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Many people, both recently and at the turn-of-the-century, jumped at this passage as confirmation that ancient Buddhist wisdom is validated by modern science. In the 1890's, Anagarika Dharmapala, D. T. Suzuki, Paul Cams, even Vedantists like Vivekananda, generally waxed enthusiastic about the compatibility of Eastern spirituality and Western science. They saw in passages like the Kalama Sutta proof positive that the Buddha was imbued with the scientific outlook. "Well, look at this," they said. "This is eminently scientific. Buddhism is just the scientific mind of skeptical inquiry. Know it for yourself; conduct experiments, and confirm them through 'intersubjective testability.' I do it; you do it. Anyone can do it and obtain the same results. Good, we know for ourselves; there is no speculation involved; we know something is true not because 'My teacher said,' or even 'Einstein said'— all of this is contained within an eminently empirical model."
I, too, accepted this interpretation for a while. Naturally, one finds it quite attractive, since science virtually is our "god," our highest authority, these days. It is quite enticing to think that Buddhism and science are identical; but also misleading. As I continued my research, I came upon some contemporary Buddhist teachers who were critical of equating the Buddha's teachings with modern science. Master Hsuan Hua, from the Mahayana tradition, and Wapola Rahula, a Theravada scholar-monk, for example, both threw cold water on this notion. Master Hua said, "Within the limited world of the relative, that is where science is. It's not an absolute Dharma. Science absolutely cannot bring true and ultimate happiness to people, neither spiritually nor materially." Strong criticism that places science as a discipline stuck in relative truths, and as a way of life, unsatisfactory. In another essay, he wrote:
"Look at modern science. Military weapons are modernized every day and more and more novel every month. Although we call this progress, it's nothing more than progressive cruelty. Science takes human life as an experiment, as child's play, as it fulfills its desires through force and oppression."
Such outspoken criticism goes to the heart of our infatuation with the "miracles" of science. At best, our love affair with modern science and technology has proved bittersweet. For every gain, comes a corresponding loss; every "cure" seems to mask or unleash manifold other disasters. For example, DDT or PCB's, once heralded as wonder chemicals, turned out to be ecological and medical disasters. And new potential nightmares lie hidden beneath the rosy promises of genetically-engineered life.
When you look at some of the research that is now being conducted—cloning, genetically-programmed foods, and the awful prospects that biochemical weapons pose to life, for example, in developing resistant strains of anthrax and smallpox with which to wipe out entire countries—Master Hua's words have an unfortunately all-too-true ring to them.
In 1989, Venerable Walpola Rahula, a Theravadan monk from Sri Lanka, warned that daily life is being permeated by science. He cautioned, "We have almost become slaves of science and technology; soon we shall be worshipping it." This was well into the final decades of the twentieth century when many people were already worshipping science. The Venerable monk observed, "Early symptoms are that they tend to seek support from science to prove the validity of our religions."
Huston Smith, the eminent scholar on the world's religions, recently made a similar point in an interview: that the failure of modern religions in the West specifically roots to their accommodation to culture, rather than exerting a countervailing influence on culture. Smith specifically saw such cooption taking place in terms of material acquisition and bowing to scientific thought. Rahula Walpola elaborated on this point: "We justify them [i.e. religions] and make them modern, up-to-date, respectable, and accessible. Although this is somewhat well-intentioned, it is ill-advised. While there are some similarities and parallel truths, such as the nature of the atom, the relativity of time and space, or the quantum view of the interdependent, interrelated whole, all these things were developed by insight and purified by meditation." Dharma, or abiding spiritual truths, were discovered without the help of any external instrument.
Rahula concluded, "It is fruitless, meaningless to seek support from science to prove religious truth. It is incongruous and preposterous to depend on changing scientific concepts to prove and support perennial religious truths." Moreover, he said, "Science is interested in the precise analysis and study of the material world, and it has no heart. It knows nothing about love or compassion or righteousness or purity of mind. It doesn't know the inner world of humankind. It only knows the external, material world that surrounds us."
I want to give rather full quotes for you because this monk's viewpoint is both powerful and rather unconventional, especially in regard to the facile linking of Buddhism and science that seems so ubiquitous these days in the West. Rahula emphasized, "On the contrary, religion, particularly Buddhism, aims at the discovery and the study of humankind's inner world: ethical, spiritual, psychological, and intellectual. Buddhism is a spiritual and psychological discipline that deals with humanity in total. It is a way of life. It is a path to follow and practice. It teaches man how to develop his moral and ethical character, which in Sanskrit is sila, and to cultivate his mind, samadhi, and to realize the ultimate truth, prajna wisdom, Nirvana."
