Buddhism: The Most Accurate World Religion?

August 24, 2011|Josh Rothman, Globe Staff

Buddhism is in vogue in the West, and has been for a long time. Partly, it's that Buddhism seems "spiritual" without being too religious; it's also that Buddhist practices, especially meditation, are popularly associated with happiness, contentment, and well-being. To distracted, dissatisfied, and overworked Americans, being Buddhist is a sensible and practical lifestyle choice. Exercise, eat well, get enough sleep, and meditate.

In The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized , Owen Flanagan, a distinguished philosopher at Duke, argues that this practical approach to Buddhism misses the point. Buddhism matters not just for practical reasons, but for philosophical ones. Subtract the "hocus-pocus" about reincarnation, karma, and "bodhisattvas flying on lotus leaves," and you'll find a rigorous, clear-eyed account of the universe and our place in it -- an account, in fact, designed to satisfy even the most ardent modern-day materialist. Buddhism matters, in other words, because it's actually right.

The Zen monk Hsuan Hua. Flanagan isn't talking about Buddhism as it's actually practiced around the world, in a bewildering array of different traditions. His subject is "Buddhism naturalized" -- that is, Buddhism stripped down to a core set of philosophical (and, crucially, non-supernatural) claims. Naturalize Buddhism, and you're left with a basically materialist, deterministic view of the world. If it existed, the "Buddhist Credo," Flanagan writes, would be something like: "I believe that everything is impermanent, that everything (including my state of mind) is subject to the principles of cause and effect, and that given that I am among the things-that-there-are, I am impermanent and subject to the laws of cause and effect." Physicists, biologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists would agree; today, it's a scientific fact that human beings live in a material, determined world, and are themselves determined and material.