Buddhism & science

[1] Mahāvagga, i. 6, and many other passages.

[2] Mahāvagga, i. 21.

[3] Majjhima Nikāya, Sutta 140.

[4] Majjhima Nikāya, Sutta 44.

[5] Majjhima Nikāya, Sutta 38.

[6] “Differentiate itself” is meant to equate samucchissatha, a word for which it is difficult to find an adequate equivalent. It signifies the self-integration of the new being simultaneously with its severance from the maternal organism.

[7] Majjhima Nikāya, Sutta 38.

[8] Buddhism in Translations, by H. C. Warren, p. 239.

[9] Pāḷi Text, P.T.S. edition, p. 71.

[10] These two words are not, as most western scholars aver, altogether synonymous, for “Dhamma” embraces everything—actual as well as re-actual processes. When, on the other hand, it is desired particularly to specify the re-actual processes, the word “Sankhāra” serves the purpose. The stereotyped formula: “All Sankhāras are transient; all Sankhāras are painful; all Dhammas are non-self,” is not based upon any caprice nor yet upon metrical considerations (as Oldenburg asserts in his Buddha, 1897 edition, p. 291), for the prose versions render the three phrases in exactly the same form, as may be seen by a reference to the Majjhima Nikāya, Sutta 35. On the contrary, the formula is founded upon a clearly understood distinction between Sankhāra and Dhamma. The native scholars express this distinction by saying that the Dhammas take in, embrace, the element of Nibbāna. Which means nothing more than that they refer to actual processes, to living beings. Western scholars would do well to sit at the feet of the native scholars somewhat more than they at present incline to do. Many a misconception might thereby be removed, or prevented from ever arising, indeed. An admonition such as this is needed in every nook and corner of our literature upon Buddhism.

[11] Majjhima Nikāya, Sutta 37.

[12] In Pāḷi, paṭiccasamuppāda, which may be rendered as “The together-arising in dependence upon.”

[13] Cf. Essay XI.

[14] The texts give the true meaning of Jāti with sufficient frequency, as, for instance, in the ninth Sutta of the Majjhima Nikāya, as follows:—

“Khandhānaŋ pātubhāvo, āyatanānaŋ paṭilābho, ayaŋ vuccat’ āvuso jāti.” Which means: “The coming into manifestation of the Khandhas (that is, the arising anew of corporeality, sensations, perceptions, discriminations, and cognition-acts, such as at every moment are exhibited in every individual combustion process, every alimentation process), the ever repeated seizing of the Ayatanas (that is, of the objects of sense, or of that, supported by which—in the objective as in the subjective sense—the senses are able to come into activity),—this, friend, is called birth.”

I embrace the opportunity of calling attention to the equally misleading rendering of Nāma-rūpa by “name and form.” The native pandits laugh at such a rendering. Here Nāma is “that which bends” (nāmeti), i.e. that which conglobates the material (rūpa) into that specific form through which even it becomes an individual. It is not merely name, but the totality precisely of what most is worth naming. As a matter of fact, the pandits of Ceylon explain it as the evolutional form of Viññāṇa.

In harmony with this, in the above cited Sammādiṭṭhi Sutta, Sāriputta gives the following explanation: “Sensation, perception, volition, thought-contact, cogitation, this is called nāma.” And in the Milinda Pañha it is said: “What is gross, that is rūpa; what is of fine, mind-like constitution, that is nāma.” In the Abhidhamma exegesis, the so-called Nāma-series is directly identified with Viññāṇa.

[15] Samyutta Nikāya, ii. 15, 3.

[16] When a modern writer, like T. Loeb in his Dynamik der Lebenserscheinungen, declares living beings to be machines “which consist essentially of colloidal matter possessing the property of automatic alimentation and reproduction,” the statement has about as much value as if one should think to explain the arc-light as something that consists essentially of a stick of carbon possessing the property of automatically lighting itself every evening and burning throughout the night.

[17] Cf. Essay V., “The Teaching of Kamma.”

[18] E. Mach, Erkenntnis und Irrtum.

