The Dalai Lama on Meditation versus Science

I recently completed "The Universe in a Single Atom" (audio or print) by the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama compares and contrasts the scientific tradition with the Buddhist tradition. Obviously, the DL has some unique views on this. I should mention I "read" this book via an audiobook (from Audible). The reader is Richard Gere. My view is that probably sold a lot more copies, but wasn't a good thing for the listener. You have to imagine Richard Gere whispering in your ear in his more urgent and earnest tones about something the wants you to realize he cares about deeply and that he obviously considers a great work. For me...just a distraction. Anyway, I finally got past that and it was well worth it.

Let's start with the basics: If you're going to learn about Buddhism, you might as well learn about it from the Dali Lama. Buddhism is far more investigative than I’d realized. Much is through contemplation rather than what Westerners think of as experimentation, of course, but exceedingly rigorous. (More on this in a future post.) It’s also non-theistic. I grew up with friends who lived in Ashrams, so I’d heard murmurs of Buddhism's different view of God relative to other religions, but it's more intense than I realized. I suppose deep down, I filtered these rumors through the view that being theistic in some fairly fundamental sense is pretty much the definition of a religion. It's not. The DL also expressed a massively different view of Karma than usually discussed in the West. In the West, Karma is usually described as a sort of metaphysical justice. The DL has clearly heard this in the way we Westerners talk about Karma, so he spends a bit of time on how it’s off-base. Short story: It's more a propensity for action (that leads to predictable results) than some sort of metaphysical justice. And you know what? That view ties much more directly to evolution, nature, nurture, and science.

Let's go further on the relationship to evolution. The DL isn’t too keen on the whole “random variations lead to evolution” argument. He finds the “random” part to be, hmm, I think he says “unsatisfying.” He's certainly not an intelligent design advocate, but something more than survival of the fittest. He actually takes a very effective swipe at the way Darwin/evolution explain altruism. He’s knows that evoluation-minded people (and psychological hedonists in general) reinterpret apparent altruism as a just another flavor of survival or self-interest. No surprise. But then he makes a humble but biting comment about how his “understanding of science is that it attempts to build theories from data rather than adjusting the data to fit the theory.” Ouch. He also finds Darwin circular because evolution defines those species which survive as, therefore, the species best able to compete. And therefore those best able to compete are the ones that survive. He’s got a theory that something like compassion might actually be an additional driver for evolution, but doesn’t flush it out much. The key is that this attempt to embrace compassion is not some soft, squishy, nice-nice religious leader saying "can't we all just get along." No, it's a real criticism of current thinking based on attacking the core of the scientific method. Worth getting his view.

[Full disclosure: I am NOT getting kickbacks from Audible, Amazon, or any other vendors when I provide a link to something I mention. However, this may change in the future.]