CHAPTER IV SCIENTIFIC BUDDHISM

Transcription

1 CHAPTER IV SCIENTIFIC BUDDHISM 4.1 SCIENCE AND THE SKANDHAS : As well as four primary atoms,there are also in the dhatu theory,a number of secondary atoms. Varying number of these secondary atoms are found in Buddhist writings. These are the five stimulating atoms or sense stimuli-go-cartrupa(pali)-and the five sensitive atoms or sense receptors-pasadarupa(pali). Thus the Buddhist psychologists believed in the material and atomic nature of colour (i.e. light), sound, odour, taste and touch,and in the material nature of the sense receptors.this is in line with the modern scientific view and indeed there are many similarities in detail too. For example,the Buddhist psychologists,like their modern counterparts,did not define the sense receptors as the eye,ear,nose,tongue and skin,but as sensitive atoms in the back of the eye,inside the ear and so on. 1 These five sense stimuli and five sense receptors are also found listed in Buddhist writings as the ayatanas,together with a sixth mental stimulus and a corresponding sixth mental receptor. The mental stimulus is conceptions or thoughts and is variously called either mano(sanskrit-manas) or dharma. 2 1 NaradaMahathero. A manual of Abhidhamma, Buddhist Publication Soceity, Ceylon, Dr. W. F. Jayasuriya, The psychology and philosophy of Buddhism. N Buddhist Steven Rose. The consciousness Brain Pelican,

2 About the identity of the mental receptor or mind base,there is much difference of opinion among the Buddhist psychologists,even within the same school. This quite understandable because until relatively recent times,absolutely nothing was known about it,either in the east or in the west. 3 To summarise,rupa covers those aspects of what we could now call physics,chemistry and biology which have a bearing upon psychology. It deals with the material sense stimuli and sense receptors and the brain. The remaining four Skandhas are purely psychological,and are put under the collective heading of Nama-mind or experience. The Buddhist psychologists expanded the four Namaskandhas to between forty-six and fifty-two mental factors! However, I shall only be dealing with the much smaller number of universal mental factors that is those that are involved in experience all the time. 4 The link between nama and rupa is provided by the important theory of phassa(sanskrit-sparsa). This is best known as one of the Nidanas, but it is included in the Skandhas as the first of the universal mental factors and put under the Sankhara heading. Phassa is the very modern and scientific view that experience depends upon the contact of three things: a stimulus, a receptor and consciousness. Each primary perspective area passes on the nerve impulses only to its so called secondary or parasensory area in the brain. Each secondary area receives not only those sensory nerve impulses but also nerve impulses from many other surrounding areas. 3 W. M. Mc. Govern in a manual of Buddhist Philosophy. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, London, Otto Lowenstein. The senses, Penguin,

3 It is in the secondary areas that the crude sensation gets transformed into a full perception. Perception is the full i.e., meaning full experience of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting or feeling things. Thus, for example, the crude visual sensation of flashing lights and a patchwork of colours becomes a street full of people, or this book open on your lap. The secondary areas are able to transform a sensation into a perception because of the nerve impulses they receive from the association areas of the brain. Perception is based not just on sensation and the information coming from the sense receptors, but also on information already stored in the brain. Modern scientific understanding of perception is able to clarify the meaning of sanna. While some writers interpret sanna as perception, others interpret it as conception, noting, ideation, judgement and discriminating awareness and all of them find justification for their particular view in the ancient texts. Modern science is able to say that sann does indeed mean perception because perception is now known to involve conception, judgement, discrimination and so on, all of which are based in the association areas of the brain. The different interpretations of sanna are simply different aspects of the very complex phenomenon of perception and it turns out that Buddhist psychologists understood perception remarkably well. This brings to our next skandha heading, for there is one important aspect of perception which both Buddhist and Western psychologists treat as a separate mental factor. This is feeling which is covered in the Skandhas by the term Vedana (sensation) 83