[19] Thus, Hering writes in Das Gedächtniss als Funktion der belebten Materie: “The central sections of the nervous system must retain some memory of that which they formerly have done.... In like manner the motor system must possess memory, albeit unknown to us it is true.” Further on he says: “The reappearance in the daughter organism of the characteristics of the mother organism is a reproduction on the matter side, of such a process as the former already once before has shared in, if only as germ in the ovary, which process it remembers, inasmuch as to like stimuli it reacts exactly as that organism of which it once formed a part”; from which the fact of the hereditary transmission of characteristic qualities would work out as a specimen merely of the “memory of unconscious matter.” Hering adds: “Thus every organic being of the present day stands before us ultimately as a product of the unconscious memory of organized matter.”

All such ideas are nothing but ingenious paraphrases of actuality; and in the last analysis amount to nothing but an audacious juggle with the word memory. And when it is further said: “If memory be attributed to the species the same as to the individual, instinct immediately becomes comprehensible”; and in conclusion: “The conscious memory of man is extinguished at death, but the unconscious memory of nature is indestructible,” I can only call this dealing in poetry, not science, a possibility only to be arrived at by the dis-actualizing of actuality. In reality memory exists solely where something is remembered, just as a flame exists there only where it is burning. Of this kind of memory, however, but one example is to be found in all the world—I myself! It is just this lack of the sense of actuality—as displayed in physics—which to such a large extent constitutes the greatness of science, while it also no less constitutes its weakness, as in biology. E. Mach in his Erkenntnis und Irrtum, p. 49, expresses himself to the selfsame effect: “Heredity, instinct, may then be depicted as memory stretching out beyond the individual,” a sentence that possesses about as much content of actuality as the “songs unsung” of a dead poet.

[20] Cf. R. Semon, Die Mneme.

[21] “They (the materialists) teach that in the central nervous system also all is only the oscillation of atoms, only reflex motion, only mechanics. In one part of the brain only, there in the grey substance of a portion of the cerebral cortex, something takes place which as yet we are unable to explain. But it is only a question of time. Sooner or later it will certainly be demonstrated that this also is nothing but mechanics, nothing more than a complicated species of reflex action” (Bunge, Physiologie, i. p. 164).

[22] “The practice of treating the unanalysed I-complex as an indivisible unity frequently finds scientific expression in singular fashion. First of all, the nervous system is set apart from the body as being the seat of sensation. In the nervous system, again, the brain is picked out as likeliest to be such a seat. And, finally, in order to save the supposed psychic unity, search is made in the brain for a point as the seat of the soul. Views so crude as these, however, are but ill adapted to indicate beforehand even in roughest outline the path of future investigation as to the connection between the physical and the psychical.” Comparison should also be made with the introductory remarks to the chapter on “Der Sitz des Bewusstseins” in Bunge’s Physiologie.

[23] Majjhima Nikāya, Sutta 28.

[24] Cf. Essay VII.

[25] Cf. Essay V., the citation from the Majjhima Nikāya, Sutta 38.

[26] Origin of Species, p. 212. John Murray, London, 1884.

[27] Physiologie, i. p. 402.

[28] Origin of Species, p. 259. John Murray, London, 1884.

[29] Ibid. p. 297.

[30] Origin of Species, p. 308.

[31] Bunge’s Physiologie.

[32] Weismann’s Leben und Tod.

[33] G. v. Bunge, Physiologie, i. p. 361.

[34] Cf. Essay IX.

[35] Cf. Essay V., remarks on the causal sequence.

[36] It is to this effect that E. Mach expresses himself on the subject of the concept in various passages in his works—for example, in the Wärmelehre and Erkenntnis und Irrtum. Ostwald defines the concept “as a rule in accordance with which we take note of definite characteristics of the phenomenon” (Naturphilosophie).

[37] For a correct appreciation of the law of the conservation of energy and the value of scientific laws and data in general, one should read among others Poincaré’s two works: The Value of Science, and Science and Hypothesis.

[38] Cf. Foreword to E. Mach’s Analyse der Sinnesempfindungen.

[39] E. Mach’s Analyse der Sinnesempfindungen, p. 4.

[40] Analyse der Empfindungen, page 15.

[41] Analyse der Empfindungen, p. 20.

[42] Ibid.

[43] Positivism itself calls attention to this quality of non-actuality in its system. In the Foreword to the second volume of R. Avenarius’s Kritik der reinen Erfahrung, J. Petzold says, “Modern psychology is ... characterized by the elimination from the psychic machinery of every spring of activity.” Here it is as with Roland’s mare in Chamisso’s poem: Perfect—but dead!