I think as soon as we hear religious philosophy – I’ll add the word philosophy because it makes it more serious – as soon as we hear religious ideas, it’s so deeply ingrained in us to assume that they can’t be proved. That’s it, we assume that, it’s such a total given. Because why? Because we assume religious ideas come from a creator, they come from on high.
I always quote this, and it’s a really good point. Years ago in New Zealand, a fellow in a class who happened to be a scientist asked a question – and I always say this, it’s very funny – that I’ve never had anyone ask before or since. It’s a really brilliant point. He said, “Who revealed all these teachings to the Buddha?”
It’s a perfect question, because it proves that we assume that religion asserts a creator. The major religions we all talk about – the big ones that we all know about – assert a creator, right, don’t they?
I don’t know about Australian Aboriginals – they’ve got an unusual view, they’ve been around for forty thousand years, their view of the world is so abstract, I don’t understand it, maybe they assert a creator, I don’t know – but certainly we know Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity all assert a boss, a person who is the source. Even the Hindus who talk about karma still assert some energy called the source, which, you know, they call “God.”
They also all assert some essential energy within us – if you’re human, at least – that they call a “spirit” or a “soul” or some intrinsic kind of self. The Greeks call it an “essence” or something.
The Buddha doesn’t assert these. This is not just some interesting point where he’s being kind of argumentative: “Oh, there’s no creator.” He’s not being a communist or anything!
This is the idea we have about religion – that it’s totally coming from on high – which is why that fellow asked that question: who revealed? It blew my mind hearing that, because I’d been a Buddhist for many years and I’d forgotten about that concept.
Of course, if it’s revelation – if it’s revealed to you – it assumes you have to be told it to know it, but the Buddha doesn’t talk this way.
There is a level in Buddhist practice when you’re really an advanced practitioner and you’ve accessed more subtle levels of your mind using the Buddhist techniques, when you can also access more powerful energy that we can’t necessarily see with our eyes – that’s also possible.
You could have a dream in which Buddha might talk to you – that’s possible – or your lama, let’s say. That could be called “revelation.” But in general, the major points about who we are, where we come from, the nature of the universe, from the Buddhist perspective, it’s all natural law.
So when I said to him, in answer, “Would you ask Einstein who revealed the teachings about, let’s say, relativity to him?” of course we all laughed because we know we wouldn’t.
This is the point, even though we say it all the time and we talk about it, you read about it: Buddha’s more like a scientist – he has a scientific approach. But we kind of laugh, you know? It’s like, “Oh yeah, come on, who are you trying to kid?”
Because the second we hear about mind not being physical, for example, or as soon as we hear that Buddha asserts previous lifetimes and future lifetimes, we automatically assume it can’t be proven. It’s very deep in us: we automatically assume that these are beliefs, that someone made it all up, and you have to believe it, you can’t possibly prove it.
So, if it’s not from revelation – if he wasn’t sitting there and had a dream or a vision about what the mind is, in other words – where did he get these ideas from? It’s a really good point. We should ask that question, we should ask that question: where did the information come from?
Well, you know, if you even just read a book about cooking – some bloke writes a cookbook – the first assumption is that those recipes came from his own experience. He might have learned them, but he’s also cooked them: he’s proven them, and he knows they’re true.
Look at the amount of work a person does just to write a cookbook, to make sure the recipes are correct: you probably try them twenty-seven times. You would never just make up a recipe if you had a dream about a recipe, and chuck it in a book without testing it. People would laugh at you because we admire the scientific approach – and cooking takes the scientific approach.
But when it comes to religion, spiritual, we don’t think that way. It seems weird to think that you can prove it, you know? And the fact is if you posit a creator, you cannot prove it, because if you can prove that God is right, then you are also God, and you cannot say that if you’re Christian – you just can’t, it’s not possible. That would be the worst, the worst, the worst thing to say.
Buddha doesn’t talk like that. So where did the information about impermanence, karma, the mind, bodhichitta, emptiness and all the rest come from? Buddha’s own experience, his own observation – just like Einstein, just like the cook.
Of course, what we have to understand here is that Buddha asserts much subtler levels of mind that are capable, therefore, of cognizing much subtler phenomena, such as the past, the future, the minds of others, etc. He, just like Einstein, used his own intelligence and observed the way things are, then presented what he found to be true, presented his methodology and said, “Over to you now to prove it to be true.” Buddha, like Einstein, is talking about natural law – it’s not Buddha’s law, Einstein’s law.
In Christianity, they talk about God’s law – God, the boss, made it up. I’m not being critical: if you have faith in a creator, you’ll live a good life, I’m not complaining.
But what Buddha presents as reality all comes from Buddha’s own direct experience, his own observation, like the contents of the cookbook. And he shows us how to see this reality for ourselves.
And, of course, unlike reality about cakes or relativity, seeing the reality that Buddha posits doesn’t just make us clever; it frees us from suffering and its causes. Wow!