able to "counterattack" this teaching by showing some adequate Bible verses...  I’m too good at memorizing  they practically "brain-washed" me.  Reading and pondering your Ancestral Well blogs is helping me wash off their dangerous doctrine.”

  Blaine, The important thing to keep in mind is that conditions surrounding these encounters don’t exist in your world anymore. Even more important, you show an eagerness to learn, to gain additional knowledge—this eagerness evident not only here at Ancestral Well, but in your correspondence with JJ and Fanvid buddies (to which we both happily belong), relating your knowledge and experiences to JJ’s and other’s many wonderful posts and discussions. As result, I don’t need to tell you, you’ve become, as I have, part of a larger family who seek to discover and learn new things about the world and each other, and ain’t it grand?

  In his earlier teachings, and again in the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha points out that “the world of learning,” (the 7^th world of the shravaka) is a world where one gains knowledge, discovers larger perspectives on how to live life, how to respond to others, and plays a pivotal role in entering the Buddha-path leading to enlightenment.

  Briefly, the Ten Worlds are described as the six lower worlds of anger, covetous­ness, ignorance, contention; the fifth–the world of humanity, and sixth–the world of temporary enlightenment.

  From Sutra of Innumerable Meanings – “Many living beings discriminate falsely—it’s this or it is that, advantageous or disadvantageous, entertain confused thoughts, make various bad choices (causes), and thus transmigrate within the six realms of existence [the six lower worlds] in lifetime after lifetime  and cannot escape from there, thus suffering all manner of miseries.

  This may sound like a “judgment” but significantly, the Buddha continues, “Bodhisattva-mahasattvas, observing rightly like this, should raise the mind of compassion, display the great mercy desiring to relieve others of suffering, and once again penetrate deeply into all laws.” How to help those suffering all manner of miseries—first of all, never judge, but show compassion.

  Thus, in one fell swoop, the Buddha dismisses all judgments, and does so repeatedly in the Lotus Sutra, always reacting to human suffering with statements like, “beholding this my heart is stirred with great pity,” or “how can I cause all the living to abandon the world of suffering and enter the Way supreme?”

  To enter the seventh world of learning—gaining knowledge—is the  trigger which takes the person out of the “lower worlds” on a path leading to enlightenment—in the eighth world one reaches the “mindfulness” of self-attained enlightenment, in the ninth, one dwells in the world of the bodhisattvas who seek to gain enlightenment, first for others, even though their own enlightenment will be delayed.

  Also important to understand is that we often go in and out of each of the six lower worlds, while simultaneously may be active in other worlds as well. One is never “stuck” in any of the worlds, in this teaching, and the world of learning acts as a gateway opening to higher worlds.

  So, as I see it (from afar, it’s true) you find yourself very much in the 7^th world of learning these days, and it’s a really good place to find yourself. The past can be done away with. It doesn’t even exist anymore.

  Study will from time to time introduce thrilling surprises as one learns to discover the beauty and probability that knowledge enhances our beliefs and encourages and motivates us to expand our beliefs, leading to productive relationships with others. It’s important, most of all, not to shut one’s self off from the ever-existing possibility that there is something new to discover that will bring it all together. The thrill of learning and discovering must never be impeded; keeping one foot in the world of learn­ing is not a bad thing. Residing there one continues to gain new perspectives, and the process seems never ending.http://ancestral-well.blogspot.com

Responses to PART TWO

Science and Teachings of the Buddha

Soon to Come – PART THREE

Blaine – this is the topic I’d like to learn! Cosmotology & religion. I was literally "attacked" by a pastor when I told him I believe the big bang actually happened. he never let me go until I said, "God created the universe as it is written in Genesis." so, Buddha's teaching and his points of view of the universe is an eye-opener to me.

Jonny J – My issue with the "God created the Universe" statement was that I need tangible proof ....hasn't happened to this day  The beauty of Buddhism is the complete lack of any "behind the curtains" hocus-pocus that a number of religions require you to accept.

Lunares – Well Jonny Joe, perhaps that issue is because we used to think about God like a person, like a human being. If we think about the Universe as the same God, you can feel that there is no issue like yours. When in the Holy Bible they say that God created human beings as His image and likeness, perhaps should be understood as beings able to feel, to love, to give away love, to share, to help, to feel the life and the universe. As Dana says many times, we are the own force of the Universe.

From Dana – Right on, Jonny Joe!!! That's indeed "the message." Shakyamuni didn't ask one to "accept" anything, he asked only for “awareness and awakening.” He didn’t teach “Buddhism” nor that one should become a “Buddhist.” Even in the Lotus Sutra, his message is not to blindly "accept" the teachings.

  Those who wrote the sutra some time after his death derived their view of what he actually taught while living, contained in earlier texts, and tell it they did with a grand, poetic flourish. The writers of the Lotus Sutra were motivated because "followers" at the time weren't getting the message – they were cloistered in monasteries and fighting among themselves (sound familiar?). The Lotus Sutra came on the scene to get to the heart of the Buddha's teachings—teachings which would lead to self-liberation, compassion, reach a point in this lifetime for one to "make one's self the light" and to practice what they've learned in the real world during this lifetime, not the next.

