Reading (For Dummies)

A psuedo-experimental rant

Nam myoho renge kyo ka?

So people have been asking me about the Buddhism thing. Okay, actually the only person that's been asking me is myself. So I thought I would expound to the world (well, more to myself) on my own personal pulpit. I don't do this sort of thing as much as I used to, but I'll get to that.

I'm a scientist. If anyone were to ask me to describe my religion, that would be it. I believe what I see, anything else is just a hypothesis to be tested, and more than likely disproved. So what am I doing? Testing a hypothesis maybe. Buddhism isn't what I would call a religion (though it asks you to believe some things without proof).

What do I believe of Buddhism? Not a lot. Karma? What's that? Infinite rebirth? Okay if you're talking about temporal logic maybe, but that really doesn't matter since the temporal logic doesn't account for anything jumping branches (neither does our understanding of the nature of the time, which has been pretty well tested I think). Well, not unless it involves warp fields and tachyons....So about the answer I'm promising...I'm coming to it.

Okay, so what I will not accept on faith is simple enough: everything.

I notice myself slipping up on myself a lot lately, though. I've become a lot less polite and warm than I once was, a lot less concientous of other people; I'm unable to focus. I'm excitable, goofy. I used to be more interested in the Big Questions: what is consciousness, what is reality, is there such a thing as a soul? For years I asked such questions to myself and to other people; I decided to pursue an education in computer science with a bit of philosophy thrown in. I hoped artificial intelligence and cognitive sciences would shed some kind of light on the answers I sought. I've become an arrogant bastard, under the assumption that all this scientific knowledge was helping me see something nobody else did. But nope. Dead ends, both of them...nothing to see here. They don't answer any questions, they just provide solutions. There's an odd sort of difference.

Maybe it's through applications of substances that I lost sight of my questions, but probably it is more attributed to being into science and math for too long, and too ununderstandingly. Of course, maybe I'm burning out. Not a happy thought, but who knows? I still wondering what to do to make a living. Okay if I'm disaffected, I'm not alone.

So I'm meditating, probably with a cult. Don't get me wrong, they're good people, after a fashion. And it's hard to believe everything you read...there was a brief spat with a Soka Gakkai member who (I'm told) wanted to make moolah off the whole thing, so he started a disinformation campaign against the current Nichiren Shoshu school. So it's hard to say what the truth is, but my assumption is never trust an organized religion, and I won't be changing that rule any time soon. I just keep my eyes and ears and open, and meditate and chant what I can. And for those who scream deprogram!, remember I went up against the best once. I'm just as stubborn as my old man and twice as good at math.
Wait for it....

So if I don't believe in the basic tenants of the religion/cult/philosophy/whatever, what am I doing, sitting in front of a piece of paper I can't read, chanting words I can't understand*? Well, perhaps I'm being sure. Shakyamuni Guatama and the other Buddhas were happy and wise in a final sort of way. My friend David from Syracuse reminds me of these stories every time I see him, it's a calmness and rationality that any computer scientist would envy...That would be nice. I joke with the Germans here that the Buddha introduced me to SGI. I'm kidding, but only slightly.

But I'm not sure if I believe that their enlightenment was true; maybe something in the buddhas' brains just broke and their state of 'enlightenment' was nothing more than improper levels of dopamine being released. Who knows? I'd like to...

The buddhism has a basic lesson in the philosophy: those seeking the answers won't find them. Perhaps, in a strange way, by being skeptical for the answers while meditating I'll see something that my scientifically trained mind doesn't. Or maybe not. It makes sense in a very non-logical sort of way, so maybe I'm halfway there already.

My whole trip overseas is sort of working for the same purpose...getting out of the river for a while to see if things look different from the banks, getting back to my roots of quasi-philosophical computer nerd. So perhaps I should answer people honestly now, when they ask, "Why did you come to Germany?" Truth, and Japan was too damn expensive.

If nothing else, all this provides a means of some mental relaxation, useful in a self-help sort of way, even if I scoff at that stuff a little bit. Mind over matter always, except when the matter is too heavy for you to physically lift...that's the general policy to take with regard to self-help. Well, I think I've expounded enough on this topic. I suppose what I'm saying doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but then it's not really supposed to. Feel free to leave questions and answers, I'll listen to both :).

*well, okay, that's partial truth. I can actually read some parts of the Gongyo. Not enough to make sense of anything, but I guess a year of Japanese has left me remembering a few words...

Posted by reid at December 11, 2002 11:30 PM | TrackBack