PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

72Pacific World“protected” religious thought by separating it so radically from the domainof science that it has now become almost incoherent, i.e., it leaves religionand spirituality with no apparent connection to the world (“God” is“wholly other”). I suggest that this view gives away far too much.Second, it does not suggest science could refute core Buddhist insights(for example), because by their orthogonality I do mean to imply they reallyare different kinds of enterprises, with different “rules” and dimensions ordomains of application, even different ontologies in some refined sense ofthe term. Of course, if an overzealous Buddhist from the nineteenthcentury CE had tried to bolster the dharma’s position by proclaiming thatMount Meru must constitute the center of the physical universe discoveredby astronomers, then he would have mistakenly recast Buddhism as aproto-science, confusing a spiritual pointer with an empirically-testableclaim about physical phenomena (a claim that happens to be false). I thinkit’s clear the central insights of Buddhism are not claims of this sort, andcannot be refuted in this way.Finally, I do not mean to say that Buddhist tenets (statable positionsand philosophical analyses) are unfalsifiable or unchallengeable. On thecontrary: any tenet that can meaningfully be framed as a testable propositioncan be falsified, and so even beyond inappropriate reifications ofBuddhist themes (like the Mount Meru example above), there are doubtlessmany features of Buddhist theory, especially when interpreted inmodern Western psychological ways, that may arguably be falsified byscience or critiqued by modern philosophy. So be it. Orthogonality doesnot protect Buddhism in this way.Buddhist theories of mind and perception are traditionally understoodas literally debatable elaborations, and as ornamentations of the directlyencountered “core insights” that are not entirely reducible to a tenet, orsect, etc. We do not construct such insights or hold them in our ordinarymind, but trim down to their givenness (tathatå, suchness). If science orphilosophy could critique a Buddhist theory (tenet, position), this critiquewould simply help the spiritual enterprise along, on the level of articulation.In the same fashion, a specific psychological (scientific) account ofmind might be very effectively branded as obtuse by an advanced practitionerof contemplation—if she also happens to be a respected scientist,and if the time is right to frame the critique cogently in scientific terms!CONCLUSIONEarlier I decried the trend towards interpreting scientific study assynonymous with reducing us and our world to scientific terms. I alsomentioned that there are more things in our world than are currentlydreamt of by science. The latter claim does not mean that there are esoteric