“A Science of Consciousness: Buddhism (1), the ... - B. Alan Wallace

these topics empirically, but that is no longer the case. In the twenty-first century,
the nature, origins, and destiny of human consciousness are still metaphysical
issues for the West, but are they similarly clouded in mystery within the
Buddhist tradition?
As new empirical strategies are devised for exploring phenomena,
metaphysics gives way to science, mere belief is supplanted by knowledge. The
approach that has repeatedly allowed for this gradual illumination of the natural
world is called the scientific method. Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary
defines this as follows: “Principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of
knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the
collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and
testing of hypotheses.” Does Buddhism include this procedure in its inquiry into
the nature of the mind and consciousness? In general, the framework of Buddhist
theory and practice consists of the Four Noble Truths: the truths of suffering, the
source of suffering, the cessation of suffering together with its source, and the
path leading to that cessation. While Buddhist contemplatives have always
placed a primary emphasis on fathoming the nature of the mind, their
orientation to this endeavor has been fundamentally pragmatic. Their first task is
to recognize the nature and full range of suffering to which humans are
vulnerable. The first noble truth formulates that as the problem to be addressed.
The second noble truth presents the hypothesis that the essential causes of
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