  A good example of "following the Buddha" – note, not "accepting" or worshiping him – is expressed in the ch. 3 Parable (of the burning house). Following the Buddha  is "to awaken to the Law" [Law of the Void, the one reality—“the Law doesn’t exist in the Law”], receive it in faith, diligently practice, and zealously advance, seeking the complete wisdom, the wisdom of the Buddha, the natural wisdom, the wisdom without a teacher, and the knowledge, powers, and fearlessness of the Buddha, become one who comforts innumerable livings beings. These shall have the Great Vehicle. It is like those children who come out of the burning house to play with the Great Bullock Cart."

  Final note – if those who say “I believe in God” with all its religious trappings brings them “out of the burning house to play with the Great Bullock Cart,” and they live their lives to prove its worth, so be it. I simply don’t see a “God” or other-worldly entity as participant in this life, nor as creator of anything, Awareness of the teachings of the Buddha and trying to live them every moment of my life brings me far greater happiness and has for some time, as well as a sense of the wonders of life, how to live it, and a sense of how we came to be (thanks to a link with scientific thought today). More importantly, this awareness does not separate me from others – it rather links me more firmly with them.

And certainly this includes all those who do not “follow the teachings of the Buddha.” Such awareness of life’s wonders reaches me often from many friends who never even heard of “Buddhism” and who know little or nothing of the Buddha’s teachings – or do they? – giving it “other names.” I learn a great deal about life and how to live it from them, and from how they live their lives.

Summer Solstice at Stonehenge

Science and the Teachings of the Buddha

The Cosmic Process of Universal Energy

and Purpose of Humankind

PART TWO

  In his New York Times article, Timothy Ferris points out, “new theories of physics imply that all known forces in nature are manifestations of one basic interaction and once, long ago, all were part of a single universal force or process.”

  Physicist Fritjof Capra, as he introduces discoveries in quantum physics in his book The Turning Point, reminds us, “as quantum physics came into play, the universe is no longer seen as a machine made up of a multitude of objects but has to be pictured as one indivisible, dynamic whole whose parts essentially are interrelated and can be understood only as patterns of a cosmic process.”

  The universe does exist, and humanity exists, emerging after billions of years as a result of this cosmic process. Teachings of the Buddha view all existence as supremely sacred, requiring no other-worldly entity—no “God on High”—to validate it. Most important of all, from this perspective, even the sanctity of the plain and mundane things of daily existence are sanctified.

  “In this enlightened awareness we can all see the marvelous wonder of our universe, blemishes and all, and find our home and comfort in a cosmos that is magically a part of us, and us a part of it.” – a Zen teaching. This view of the individual’s interpenetration in the universe links science and the teachings of the Buddha with scope and majesty.”

  Niwano in Buddhism for Today further connects us with scientific thinking while simultaneously establishing Buddhism as—not a philosophical system only—but one of the most profound religious practices in today’s world. He explains, “Humans are formed by combinations of particles. Looking more deeply, living beings are an accumulation of energy. Evolution culminating in humankind was caused by the urge to live. Life had mind through which it desired to live from the time before it existed on earth. Such a will exists in everything in the universe and exists in us today.”

  His view of the universe and life evolving from a “will of a universal life-force—energy”—transcends theories of evolution, and is one shared by Fritjof Capra. In the film “Mind Walk” the physicist, Sonia, defines evolution, not as adapting, but discovering new forms, to which the poet responds, “You mean I can go on writing poems whether I need to or not?” Her response, “Yes.”

  Whatever caused the universe to come into existence—how and why it happened resulting in the emergence of humankind, and whatever theoretical scientists advance to explain the nature of its origin, more than a few would agree the process was, and continues to be, inevitable—a majestic happening, nothing can stop it. . . “And there are many beautiful arms around us in things we know.”–Poet in “Mind Walk.”

  Only humanity itself is capable of interfering with this natural flow toward the harmonious and productive advance of civilization and humankind. The Buddha’s teachings reveal the purpose of humankind and only through an awareness and implementation of this purpose, realizing our interdependence with each other and with the world around us, will the purpose of humankind be fulfilled.

  Chaotic conditions reported to us these days may cause us to throw up our hands in despair, but the truth is inescapable. To quote physicist Sonia in “Mind Walk,” “Like it or  not, we are all part of one inseparable web of relationships.”

Early Galaxy - 6 billion years ago

(one half of the age of the universe)

Science and the Teachings of the Buddha

(In Three Parts)

PART ONE

Published in response to thoughts expressed by Blaine Smith, Jonny Joe, and Lunares in linking the teachings of the Buddha with contemporary science, and perhaps also for those engaged in Buddhist meditative practices (“mindfulness”), especially the Canadian artist, teacher, Allan O’Marra, and friend Cody Masek.

