PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

Tainer: Studying No Mind 73or peculiarly “spiritual” phenomena in the world that are not covered byscience . . . rather, my point was that everything in life is this “more.”Framing spirituality as being about explicitly statable but novel phenomena(happenings, qualities, etc.) is again buying into an inappropriate formof reductionism.Rather than rejecting or hiding from science, we should embrace andrespect it as offering a major path to understanding. And we should learnto exercise our humanity and status as spiritual beings, for that will give usaccess to another, vital way of knowing. This means throwing open theboundaries to inquiry in both directions. Let science study everything (thatit can find an approach to studying), including spiritual experience. Letspiritual insight regarding our participation in a larger, more fully-dimensionedcontext, bear on everything . . . including science.In this way, the development of cognitive science, and the assimilationand clarification of the essential points of Buddhism by our culture, mayover time become mutually-informed—and even mutually-inspired—enterprises. Perhaps we will thus realize a previously unattainable, integratedvision of the very rich world that we are in, and that we are.