When I came upon these two comments, I had to pause, because both monks came out of the Asian tradition, and in many ways predate the "Westernization" of Buddhism. Unlike Suzuki and Carus, heavily Westernized people who had been promoting a very strong link between Buddhism and science, Masters Hua and Walpola emerged from a monastic discipline and a more traditional understanding that was less enamored of modern science and more critical of Western philosophy.
So, I started to reexamine this passage that I have quoted from the Kalamas: "When you know for yourselves what is wholesome and unwholesome..." This, I believe, holds the key to understanding the difference between Buddhism and modern science. The passage needs to be understood within a specific context of moral inquiry, and not simply as a nod to Western empiricism. This "knowing for yourself " locates knowledge ('scientia') firmly within the moral sphere, both in its aims and its outcomes. It is using a meditative form of inquiry to penetrate the ultimate nature of reality. It implies a concept quite foreign to modern science: that the knower and what is known, the subject and object, fact and value, are not merely nondual, but that knowledge itself is inescapably influenced by our moral and ethical being. Interestingly, this is exactly what Suzuki said was lacking in modern science—a position he came to over time.
When he first came to the West as a missionary for Buddhism, Suzuki extolled upon the remarkable resonance between Buddhism and Western science. By the 1950's and towards the end of his life, however, that enthusiasm for identifying Buddhism with modern science waned. He came to doubt the sufficiency of a religion based on science, and even saw the need for religion to critique science. In 1959, Suzuki partially repudiated his early modernist agreement with Carus and Western Buddhists that "religion must stand on scientific grounds... that Christianity was based too much on mythology."
Suzuki reflected, "If it were possible for me to talk with them now, I would tell them that my ideas have changed from theirs somewhat. I now think that a religion based solely on science is not enough. There are certain 'mythological' elements in every one of us, which cannot be altogether lost in favor of science. This is a conviction I have come to."
Suzuki was not alone. The negative effects of two World Wars, both frightening examples of the ill-fated marriage of scientific technology and human ignorance, did much to damper enthusiasm and optimism for science as a panacea for human problems. Chemical and biological warfare, nuclear bombs, environmental pollution, along with experiments on human embryos and the burgeoning spectre of genetically engineered life—all shatter illusions that science per se spells progress or generates wisdom and ethical imperatives. Public concern over the dubious relationship of science to social benefits and human values if anything seems to be growing. In sum, doubts that would never have troubled Paul Cams' infatuation with science have now become commonplace: Is science sufficient for describing reality? Is it capable of meeting human needs?
This idea: that the very fabric of modern science is lacking this grounding in the moral sphere, and as a result its discoveries and uses are incomplete and often deleterious, should not surprise a Buddhist. For it is here that the marriage between Buddhism and science begins to unravel, and where the comparison breaks down. You will notice that throughout the East Asian traditions there exists what I call a rather distinctive epistemological model or way of knowing; a theme that repeats itself again and again. In Sanskrit it's called sila, samadhi, and prajna (morality, concentration, wisdom). The ethical component cannot be overemphasized. For, in order to see things as they are, there has to be this purification of the mind—a rectification on the part of the beholder. Another text, The Visuddhi Magga, ("The Path of Purification"), an early Buddhist manual from the fourth century, describes the Buddha's science of inquiry as a three-step path: virtue, meditation, and then insight into the nature of all things as they really are.
This approach presents something quite different from the premises and procedures of modern science. Any of you students or faculty here from Stanford or U.C. Berkeley, I doubt you will have encountered this ancient methodology as part of your scientific training-even in the History of Science. When you go into your science classes nobody says, "You will need a protractor, an advance-function calculator, a computer, and of course be expected to sign up for the lab section on virtue and meditation, prior to writing up your insights." These are not the standard laboratory equipment of a modern-day scientist. And yet, without these, in the Eastern spiritual and philosophical sense, you cannot have science. This is "science" without a firm foundation. This formula is not unique to Buddhism; it appears throughout the Eastern traditions: Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism. Taoism, for example, speaks about cultivating the mind (xin), and regards the mind as a repository of all perceptions and knowledge. It rules the body. It is spiritual. And like a divinity, it will abide only where all is clean. This knowledge, this truth can only abide where the mind is made clean—meaning, one must be morally sound and grounded. It is interesting that these ancient wisdom traditions considered moral purity as the absolute prerequisite of true knowledge, and that we today regard it as immaterial, if not downright irrelevant.