when asked for ... "evidence" ... ideas, please ?
Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2012 11:59 am
A good friend likes to tease me about the lack of evidence for "God", by which he means not only the sky father of the Abrahamic faiths, but any transcendental, non-material factor, state, entity, archetype or "Being". This would include Mahayanist claims of bodhisattvas, Jodo Shinshu claims about Amida Buddha/Other power, and just about any other claim regarding experiencing or knowing something real in our subjective selves and through subjective states.
I responded with something I read in Ken Wilber, namely that the knowledge-acquisition process is the same in spirituality as it is in science or any other quest for knowledge. Mainly, it consists of three steps:
1. Perform the Injunction: If you want to know "X", then do "Y". If you want to know if Jupiter has moons, look through a telescope, the specialized lens that reveals physical information; if you want to know about Buddha Nature or the Formless or Amida's reality, look through the specified lens (meditation, contemplation, deep listening to the scriptures, etc.) which reveals spiritual information.
2. Perform the experiment: look through the telescope, do the meditiations. Take notes.
3. Share your conclusions with a community of those who have adequately performed steps 1. and 2. - in other words, "peer review"
My friend says that viewing Jupiter's moons through a telescope is genuine evidence because it consists of sensually shared and observed data about objects "out there" that can be verified by plain sight. He says that meditation's data are not real evidence because they do not point to an observable "out there", but merely to a subjective, albeit possibly repeatable, personal experience.
There the debate stands. I had thought that knowledge-acquisition IS a form of evidence, if the three steps are correctly carried out. Why is it evidence when a physical lens reveals moons, but not evidence when following the same three steps reveals spiritual things? If three people look through a telescope and agree that they are seeing moons, and three people perform a particular meditation and agree that they have had (say) a satori, why are not both groups equally "evidence-finders"?
Is knowledge-acquisition only evidential if the knowledge acquired is about the material world? And if that's the case, what to make of Buddhism's empirical methods and means of testing its "data" ? Certainly the acquisition of new data about the ego/non-ego, samsara, bodhicitta, the place/function of the practitioner's mind, anatta, etc., must be considered a form of knowledge acquisition, which involves "evidence" in some meaningful sense. Otherwise, why Shakyamuni's constant injunctions to experiment, to not take his teaching on faith or to treat it like a dogma; why his triumphant claim of finding the Unborn, the Unconditioned? Is not the attainment of spiritual knowledge or "gnosis" an attainment of authentic knowledge-acquisition ?
I responded with something I read in Ken Wilber, namely that the knowledge-acquisition process is the same in spirituality as it is in science or any other quest for knowledge. Mainly, it consists of three steps:
1. Perform the Injunction: If you want to know "X", then do "Y". If you want to know if Jupiter has moons, look through a telescope, the specialized lens that reveals physical information; if you want to know about Buddha Nature or the Formless or Amida's reality, look through the specified lens (meditation, contemplation, deep listening to the scriptures, etc.) which reveals spiritual information.
2. Perform the experiment: look through the telescope, do the meditiations. Take notes.
3. Share your conclusions with a community of those who have adequately performed steps 1. and 2. - in other words, "peer review"
My friend says that viewing Jupiter's moons through a telescope is genuine evidence because it consists of sensually shared and observed data about objects "out there" that can be verified by plain sight. He says that meditation's data are not real evidence because they do not point to an observable "out there", but merely to a subjective, albeit possibly repeatable, personal experience.
There the debate stands. I had thought that knowledge-acquisition IS a form of evidence, if the three steps are correctly carried out. Why is it evidence when a physical lens reveals moons, but not evidence when following the same three steps reveals spiritual things? If three people look through a telescope and agree that they are seeing moons, and three people perform a particular meditation and agree that they have had (say) a satori, why are not both groups equally "evidence-finders"?
Is knowledge-acquisition only evidential if the knowledge acquired is about the material world? And if that's the case, what to make of Buddhism's empirical methods and means of testing its "data" ? Certainly the acquisition of new data about the ego/non-ego, samsara, bodhicitta, the place/function of the practitioner's mind, anatta, etc., must be considered a form of knowledge acquisition, which involves "evidence" in some meaningful sense. Otherwise, why Shakyamuni's constant injunctions to experiment, to not take his teaching on faith or to treat it like a dogma; why his triumphant claim of finding the Unborn, the Unconditioned? Is not the attainment of spiritual knowledge or "gnosis" an attainment of authentic knowledge-acquisition ?