Buddha's Nature: A Practical Guide to Enlightenment Through Evolution - Hardcover

Nisker, Wes

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553106015 ISBN 13: 9780553106015

Publisher: Bantam, 1998

Synopsis

The Buddha said that "everything we need to know about life can be found inside this fathom-long body." Yet when most people start on the spiritual path, they consciously or unconsciously cut themselves off from their body. Why?

This provocative synthesis of Eastern wisdom and Western science seeks to correct that tendency by bringing us back to the Buddha's original revolutionary message.  It shows how the path to true liberation comes only through a deep understanding and acceptance of our biology and its important role in our spiritual evolution.

It also shows how twentieth-century science is finally catching up with the time-honored beliefs of Buddhism.  The latest discoveries in physics, evolutionary biology, and psychology are expressing in scientific terms the same insights the Buddha first discovered more than 2,500 years ago.  Insights such as the impermanence of the body, where thoughts come from, and how the body communicates with itself.  Based on the traditional Buddhist meditation sequence known as the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, Buddha's Nature propels us on an extraordinary journey through our entire biological and psychological heritage.

Here is a practical program from a renowned meditation teacher for gaining a greater understanding of our true place in the cosmos as well as invaluable insight into the origin of attachment, desire, emotion, thought, and consciousness itself.  These practices do not require a belief in Buddhism, nirvana, or any religious concept.  Instead they offer a spiritual and scientific path to personal freedom and peace of mind.


Wes Nisker is the author of Crazy Wisdom and a renowned lecturer who has taught courses on Buddhist meditation in such places as the Esalen Institute, the University of California, and Spirit Rock Buddhist Meditation Center.  He has been a featured speaker at the Buddhism in America conferences as well as the Transpersonal Psychology Association conferences.  Mr.  Nisker currently serves as secretary of the International Transpersonal Association's board of directors and is the founder and co-editor of the international Buddhist journal Inquiring Mind.

About this title

About the Author

Wes Nisker is the bestselling author of Crazy Wisdom and a renowned lecturer who has taught courses on Buddhist meditation at the Esalen Institute, the University of California, and Spirit Rock Buddhist Meditation Center. He is the founder and co-editor of the international Buddhist journal, Inquiring Mind.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Reviews

At first glance, Nisker's book is a beginner's guide to Buddhism. It simply and clearly lays out, in a series of straightforward how-to steps, different Buddhist meditation techniques. At a deeper level, however, the book is not so simple. Nisker combines the practices and principles of Buddhist meditation with current breakthroughs in cosmology, evolution and molecular genetics. For instance, he argues that, in meditating on the body, one can pass through the cells into their evolutionary origins. While Nisker's remarks on Buddhism are informed by careful study, his exploration of science is less successful. Nisker often chooses scientific viewpoints that are outside the mainstream, and he presents them, often out of context, to justify his idiosyncratic points. Moreover, Nisker's rambling prose, which reads more like a disjointed diary than a refined, considered personal reflection, results in a flat, joyless book. The author's interpretations of the Buddhist view on the lack of God, the self and consciousness fall like afterthoughts in the last few pages.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Buddha Was a Biologist

It is our contention that the rediscovery of Asian philosophy, particularly of the Buddhist tradition, is a second renaissance in the cultural history of the West, with the potential to be equally important as the discovery of Greek thought in the European renaissance. [Asian philosophy] never became a purely abstract occupation. It was tied to specific disciplined methods for knowing--different methods of meditation.
--Francisco Varela, The Embodied Mind
Combining Buddhist meditation practices with current scientific knowledge  seems a wise use of human resources. Generally speaking, Buddhism and  science represent the respective genius of Asian and Western  civilizations. In comparing the two ways of knowing, one might conclude  that the planet was somehow divided along the lines of the two hemispheres  of the brain. In the West we looked outside of ourselves for truth,  dividing up the world with our intellect and reason to see if reality's  secrets were hiding inside of things. Meanwhile, the genius of Asia was  directed inward, relying more on intuition and experiential knowing,  seeking to resolve the questions themselves in the realization of  nonduality and the great mystery of consciousness.

In recent decades, through modern communications and travel, a bridge  has been built between the two civilizations, a kind of corpus  callosum connecting the two hemispheres of the world brain. Perhaps  out of the confluence, some tools and techniques will be discovered that  will nurture a more awakened and satisfied human existence.

As they compare notes, scientists and Buddhist scholars alike have been  astounded by the fact that the two ways of knowing have arrived at so many  similar conclusions. Physics is one arena where the two have found  agreement. As impossible as it must seem to physicists who use  sophisticated bubble chambers and laser photography to study subatomic  events, Buddhists have uncovered at least the basic principles of  subatomic physics through their meditation practices. Meditation can  reveal that there is no solidity anywhere, that the observer cannot be  separated from what is observed, that phenomena seem to appear out of  emptiness, and that everything affects everything else in a co-emergent  system that scientists have only recently acknowledged and named  "nonlocality." These truths have been discovered by many people who have  simply focused their attention inward.