From work in progress

“Promises Made – Celebration of Life and the Threefold Lotus Sutra”

 (Dana F. Skolfield)

These are really thoughts of all men and women in all ages and lands,
they are not original with me.
If they are not yours as much as mine,
they are nothing, or next to nothing . . .

If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle, they are nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant, they are nothing.

—Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

  In 1982-83 the process of learning and study is jump-started by the Timothy Ferris article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, “Beyond Newton and Ein­stein” and from his PBS special, “Creation of the Universe,” luring me into a world of cosmology and quantum physics.

  Cos­molo­gists study the history of the uni­verse; quantum physi­cists, the very small, seeking a theory of a grand, unified force found in primor­dial energy resulting in the formation of all matter in the universe.

  Following this in 1983 and up to the present time, further insights from Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time; Timothy Ferris’s Coming of Age in the Milky Way; physicist Fritjof Capra’s The Turning Point, and Ken Wilber in an interview from the 1996 archives of “Shambhala Sun Magazine” on line. More recently, gaining new perspectives from further writings—significantly, and not surprisingly—enhancing and resonating with teachings of the Buddha.

  It must be emphasized here that I’m certain my present state of “mindfulness” and hopefully increasing awareness—celebration of life each day—has been made possible only because I’ve had the great good fortune to find remarkable, “life-affirming” friends, in person, as well as on-line responders to blog posts, a few mentioned above.

  When particle physicists began to explore the inner workings of atoms which make up everything in the universe, quantum mechanics and theories of rela­tivity opened up “two very different paths for physicists to pursue, leading to, as Fritjof Capra says in The Turning Point, “the Buddha or the Bomb, and it is up to each of us to decide which path to take.”

  These explorations led physicists to conceptions of the universe as an inter­connected web of relationships—webs of energy we call matter—and to the con­clusion that these “cosmic webs of energy” are intrinsically dynamic and can be understood only in terms of movement, action and interaction.

  Timothy Ferris reminds us in Coming of Age in the Milky Way that quantum physicists discovered in their observations that what is perceived in experiments depend on the point of view of the observer, and this “tore down walls, reuniting mind with the wider universe . . . we do not see things in them­selves, but only aspects of things. What we see in an electron path is not an electron, and what we see in the sky are not stars.” (One is reminded here of the central lesson of “The Magic City” – Chapter 7 of the Lotus Sutra – to see beyond appearances.)

  Just as the Buddha taught—things, phenomena, are what we choose to call them, in reality not really what they are; that the true aspect is the one law, namely, non­form. These insights began to emerge when I discovered in 1985 the writings of Nikkyo Niwano, co-founder of Rissho Kosei-kai, a Buddhist laypersons group. His Guide to the Threefold Lotus Sutra and Buddhism for Today, a modern interpretation of the Threefold Lotus Sutra and many other writings, insured my own “lifetime” dedi­ca­tion to the sutra, and to the Buddha’s teachings.

  With each new advance in theoretical science, physicists and cosmologists inform us that since the beginning of time, nothing in the universe today, including you and me, could have come into existence had not certain condi­tions caused it—matter created from primordial energy forming patterns of rela­tion­­ship, matter pre­dom­i­nating over anti-matter, elemental particles reaching out to inter­­connect to form webs of rela­tionship. Reaching back to the first second of time, the universe began to form out of the “big bang,” caused by funda­mental elements which make up all life in the universe today. “Every atom in your body was once inside a star.” (Alan Sandage, Cosmologist.)

  Buddha-thought presents a remarkably similar view. The central doctrine of the Buddha’s teachings, the Law of Causation, states that all phenomena in the universe are produced by causation, thus, all things are interrelated. From Niwano’s Buddhism for Today:

  “Shakyamuni Buddha did not regard this universe as God’s creation or his conquest, but as resulting from the relation of cause and effect by which all phenomena are produced. . . all things exist in relationship to one another and are interdependent.

  “All things and forms in the universe, how we view ourselves as human beings, are produced from one void that can neither be seen with the eyes nor felt with the hands. There is a great invisible life-force of the universe, the working of which produces all things from the void, and all things are produced by virtue of the necessity of their existence. Humanity is no exception. We ourselves are brought into being in the forms we take by virtue of the necessity to live in this world. Think­ing this way, we are bound to feel the worth of being alive as human beings, the wonder of having been brought into this world.”

  Buddhist teachings ask, “Is there something which is unchanging and eternal?” The Buddha suggests in the Lotus Sutra this “some­thing” is life itself, the desire to live, originating from primordial energy at the beginning of time—the great life-force of the universe caus­ing every­thing to live. The universe simply is, primordial energy caused its existence. The Buddha is not god or creator, but the appearing Buddha, Shakyamuni’s enlightenment that we are all one substance with “Original Buddha”—one substance with nothing other than the great life-force which caused everything to live from the moment of the “big bang” leading to the emergence of humankind.

  Revering the Buddha – recognizing “Buddha” presence in each moment of our lives, simply gives name to and a vision of celebration of life itself.