4 On this subject Prince Siddhartha says: There are these three feelings, Brethen. What three? Feeling that is pleasant, feeling that is painful, and feeling that is neither pleasant nor painful. Since the Buddhist psychologists believe that the sense stimuli and receptors are atoms, they see the contact between them as atomic. Thus far the theory of Phassa runs closely parallel to the modern view. 5 Accepted opinion in the west until only five hundred years ago. The popular theory in the east was that the base of experience was the physical heart. Prince Siddhartha always resisted indulging in idle speculation, and so simply called that material thing ( yam rupam ). As a result, later Buddhist writers called the mind base mano, not specifying what or where it was. But some Pali commentators reasserted the popular view and identified it with the physical heart, or hrdaya. 6 It is only quite recently that science has finally been able to answer this question and prove beyond doubt that the base of experience is the cerebral hemispheres of the brain. This clears up a good deal of argument and uncertainty in the Ancient Buddhist texts and enables modern Buddhist writers to replace such terms as mind-base and heart with the term brain. 7 This clears up a good deal of argument and uncertainty in the ancient Buddhist texts and enables modern Buddhist psychologists would clearly 5 Samyutta-Nikaya, ch.34. Pali text society P.no The Centrak philosophy of Buddhism, George Allen and Unwin, 1960, P.no AnguttaraNikaya 3. P.no

5 have believed in the brain as the physical mind-base if only they could see it as easily as they could see the eye and ear and nose Science and the Way of Nirvana The way to enlightenment and nirvana is the Noble Eightfold Path, the forth of the Four Noble truths; the most important section f this path is bhavana or meditation. Inevitably, over the last two and a half thousand years, Buddhist meditation has diversified as it has spread from one culture to another; it has become encrusted with ceremony and tradition. As a result, there are today a bewildering array of Buddhist meditations; the proponents of any one of them often lay great stress on minor aspects so as to differentiate their tradition from the others. Despite this variety, most Buddhist schools still succeed in getting people enlightened. In the Abhidhammas, Buddhist writers have made a detailed analysis of meditation into its constituent parts. It is an excellent analysismethodical into its constituent parts. It is an excellent analysis-methodical and based upon direct experience of what is described. Modern science can take this as a basis,can add to and relate it to modern knowledge of the nervous system. This will give the would-be Buddhist mediators an objective criterion against which to judge the value of this or that technique or tradition. In time, it should always give rise to such a specifically Western form of Buddhist meditation as is thoroughly at home in the modern world. 9 8 SamyuttaNikaya 2, P.no.213,Pali Text Society. 9 Murti; T.R.V- The central philosophy of Buddhism, George Allen and Unwin,

6 The first thing a novice meditator has to tackle is the posture. There are a great many of these, a number of them very painful, and some of them always certainly bad for the legs. Different schools prescribe different postures and emphasize seemingly minor points such as the position of the hands. 10 Fortunately, the Japanese scientists have done research on some of the postures used in Buddhist meditation. Out of these, they have found that the full-lotus is the most stable. They have also reached the conclusion that no one posture is of vital importance in meditation. What matters, they have found, is the mental state of the meditator; this view is also found in the Abhidhamma analysis. It appears that any posture which allows the meditator to be both relaxed and alert will do. Scientific findings like these can save western meditators from quite unnecessary bodily contortions and the agony which goes with them. 11 However, application of desensitisation therapy has already provided some practical information. For example, in this therapy, while relaxing, one deliberately concentrates on objects which normally evoke an emotional response. In Buddhist meditation, at the moment, these objects are mostly to arise of their own accord. According to the Abhidhammas, vipassana begins with the Four Foundations of Mindfulness(sati-pattana; Sanskrit-upasthana). Mindfulness(sati; Sanskrit:smiti) is yet another term for attention and it is applied, in the first foundation, to the body, in the second to pain and pleasure, of mind. Taken together, the Four Foundations cover almost 10 Ryutaro Ikegami- Psychological study of zenposture and edited by Yoshiharu Akishige circulated in photocopy P.no Suzuki. T Electroncephalographic study during Zer practice prac. 15 th convention of J-EEG-S, 1966,28, quoted by Akishige.chap-1 86