Although the agreement between Buddhism and modern physics has been given  wide attention, I believe that what will become even more significant in  coming years is the sharing of information between Buddhist meditators and  biologists, in particular neuroscientists. The Buddhist and scientific  maps of mind and cognition are strikingly similar. Furthermore, the  Buddhists have for centuries been studying the elusive nature of "self"  and consciousness, concepts that are currently befuddling the  neuroscientists. Many Buddhists have even resolved these puzzles, at least  to the individual meditator's satisfaction.

Buddhist meditation itself could be understood as a form of scientific  research. Meditators try to maintain the scientific attitude of  objectivity while investigating themselves. They too want to look at life  without prejudicing the study with personal desires or preset theories.  "Just the facts, ma'am."

A scientist might argue that his findings are objective because they can  be verified by someone replicating the experiments or redoing the  mathematical equations. However, every Buddhist meditator who undertakes a  specific path of inquiry is, in a sense, redoing the experiment, and most  will arrive at similar conclusions about the nature of self and reality.  In mindfulness meditation, what is known as "the progress of insight"  unfolds in a relatively standard fashion for most people.

The Buddha wants each of us to become a scientist, using ourself as the  subject. He recommends a careful deconstruction of the seemingly solid  realities of mind and body as a way to explore their sources, and thus  reveal our oneness with the world. As it says in the Abhidhamma, an early  Buddhist text, "the first task of insight (vipassana) meditation is  . . . the dissecting of an apparently compact mass."

Modern science also set about the task of disassembling reality, and has  found--miracle of miracles--that oneness is right there, in reality's very  core. If it has proven anything, Western science has validated the  mystical vision as the ultimate truth. Nothing can be separated  from anything else. The scientists attempt to express this oneness by  inserting the connector: wave-particle, space-time, matter-energy.

Although modern science has helped humanity achieve new levels of  material comfort, its greatest gift may yet turn out to be spiritual--a  more accurate and satisfying way of understanding ourselves. Instead of  reducing humans to material processes, as some critics assert, scientists  are simply showing us the specific threads that connect us to all of life  and the universe. Most scientists would not deny that there may be other  factors at work in our creation (gods, spirits, souls), and at least they  are proving that we are not separate and alone. After all, every time they  find another cause they also find another connection.  A single protein molecule or a single finger  print, a single syllable on the radio or a single idea of yours, implies  the whole historical reach of stellar and organic evolution. It is enough  to make you tingle all the time.
--John Platt, The Steps to Man  The Buddha was a great scientist of the self. It is clear in the Pali  Canon that he was not much concerned with cosmic consciousness, and there  is no evidence that he believed in any god or goddess. He was also silent  on the question of a first cause, saying it would be impossible to trace  the karmic source of either an individual or the universe. Instead,  throughout his discourses we find the Buddha emphasizing what I would call  "biological consciousness."

The Buddha's meditation instructions in the Pali Canon are almost  exclusively focused on the natural processes of our physical and mental  life. He tells us to meditate on our skin and bones, our nervous system,  the processes of walking, hearing, seeing, and thinking. According to the  Buddha, everything we need to know about life and reality can be found  inside "this fathom-long body."

Throughout his teachings, for instance, the Buddha emphasizes the  impermanent nature of all phenomena. Remembering this universal truth  (documented from Heraclitus to Heisenberg) is critical to our personal  happiness, because the fact that everything is in transition means that we  can't hold on to any object or experience, nor to life itself. If we forget about impermanence and try to grasp or hold on to things, we will  inevitably create suffering for ourselves.

The Buddha tells us to become personally familiar with this truth  by meditating on the changes that take place inside of us at every moment: Herein a person contemplates as impermanent  and not as permanent, the pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feelings . . .  the feelings born of visual impressions, sound-impressions, smell-impressions,  (etc.) . . . the corporeal phenomena water, heat, air . . . skin, flesh,  blood, sinews, bone, marrow, (etc.) . . . visual consciousness, auditory  consciousness, olfactory consciousness, (etc.). . . . Contemplating  them [all] as impermanent, the meditator abandons the notion of  permanency . . . [and] by relinquishing, the meditator abandons  craving.
--Satipatthana-Katha According to the Buddha, by experiencing our own impermanent nature--by  feeling it and reflecting upon it regularly--we can learn to inhabit this  truth and live by it. As we grow familiar with the radical impermanence of  every moment's experience we stop getting so lost in our own desire  system; we don't hold on as tight or get so "hung up." We are able to live  more in harmony with the way things are. This is one example of how the  Buddha was able to use his scientific insights in the service of  spirituality. Those who drink of the deepest truths live  happily with a serene mind.
--The Buddha, The Dhammapada As a spiritual biologist, the Buddha studied the human condition  thoroughly. He gave a broad outline of his findings in the Four Noble  Truths, the first of which announces that life is inherently  unsatisfactory, a time of continual neediness and desire accompanied by  some measure of pain, sadness, sickness, and inevitable old age and death.  It's all part of the deal when you get a human body and nervous  system--period. Critics cite the First Noble Truth as proof that the  Buddha was negative about life, but he was simply making a scientific  observation.

This human...

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0553106015
• ISBN 13: 9780553106015
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256