Last year, I read the book Why Buddhism is true, by Robert Wright. The author revaluated Buddha’s teachings in the scope of modern psychology (“Modern Psychology” refers to psychology embraced a scientific method and advancing as a science, which started from mid 19th Century) and his findings, I have to say, are astounding. After taking some lectures online given by the author, I get a deeper understanding of this book. In May, I will venture to write something on Buddhism, and my writings on psychology are to be devoted to evidences supporting teachings from Buddhism.

About Buddhism and its supporting evidences from psychology involved in my later writings, two things I want to highlight in the first place: first, I am to talk about “Secular” Buddhism that has little to do with religion; second, scientific researches are not all mighty.

Buddhism: “Secular” versus “Religious”

Religious Buddhism came to China about Western and Eastern Han Dynasties and its development peaked in Tang Dynasty when the well-known East Asian school of Buddhism—Zen Buddhism(禅宗)—was born in our land. From our language, we can still see the great influences in our culture brought by Zen: we say “a fraction of a second”, “一刹那” or “一弹指”; we describe “being in the state of enlightenment” as “醍醐灌顶”; “眼花缭乱” means “being dazzled or something dazzling”. Those words are all derived from Chinese translations of Buddhism writings.

We speak in Zen terms everyday, whereas hardly do we know or examine the Buddha’s teachings. The primary reason, my point view only, is that Zen Buddhism in China is titled “religious” and anything “religious” does not have a huge market whether in ancient or modern China. We intuitively think that something “religious” refers to the unrealistic, unfathomable, mystic which can not be objectively speculated and unworthy of studying.

  Robert Wright in his lecture quoted William James’ argument on religion and pointed out that all religions believe in an unforeseen order. If we take away the “unseen order”—in Buddhism, they’re Reincarnation and Six Divisions in the Wheel of Karma(转世和六道轮回), what Buddha had said is mere theories on humanity and truths that can be objectively validated in one way or another like what scientists do to their theories. My later writings are to talk about “Secular” Buddhism which does not touch the “unforeseen order” either.

Science is a tool not God

My later writings on psychology will introduce you to some researches involved in the process of validating the Buddha’s teachings. When I read researches and experiments in the realm of psychology, I used to have these tempting thoughts as follows:

  (1) Well, this evidence is not that convincing. I think this experiment could be interpreted this way or that way…

  (2) In real life, I don’t think the conclusion would stand. I would rather choose…

I have to confess that experiments in psychology did not always give me a satisfying answer. However, I was totally wrong, for science is a tool not God; it cannot give us the luxury of knowing for certain and thinking in probability is important. All the present conclusions and theories in all fields, especially in social sciences like psychology, are open to different interpretations, have the likelihood of being false, and describe a general pattern that might be incompatible with individual choices. This ambiguity really makes social sciences intriguing and fascinating.