Generally speaking, if you throw out all the religious terms in Buddhism such as rebirth, the Buddha’s ability to see what happens to beings after they die, and throw out other things that don’t fit with a materialistic society but keep Buddhist rituals an robes, including meditation and mindfulness, you have secular Buddhism.
Secular Buddhism can be both hardcore and soft. It can be against anything that smells of religion, including metaphysical doctrines—even mysticism— considering these to be illegitimate insofar as they go beyond reason and empirical investigation. Or it can be tolerant of religious propositions, etc., but only if they are politically correct and don’t go too much against the times.
More fundamental to secular Buddhism is the belief in the adequacy of reason and empirical investigation. This, of course, assumes that reason and empirical investigation, as tools, are fully capable of understanding the Buddha’s awakening. Any well educated person, therefore, should be able to understand the Buddha’s awakening by reason alone which makes faith unnecessary. But this is impossible. To make reason and investigation work requires a certain amount of dumbing down and revisionism of Buddhism, itself, since Buddhism, as it stands in the discourses, is not yet well understood, even by Buddhist scholars. Gautama is not modern by any stretch of the imagination. His nirvana, in fact, defies modern explanations.
The Buddha of the discourses is neither a man of reason nor a man who accepts the validity of empirical investigation. His awakening transcends these, arguably, secular positions such that it is independent of all sensory evidence. The Buddha even goes so far as, absolutely, to deny that his religion (dharma) is his own devising which has be hammered out by reasoning and based on investigation (MN #12 Mahasihanada Sutta). In addition, he made it very clear that anyone not giving up this view is consigned to Niraya Hell! Yes, those are pretty strong words which go to underscore the fact that the Buddha’s awakening went beyond the sphere of reason and investigation which are, structurally, important to secular Buddhism without which it falls.
Well, aren´t we the lucky ones?
Recently broadcasted on the Coast to Coast radio (with millions of american listeners)we hear a well known scientist Dr. Dean Radin (AT&T, Bell labs, Princeton) defending the mystical side of Buddhism, criticising the view of the brain being the seat of consciousness and even presenting research on siddhis performed by tibethan yogis in his laboratory. The guy also talks about Patanjalis Hatha and Raja Yoga including its mystical sides.
Here is a excerpt;
"Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Dean Radin, discussed his latest research into the extraordinary powers of the mind, and enlightened beings. Various 'supernormal' powers, called siddhis, were described in classical yoga texts and included everything from telepathy and precognition to invisibility and levitation. According to this tradition, these abilities would occur as a consequence of deep meditation. While everyone has the potential to develop these skills, "our lives are so distracted, that we don't have the capacity to pay attention to what's actually inside all of us," he noted. The first siddhi in advanced meditation is the simultaneous perception of past, present, and future, which could lead to precognition, he said.
Yoga and Eastern philosophies in general suggest that consciousness is fundamental and out of this emerges the physical world. Even science is beginning to question the seat of consciousness-- that awareness does not stem from the brain but is just built into the fabric of reality, Radin commented. In this way of thinking, the brain could be thought of as a receiver, and something like telepathy is not a form of signaling, but a momentary recognition of the holistic nature of reality, he outlined. Citing an experiment with an advanced meditator, he explained how the subject was able to influence the movement of a laser beam in a separate room, not by projecting outward, but by going deeper into his mind."
Go here to listen; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74glSQh4q4E&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PLIOSE1vN8rwiz7noIIZq3HL2sX_np4wpM
the interview begins at the 38:30 mark.
Posted by: azanshi | August 18, 2013 at 05:39 AM