Midnight musings

 

Me, at 3AM in the morning 

At first sight, Buddhism seems to be a very “empirical” religion, perhaps the only such religion (or “religion”). But is it really? Or is it really anymore “empirical” than any other religion? I brooded over this (meditated?) at 3AM as usual, and here is what I saw with my inner eye…

Nirvana doesn´t seem to be empirical. At least not Parinirvana. But since nirvana is the *goal* of Buddhism, this is somewhat of a problem! Nor does rebirth seem to be empirical. But rebirth is the *problem* Buddhism is supposed to solve. Finally, karma isn´t empirical either. But the law of karma is what makes the Buddhist universe ultimately meaningful, as opposed to atheist materialism, in which the universe has no higher meaning or purpose (or perhaps none at all). So three very basic pillars of Buddhism turns out to be non-empirical.

I suppose two responses to this are possible. One is that Buddhist meditators have certain experiences which proves nirvana. But do they? There may indeed be experiences of a “state beyond mind” during meditation, but after some hours, the meditator must re-enter the stream of samsara. So he hasn´t really *proved* the existence of a permanent state beyond samsara known as nirvana. Indeed, it seems *nothing* can prove the existence of such a state even in principle, since the only way to prove that a permanent nirvana is real would be to leave it and come back to planet Earth, but if so, the state isn´t permanent anymore… 

Besides, Buddhism tries to prove much more than this. For instance, we have the claims that those who attain one of the meditative absorptions known as dhyana will remain in a very subtle heaven-world for millions of years (after physical death), but eventually, even they will have to be reborn in the next universe. OK, and how do you know *that*, then? Rebirth can be “proven” by past life regression, but it´s a crude tool. And not everyone experiences previous lives anyway. As for karma, that seems to be a mere philosophical speculation.

The second answer is to defer to the Buddha. After all, the Buddha is said to have been omniscient. He saw all his past lives, he saw all the secrets of existence (presumably including nirvana and karma), and so on. But none of us have ever met the Buddha. Indeed, according to Theravada understanding he´s gone (in Parinirvana). So how do *we* know that the Buddha was telling the truth? Here, the only recourse is to quote scripture or reference tradition. You have to simply trust that the tradition is true. I mean, only a truly remarkable person could have laid the foundation for such a tradition, right? Or are you calling Ananda a liar?

But please note what´s going on here. *It´s exactly the same apologetic argument as Christianity*. For the record, I don´t really know whether Buddhists even make the arguments outlined above, but it seems they “should” do so. A modernized Western Buddhists might want to try the first type of argument, a more traditional Asiatic ditto might try the second. But both fall short. Nor is there any difference between the empirical dimension of Buddhism or that of any other religion. Wasn´t Paul´s meeting with the Christ on Damascus Road empirical in the same way as Buddhist spiritual experiences? Indeed, Paul didn´t even want to meet Christ, yet he was zapped anyway!

So it seems Buddhism is in the same ballpark as everyone else. Yes, they have interesting experiences, perhaps even insights. But at this stage of human (spiritual?) evolution, there doesn´t seem to be any way of judging which religion (if any) has the “true” spiritual experiences. Humans can only see as if through a mirror darkly, and indeed, very often what we see in the mirror is just distortions of our own faces…