Mahendra's Musings - Part 3

Mahendra’s musings - Part 3.

“We all like explanations and we all look for answers”

We all want answers. Why? How? When we were kids, simple explanations would do. Most of these appeared plausible to us. “Why should I wash my hands before eating?” Because you may swallow a bug and become ill. “What is a bug?” It is a tiny creature so tiny that you cannot see it but it makes you ill when it enters your body. And away you run, fully satisfied and perfectly happy to wash your hands!

As you grow older, you want a bit more. You don’t really ask for evidence but you come close to it. Why should I study so much? Because if you don’t study and gain knowledge, you won’t be able to answer the questions in the examination paper. But Tom doesn’t study that much and he passes exams. That is because Tom has above average memory power but if you look at all your friends who do well, you will find that most of the ones who pass have studied very hard. A touch of probability and statistics!

And so it was with our Ancestors. What is thunder? What is lightning? Why is the sea so rough? What is a tornado and why do we get them? The scientific knowledge we now have was non-existent at that time. An easy explanation was to attribute these to Supernatural forces. Almost every ancient civilisation believed in some form of God or Gods. And He had to be powerful and strong to do all the things he did. Bacteria and other microorganisms were unknown and diseases were thought to be caused by demons; the germ theory of disease is very recent in human history. It was therefore perfectly natural to invent Gods of all kinds to explain things. And as God was “good”, the Devil had to be invented to explain Evil. In a way, it is surprising that even now, people do not question the explanations offered for some phenomena as the explanation often invokes something which in turn requires a further explanation. How did the Solar system start? It was created by God. I see, where did God come from then? That does not seem to matter for a lot of people. The Greeks believed that the sky containing the stars and Earth was held up by Atlas on his shoulders. This was a punishment given to him by Zeus for siding with the Titans. But who holds up Atlas? And how was the sky held up before Atlas arrived on the scene? Ancient Chinese and Hindus said that the Earth was held up by 4 elephants and the elephants stood on a giant tortoise. At this point, the obvious question should be what is the tortoise sitting on? But for some strange reason, this was apparently unquestioned, although some records state that this question was indeed asked, with the response that it is “turtles all the way down”.

We now try to answer questions by means of the scientific method. This implies forming a theory (hypothesis) and then seeking evidence to support it. If the evidence is strong, then we accept it. If the evidence does not support it, we reject it or if the evidence is equivocal, we remain open minded till further evidence becomes available. This I believe is the only logical and sensible way to come to conclusions.

I believe in Evolution and the evidence for it is so strong that it is no longer a theory but a fact. Natural selection, random mutations and survival of the fittest is the basis of Evolution. But how does morality fit into this model? In a geophysical system, it is not easy to see a reason for any sort of morality to exist. “Good” and “bad” are moral constructs by Humans, or are they? Do animals display behaviour of a moral kind? Some species appear to do so as shown through ingenious experiments. There is a chimp (A) in a cage with another cage next to it containing another chimp(B). When A is offered a berry of a certain kind, he accepts it. He then sees B being offered a more attractive berry. When he is now offered the original berry, he is angry and throws it at the person offering it. When offered the more attractive berry, he readily accepts it. In the next experiment, a mouse in a cage is offered an item of food. Every time he accepts it he is offered more food, but this time of 2 kinds of equal attraction. If he accepts item A from the mix of A and B, the mouse next door is also offered food. If he picks up B, the other mouse is not offered anything and the mouse can see this happening. With repeated offerings, he chooses to pick A rather than B. When the experiment is repeated with item B being the one where the neighbour is offered, he now picks B. In some way, the mouse appears to get more satisfaction when his neighbour also gets the berry. This is quite extraordinary.

As already touched upon, we know that evolution occurs through two main strategies. Firstly through Random mutations which produce variations in a species and we now know that epigenetic mechanisms (influencing genes through environmental changes) and secondly, through natural selection which ensures the survival of the fittest. In this way, new species emerge and inefficient ones tail off and disappear. It is estimated that only 4% of all known species on Earth have persisted to this day.

