Hi Everybody,
Hope you are well. Beautiful sun-kissed day here in London. Walking with my dog Gatsby in Richmond Park had the breath of spring about it. Bit early for that of course.No doubt we'll have snow before the week is out!
So where are we? Middle of Chapter 3, Buddhism and Belief, a really important issue to get to grips with and in this episode we pick up this central question of faith in Buddhism...
' ....what can it possibly mean in a religionthat has no gods to have faith in? One hurdle we have to leap over before we get to that is the subject of Shakyamuni's own enlightenment, the nature of the reality he came to understand. Enlightenment is in a sense a technical term in Buddhism, and I think it really helps to see it in that light. Indeed the word Buddha itself essentially means the enlightened one, it comes from a Sanskrit word that means to be awakened, or to be aware of, or to know deeply. And the key thing to note is that those are quite human-scale activities aren't they? Nothing divine about them. We can all wake up, or be aware, or know deeply.
So how should we deal with the fact of Shakyamuni's enlightenment? In many ways the concept of a state of being, or a state of mind labelled enlightenment is strange to us, not to say alien. It's a word we're not l;ikely to use often, if at all. In an essentially intellectual and materialist age we are much more attuned to, and much more comfortable with, down-to-earth explanations and scientific patterns of proof. But of course, as we all know, there is much more to our humanity, particularly our humanity when it is lived at the highest level, than can be observed and measured in a laboratory. So we have to accept I think that in using an unusual word like enlightenment we are reaching out in an attempt to describe something that may be very difficult to actually pin down, but which nevertheless remains a wholly valid part of human experience. Put simply we might say that enlightenment involves a completely different view of reality. One analogy that comes to mind is the sort of phase change as it's called in physics, that happens when water turns to ice. It is the same stuff so to speak, precisely the same molecular substance, nothing has been added or taken away, ( except energy ) but itr is also a complete transformation.
But in truth, metaphores take us only so far don't they? Many attempts have been made to bring the implications of Shakyamuni's experience closer to us. They contain many ideas that have become the central pillars of Buddhist thought, ideas that underpin the entire structure. So let's look at a couple of these ideas to see if they help to clarify things for us. Take the profound interconnectedness of everything in the universe for example, from the dust beneath our feet to the great galaxies spirallin gout on the edge of space. Everything, Shakyamuni tells us, is interconnected, way beyond anything that we can possibly perceive and understand with our senses.
Perhaps the strangest thing for most of us is the fact that today's most eminent scientists talk to us ina disturbingly similar way. The late, great, nobel-prize winning American physicist Richard Feynman for example tells us;
' First of all there is matter, and remarkably enough, all matter is the same. The matter of which the stars are made is known to be the same as the matter on earth...The same kinds of atoms appear to be in living creatures as in non-living creatures, frogs are amde of the same ' goup' as rocks, only in different arrangements.'
It's hard to think of any other scientist who could use the word 'goup' in a scientific text and get away with it! The fact that Feynman describes a profound connection between frogs and rocks is surprising enough, but what he is clearly saying in plain English, is that all matter, animate and inanimate is deeply interconnected.
And then there's the great philosopher-scientist Daniel Dennett tellingn us almost exactly the same thing from a slightly different persepective;
' There is just one family tree ( he tells us ) on which all living things that have ever lived on this planet can be found...not just animals but plants and algae and bacteria as well. You share a common ancestor with every chimpanzee, every worm, every blade of grass, every redwood tree.'
' ...all living things that have ever lived on this planet...' It's a phrase that takes the breath away. But just think of the implications. It means that the bunch of roses that you give to your beloved partner on your anniversary carries DNA that connects them closely top the hand that holds them. The family dog that takes you lovingly for a walk every morning, as my gatsby does, hangs from the same family tree as yourself. There could surely be no clearer confirmation of Shakyamuni's perception of a universal interconnectedness, all those years ago.
Then there's his perception that lies at the very heart of Buddhism, that change, or impermanence, is the very nature of all things. However much we may cling on to the idea that what we have we hold, however fiercely we may desire things to remain as they are, nothing, nothing, ever stays the same from one moment to the next. Everything that ever is or was, every life, every relationship, goes through the same endless cycle of birth, growth, decline and death.
- becoming, growing, susbsiding, dying
- forming, continuing, declining, disintegrating.
Once again this is absolutely in tune with the message from modern science. The only thing that varies is the period of the cycle, from a few millionths of a micro-second for the life span of a sub-atomic particel say, to the life span of a mayfly, or a man, or a mountain, or the dramatic events in the life cycle of a star, like our Sun, spread over many millions of years. Science has steadily discovered and we have steadily come to understand, that they all become, grow, decline and die.
It's worth adding perhaps, to bring this passage to an end, that there is an extraordinary paradox in all of this, one of so many in Buddhism, in that underlying this universal cycle of flux and change, that affects all things without exception, there is a single constancy; the unchanging constancy of the rhythm itself, that sustains and supports the endless cycling from birth to death.
Well that's it for now I think. Enough to take in for one session. But I must say I am enjoying retracin gthe journey in short stages like this. It does sharpen the focus on particular passages.
Hope it does for you too.
See you next week.
William
Well that's it for now I think. Enough to grasp for one session. But I must say I AM ENJOYING
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