Buddhism and Science

Question 1

Show, with the help of four things said by Shaku Jinsen during his guest lecture, that the relationship between Buddhism and western science is complex

Answer 1

• It is often defined as a “way of life”. He calls this an empty definition because it can be said about a lot of things. He described it himself as a philosophy and not really a religion. However he also reffered to it as “atheist religion”
• For buddhists”things are true because they are beneficial” – knowledge has to do with morality. In buddhism, perception of reality has to do with how they feel; their mindset. This doesn’t go really well with the normal scientific attitude of being subjective. The similarity is that you dont really on traditions, prescriptions, etc. but that you look for yourself. The main difference though is that in science it’s not so much about the mindset and whether it’s beneficial or not.
• He mentions that there are different ways in different schools of buddha and that there are different groups of buddha. They all use different scriptures, some are old, others are new. He also said that because of this, you can provae almost anything by choosing a scripture. He calls this buddhist modernism.
• Mediation is a practice of buddhists that was later copied by psychologists to deal chronic pain and stress. And later this was also used in the clinical world. This is good because it helps people. But on the other hand, almost the whole buddhist part was taken out of it. And on the other hand, from a western view, it goes against their way of dealing with these things, in a medical way or a psychological way. Western world used the concept of buddhist meditation but there is almost no buddhist mindset left.
• Some buddhists claim that science has been able to prove what buddhism has been saying for 200 years. However there are buddhist who have their doubts because scans have shown that when buddhists meditate, some parts of the brain are active. They claim that if anyone with a passion thinks about their passion then of course parts of the brain will be active. And the studies reports are often only from the point of view of the western scientist, there no input from the buddhists usually. They want to shift the relation between the discussion to morality.
• On the other hand, buddhism does not really believe that earth is created by a higher power, which goes hand in hand with
• Rebirth is one very important part of buddhism, this is something which doesnt go well at all with western science