Survival of the fittest (of genes) has been named “The selfish gene” by Richard Dawkins. It must be emphasised that only the gene is selfish in seeking survival at any cost. When it comes to animals that have evolved to be more complex, it appears that in an almost paradoxical way, they must be less selfish in the interests of the whole group of species. For example, by social strategies such as cooperation, altruism, not only the species but individuals within it have greater chances of survival. Thus began Tribes and Communities. But in order to have robust methods of cooperative behaviour extending to all members within a community, fresh strategies were required. One method is through punishment for deviations from accepted behaviour so that a deterrent is thereby introduced. The more powerful and “self-policing” method could be by inventing Religion. Fear of being “caught” with dire consequences by a Power which although unseen is able to see, would be a powerful incentive to toe the line. In order for this to be most effective, a view that death is not the end and that life continues in some form had to be introduced so that there is no escape from punishment with death. This would help in providing a more suitable environment for the species to survive. But as evolution progressed, Man became more and more questioning and demanded proof before accepting such concepts. But Religion has a powerful hold on people as humans are frail at times of stress and look for support to help them through these periods. Belief in an all-loving God would supply this comfort. The concept of an all-loving merciful God is very comforting, but only if you are willing to truly believe it and accept it. I compare this to a man undertaking an arduous journey of several hundred miles through a totally unpopulated desert in a car which he knows is roadworthy and equipped with safety measures and reserves. He is still a bit anxious about the possibility that things may go wrong. But if he is told that there will be a helicopter accompanying him throughout the journey hovering above him although he cannot see it, but will come to his rescue immediately if he gets into trouble, he will feel much more relaxed and happy, but only if believes it. It does not matter if a helicopter is there or not. What matters is his belief that it is there, his faith in other words. In the case of the God theory when situations do arise where the “helicopter” fails to turn up, believers still say that “God is there and although it appears as if he did not care for me, He has a plan which will be for my benefit as I know he loves me. “I don’t see his plan right now, but I know I shall be fine in the end”. This explains why two mothers of equal good moral standing and behaviour who pray to God to save their respective child affected by a disease with a high mortality, get two opposite results and they are still happy. One child lives and the mother thanks God profusely for his kindness but quite amazingly, the mother of the child who died doesn’t get angry with God for not listening to her but says that God always knows best. She is happy because she is convinced that her little daughter is in Heaven in the arms of the loving God and that someday in the future, she will be reunited with her daughter. You can’t lose!

On the other hand, some mothers may say that they cannot accept that such a loving God exists after this experience and reject belief in a God.

There is another aspect to Religion. Those who are in the Organisational side of them wield immense power. The Catholic Church is one of the richest and most powerful organisations in the World. They are financially very well off and have the power to interfere and intervene in politics, government policy, and have done so many times.

The other aspect of religious belief is that ruthless politicians will exploit religion for their own ends. They may not have a personal belief in religion although they will portray themselves as believers in order to pursue their nefarious goals. The use of Religion as a Trojan Horse fills pages and pages of human history.

The final and most dangerous aspect is how Religion is interpreted by the followers. A literal interpretation of the Quran and Old Testament has led to Wars and human misery of terrible proportions. A belief that the End justifies the means is dangerous. For Evangelists, evangelism is the desirable end and hence whatever means used in its pursuit is perfectly acceptable. The suicide bomber could be one who genuinely believes that he is doing something good in the eyes of his God and appears to be totally unaffected by the slaughter of innocents it involves. He may also be motivated by the promise of an afterlife filled with mouth-watering comforts.

Religion thus can be a force for good but it could also be one of the most damaging and dangerous driving forces.