7 everything which could possibly arise in experience. Thus in vipassana, attention is applied, not to just one thing, out to everything. 12 In Buddhist meditation there is no rigid breath control, as is there in some Hindu meditations. Instead, the Buddhist meditators breathe naturally, using the breath, if at all, simply as something to concentrate on or be mindful of. The Japanese scientists have studied this aspect of Buddhist meditation too and have found that as meditation proceeds, breathing becomes slower and lesser air breathed in, that breathing is done mainly from the abdomen; this is the normal sort of breathing if the body is pleasantly relaxed. What emerges so far, then, is that the first fundamental of Buddhist meditation, is non-reaction. The meditator does not react physically or mentally to any stimulus or, if he does react, he does so slowly and deliberately. All automatic responses are checked. Since emotion plays an important part in giving rise to physical and mental activity, this nonreaction is largely a matter of avoiding emotional responses. The Abhidhamma writers speak of the meditator cultivating non-desire or non-attachment (alobha) and non-ill (adosa; Sanskrit: advesa) and equanimity (upekkha; Sanskrit: upeksa). 13 The early Buddhist and Mahayana views intact describe two stages on the path of wisdom. The early schools such as the Therevada stress the 12 Rune Johanson- The psychology of Nirvana George Allen and Unction and emotion P.No Ryutaro Ikegami- Psychological study of Zen posture Edited by Yoshiharu Akishige circulated in photocopy. 87

8 way to ultimate wisdom which is still within the world of relative truth, while the Mahayana stresses the ultimate wisdom itself. 4.3Buddhism and psychology This Buddhist classification of feelings remains as good as anything yet put forward by modern psychologists. As for the relationship between physical and mental feelings, and how mental feelings arise, this is still a complex subject, full of unsolved problems. It may be that mental feelings are sometimes memories of past physical feelings which have become associated with a particular object. Thus, if a child is bitten by a dog, it feels immediate pain and remembers it in association with the dog. By a process of generalization it may come to associate this remembered pain with all dogs, or even with all animals, and so find all dogs or all animals disagreeable. This may be how all sorts of perceived objects, originally quite neutral, come in time to be associated with varying degrees of pain or pleasure. However, there are almost certainly other processes at work too and it might be better if we leave mental feelings an open subject and move on to the next Skandha. 14 This is Vinnana(Vijnana), which means both experience, and also discrimination, in the sense of cutting up a whole into parts, because it divides up whole experience into six parts. These are visual experience, auditory experience, olfactory, gustatory, body and mental experience. We have already seen how modern brain research bears out this sixfold classification. We have seen how each of the five types of sense perception- visual and auditory and so on- is localized in its particular 14 Dr. W. F Jayasuriya- The psychology and Philosophy of Buddhism Buddhist Missionary Society Publication, Malaysia,

9 secondary area in the brain, and how non-sensory experience-memories, concepts, symbolic thoughts and so on- is based in the association areas. 15 Later Buddhist psychologists retained these basic classification, but distinguished between physical and mental feelings. Physical pain and pleasure (dukkha and sukha) is that which is caused by stimulation of the sense receptors in the skin and other body organs. The mental feelings are either disagreeable (domanassa) or agreeable (somanassa), and are aroused by all sorts of stimuli and perceived objects such as spiders or money or clashing wallpapers, which certainly do not cause actual physical pain or pleasure. Thus, they all include phassa, Manasikara (Sanskrit:Manaskara), and Cetana with which I have already dealt. Manasikara means attention and it seems to be equivalent to the modern use of the word. The part of the brain particularly involved here is the reticular formation. But by far the most important mental factor listed under sankhara is cetana, and it is this term which completes the Buddhist theory of psychology. 16 Cetana is usually translated as volition and is said to be the accumulation, co-ordination and direction of mental activity, leading to the production of vinnatti (Pali) which initiate bodily activity- speech and movement. One of the outstanding achievements of neurobiology has been the discovery that all nervous activity takes the form of uniform electrical impulses areas of depolarization. 17 We shall presently see that modern science is increasingly able to explain psychology in terms of the functioning of the brain. It is now 15 Steven Rose- The conscious Brain, Pelican, Peter Nathan- The Nervous System, Penguin, Peter Nathan- The Nervous System, Penguin,

10 known that contact of a sense stimulus with a sense receptor does not give rise to sense experience immediately. Instead it generates an electrical nerve impulse in the appropriate sensory nerve. This nerve impulse passes along the sensory nerve, up through the thalamus, until it reaches the cortex of the cerebral hemispheres of the brain, arriving at what is known as a primary receptive area. It is that the third part of phassa takes place, a fraction of a second later than the initial contact of stimulus and receptor. When the nerve impulse makes contact with the primary receptive area, it gives rise to sensation. This sensation is, as it were, the raw material of sense experience. It is the crude awareness of light-flashes and sparks- or the crude awareness of sound buzzing, whirring and clicking, and so on for the other senses Translated by Herbert V. Gunther in Philosophy and Psychology in the Abhidhamma, Shambhala, Berkely,