Theres a kind of hush By B. U. N. Peiris, Lakshapatiya, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka 24th June 2005 “Do your allotted work regardless of results, for men attain the highest good by doing work without attachment to its results” Krushna to Arjuna: The Mahabarata “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed” I just happened to overhear a colleague from mine saying while I was passing his desk. ‘So, you had a fine Physics teacher, eh!” I butted in. I was pleased that my colleague could still remember his Physics lessons at college. Since The Fundamental theory of Physics, that preceded Newton’s three famous Laws of Physics, has withstood all the tests to date, I could safely say that my father too was not destroyed even in his death. After all, all of us are made of the same stuff: energy. But then again, it is not acceptable my father is no longer with us: he has left us for a rebirth, according to the Buddhism, that is. As every action follows a reaction, as laid out in Newton’s third Law, the merits & demerits, virtues & vices of my father would warrant another birth in another form of a living being somewhere in the cosmos. Once again that is according to Buddhism. One can end the almost eternal cycle of birth & rebirth, suffering of living only if one could break free from all desires, free from all vices, animosity & pride, anger & enmity, jealousy & greed & reach the summit of all virtue & yield into the power of impermanence as Buddha & few of his disciples preached & reached: Arhath, the state of eternal enlightenment. Attempts to fit in the round peg of science into the square hole of religion would be a task beyond ordinary human perceptions. But then Buddhism is not an ordinary religion. It is an atheist religion that conforms to the scientific foundation; action & reaction, cause & effect, reason & result. As Tenzin Gyatso, his holiness the Dalai Lama proclaimed in his latest book “The Universe in a Single Atom” that if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science & abandon those claims.” Dalai Lama doesn’t sound like a dogmatic religious leader, but rather like a sophisticated scientist in the tradition of Darwin: If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory (of evolution) would absolutely break down. Scientist Richard Dawkins, one of the most prominent proponent of atheism, would be pleased to hear those words of Tenzin Gytso, since he argues that God should be no less explicable than any other natural phenomenon. But then neither the creationist nor atheists ought be at the loggerheads, at each other’s throat since science & theology can coexist, side by side. I suppose the world is big enough. Perhaps not. Perhaps, The world is not enough (with apologies to Bond) for the battle. Rushdie (may all gods, big & small protect him!) argues that such a truce would have a chance of working only if it were reciprocal-if the world’s religions agreed to value the atheist position & and concede its ethical basis, if they respected the discoveries & achievements of modern science, even when these discoveries challenge religious sanctities, & if they agreed that art at its best reveals life’s multiple meanings at least as clearly as so-called “revealed’ texts. No such reciprocal arrangement exists, however, nor is there the slightest chance that such an accommodation could ever be reached. Rushdie could be wrong in terms of such a chance, since non other than Pope John Paul the second himself declared (in French) Aujourdhui, pres dun demisiecle après la parution de lencyclique, de nouvelles connaisances condesuisent a reconnaitre dans la théorie de levolution plus qu*une* hypothese.(Today, almost half a century after the publication of the Encyclical [Humani generis, 1950], new knowledge has led to the recognition of more than a (a, as Vatican newspaper L’Osservatroe Romano translated-French “une” means a or one) hypothesis in the theory of evolution. The Pope appears to think there’s evidence to support evolution, hence it is “more than a hypothesis.”my-srilankaholidays/2007/07/tales-from-resplendent-island.html
Posted on: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 13:18:23 +0000
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