Mahendra’s musings- Part 2

Mahendra’s musings

So who are we? We are descendants of apes with a history of at least 200,000 years going back to an origin in Ethiopia.  The latest finding in Morocco takes us further back to at least 300,000 years. Fossil evidence leaves no room for doubt at all that what we now know as Human or Homo Sapiens Sapiens did not exist in the early stages of the formation of Planet Earth Millions of years ago. It is therefore abundantly clear that the traditional Christian teaching of Creation and the story of Adam and Eve cannot be true. However, the Big Bang theory which is now accepted is also totally baffling and incomprehensible to me. How can a massive Universe originate from something which was trillions upon trillions of times smaller than an atom? All this first happened in a mere fraction of a second and then expanded hugely and continues to expand to form our massive Universe. By “thinking” and reflecting, I just cannot get my head around it and is reduced to accepting it on the basis that there is supposed to be good mathematical proof for it. What about quantum mechanics? A particle being in two places at the same time (superposition), particles light years apart influencing each other simultaneously (quantum entanglement). No wonder people are prepared to accept supernatural beliefs on the basis that the fact that we cannot understand it is not proof against it. But one must be careful in not extending this argument superficially. The fact that we cannot prove that a Hamburger is circulating around the Moon does not mean that we cannot discard such a ridiculous notion. In fact the more difficult it is to disprove something; the more likely it is not to be true.

The big question for me is what are we really? We know that all matter, including living matter is constantly changing and a permanent entity of anything is not possible, unless an entity is defined as a continually changing one, so that “what is now is what changed from what was before” and “what will be is what is now changed into what it will be”. It is an entity in that there are separate entities (like evanescent but separate Tom, Dick and Harry) but each one is impermanent and not unique. It could be looked upon as a collection of changing entities.

It appears to me that each person has a physical component, i.e., the body, and something on top of that which we could call the mind or consciousness. I find it difficult to accept that the mind or consciousness does not need or does not function through, a physical basis, i.e., the brain. With my medical and neurological background, I have witnessed people with cerebral damage through disease or trauma, change virtually completely in personality and behaviour, depending on the area and extent and nature of the damage. Either our consciousness or “mind” expresses through the brain or damage to the brain also damages the mind (consciousness), whatever it is!

If we are all a bundle of ever changing particles and mind, what is our place in the Universe as a whole and more specifically within the animal kingdom? Why do we reflect and act introspectively and if so, is it just us humans, or is this behaviour more widespread? Do animals think? Have they got self-awareness? Do they possess consciousness? Do they exhibit moral behaviour?

As we progress from birth to death, we strive to be free from painful and unhappy experiences and be filled with pleasant and happy experiences. But is this just a change within a spectrum of awareness of what is pleasant or what is unpleasant? Can we “feel” happy if we have never felt what it is like to be unhappy? In other words, we can only actively feel unhappy or happy, just at the time when our experiential state changes, and is not lasting? Are painful and unhappy experiences a necessary evil to being able to experience the opposite? What sort of experience will it be to be neither happy nor unhappy? Is this what we call contentment? The analogy is the way we feel temperature. If we enter a room which is at a much lower temperature than the one we were before we entered the room, the room will feel hot. On the other hand, if the temperature of the first room was much lower, we will feel warm or hot. After some time, a new equilibrium may be reached where you are neither hot nor cold. In other words, we respond more to change than to absolutes.

Buddhism teaches us, that it is impossible for a human being not to experience sadness of some kind or other in his/her lifetime. The term “Dukkha” is often translated as “suffering” which is really inaccurate and misleading. When we say that our existence can never be free from “dukkha”, the reference is to the fact that we are all subject to illness, injury, separation from loved ones, not being always able to get what we desire, not being able to make our elation last and not being able to avoid death. There is a lot of fun in between! But we cannot avoid the hazards. Even pleasurable sensations do not last forever. The acquisition of something you yearned for will make you elated but the needle will come down and you will most likely move on to acquire something else in order to feel happy again. Every attachment runs the risk of detachment resulting in sorrow. Life, therefore, cannot be perfect however rich, talented or powerful you are. A better word for Dukkha is unsatisfactoriness.

If so, what is the answer to us leading as happy a life as possible, given the fact that some of the downsides are unavoidable? The answer appears to be in two parts. Buddhism advocates a way of life minimising attachments to objects or people, thus minimising the risk of dispossession which causes unhappiness. It also promotes an ethical or moral code of behaviour. In the end, however, Buddhism advocates a solution which is based on a rather radical explanation of living systems, at least as applies to the animal kingdom.  This is the teaching of a “life force” which is not in any sense permanent (as for example a soul) but is present in some complex fashion in an animal distinct from its body. I am not certain whether this is part of consciousness. It is not a permanent entity such as a “soul” but little explanation is provided on exactly what it is. According to this, when an animal dies, it triggers the birth of another being and the circumstance of that birth and the nature of the new “born again” is determined by the collective past actions of the animal that died. This collection is called “karma” and is continually changing according to our actions. There is a moral element in it which says that “good action or karma” begets “good results or karma” (“we are the result of what we were and we will be the result of what we are"). This is hard to build into biological systems as we understand them through science. The principle of “an action having a reaction” is easy to accept in physical terms. For example, if you heat a piece of paper to a high temperature, it will catch fire. There is no “purpose” in it.  Even in some areas of behavioural change the sequence of action and reaction is easily seen. For example, if we refrain from smoking tobacco, our chances of suffering from heart disease and strokes are considerably reduced. It becomes harder to explain when we delve into moral responsibility. Sometimes it is obvious. If you are rude to a person, it is likely that you won’t be treated well. But if somebody utters a lie, an untruth, it is said to bring a bad result purely because lying is bad. Lying is a “sin” or lying is an “akusala”. But in reality, a lie might save your life or the life of another! When the murderer came looking for your brother to kill him, you said he is not here, which was a lie. The matter now becomes more complicated by stating that the result of an action will have a favourable moral consequence if the action was motivated by a good intention. This too has problems as killing a fellow human being is classed as a sure way of generating bad karma but what if the only action you could take to save your mother was to shoot the gunman? Your motive was pure. Buddhism also teaches that an action has good or bad consequences according to (1) the motive (2) the nature of the action itself and (3) the intended result of the action and this does make some sense. But why should this kind of morality operate at all in the Universe? One explanation is that we are all subject to the “will” of a supernatural being, a God who has laid down all the laws. The difficulty arises when this Power is said to be All-Powerful and All-loving which appears contradictory when we see the prevalence of gross unfairness and injustice in this World. If He is the Creator of everything, He is also the Creator of harmful bacteria and viruses. If He is All-loving, he picks and chooses who to bestow his largesse. The oft-quoted Christian view that we are all sinners and we are suffering for the “original sin” is catastrophically unfair as generation after generation is being punished for no fault of theirs. To sentence all humanity for the conduct of one person is unjust whichever way you look at it. In any case, an all-loving power should not be in the business of punishing. Then there is the contention of being granted a “free-will”.  If the Creator of Man created a person who when given the ability to make a choice between good and evil makes the wrong choice, I would blame the Creator who surely had the wherewithal to produce a better specimen. I know many very ordinary human beings who lead exemplary lives, unaffected by temptations to do the wrong thing. Why didn’t He create such a being in the first instance? In any case, what is He up to creating beings and watching them behave or misbehave? Is the whole Universe an experimental playground? I am yet to see any convincing argument to support the God belief. I have my thoughts on why it is so strongly held and why it has such a long history and I shall return to that later on,

But returning to the process of “rebirth” for lack of a better term, if  we consider a human birth for the time being, and let us for the sake of simplicity and discussion talk about John, a kind man who has a few blemishes in his life which he is not proud of , who is about to die and be born as Sarah, to an English family consisting of a mother with a genetic disorder with dominant inheritance and a father who is almost always drunk, living in a socially deprived area. The chances of Sarah blossoming out to become a worthy young girl are heavily weighted against her. This implies that in some amazingly complicated and unfathomable way, John’s karmic accumulation selectively “chose” Sarah’s mother’s womb and this included the choice of a mother with a certain genetic constitution as Sarah is at high risk of inheriting the mother’s dominant disorder. Even if we are prepared to consider this possibility, we cannot even remotely come up with a hypothesis to explain how it could happen. Our lives are conditioned by our genes and our environment. How did these aspects of Sarah come to her from Peter? The implication is that Sarah’s genes were in some way affected by John’s. To make it even more complicated, in some totally spooky way, Sarah became the “chosen one” to succeed John through a mechanism that was able to take into account the social background into which she was born. This can only be accepted as a matter of faith. It seems so far-fetched and unlikely.

It is even more difficult to explain what this “life force “is. We know that the Human race has grown by billions and does it mean that life forces, whatever they are, can move from humans to animals and vice versa? Do these life forces come from outer space? Where did they come from? Have all animals got it? What about an amoeba? A Mosquito? If a human is reborn as an animal, is that the end of the road for final salvation as according to the Teaching, only a Human being can attain final salvation.

The Buddhist solution for ultimate bliss is to stop this cycle of births and deaths. The persistence of the life force is said to be driven by ignorance and the desires leading to attachments or clinging. “Who” or “what” is able to experience such emotions? Once these are overcome, the life process ceases and dukkha is thus abolished. But if we do achieve it, who or what experiences it? And even if as some say, this state can be achieved in your own life, what happens when that life ends? That is why I am not able to comprehend how this is a solution when the person who had the problem also ceases to exist. We are told that with our limited intellectual abilities, we are unable to comprehend this state called Nirvana. There appears to be an implication that although “you” cease to exist, “something” is experiencing a kind of supreme bliss. Furthermore, Buddhism refers to other realms of existence including some which are supremely “happy” but yet subject to death but in these realms, they are unable to attain total enlightenment as the latter can only be achieved as a Human Being.

The carrot however in the teaching is that this attainment is within the reach of every human being and by following what is called the Noble Eightfold Path, realisation or Insight will come to the Practitioner. We are told that it is something you can only experience. It cannot be visualised or imagined or logically derived.  The path is shown and it is entirely up to you to test it for yourself.

I am forced to conclude that acceptance of Buddhism as the ultimate Truth of our existence and of our Universe is also a matter of faith just as acceptance of God is a matter of faith. What we know of our Universe and of Human Evolution does not fit in any way with what is expounded in any religion or philosophy. These doctrines were propounded when our scientific knowledge and understanding was backward, when many what we now know as natural phenomena were attributed to Supernatural powers. The list of phenomena being transferred from the “Supernatural” to the “Natural” is growing all the time and will continue to do so as we gain more and more knowledge.

However, I find some of the practical advice given to lay people on maximising happiness and minimising sadness (I call this a state of contentment), through a Buddhist approach very helpful. But religions (classifying Buddhism arguably as one) cannot be eclectic. We cannot make up a basket of things from Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism etc and produce the “Real truth”. Each claim to be the Truth and only one can be. A basket of components promoting good behaviour and a life of relative contentment can be built through the adoption of some aspects of many Religions. The big appeal of Buddhism to me is its highly sophisticated understanding of human psychology, the teaching of self-reliance and self-improvement, the lack of dependence on a supreme being and the non-violent, universal love it promotes among not just human beings but also all animals. The practice of Buddhism in a Society will produce a just and relatively peaceful and content one.  Lastly, it is ahead of its time when The Buddha said “Don’t accept things because your elders said it, don’t accept things because holy texts say it, don’t accept things even though I, the Buddha said it, but see for yourself and accept it if it seems right for you on the evidence”. This is known as Ehi Passiko – come and see for yourselves.

In my next instalment, I shall be musing on “Morality” and Religion. Are they evolutionary responses for the survival of the species?

Malham Retreat song May 2017