At the beginning of this course when I said that I was interested in the question of whether the naturalistic version of Buddhism might qualify as a spiritual or even a religious world view. I, I brought out this William James quote where James said that the animating essence of religion is the belief that there is an unseen order and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves to that order. And I said kind of tentatively that, it, it would seem that, that Buddhism offers such a thing, you know. It says that the truth about the world is generally unseen. And that if we discover it, and harmoniously align ourselves with the truth, then we will in some sense realize our supreme good. Well, since I said that, you know, I think we've learned a lot more about what the truth is that, that Buddhism asserts. So maybe we're in a better position now to ask ourselves whether it really is an unseen order in the sense that James, meant the term. Okay. Whether it really might qualify even a, even a naturalistic Buddhism to be a kind of spiritual or religious worldview. Well, certainly, it's unseen, right? I mean, if, if you take this truth about reality to be the thing that becomes clear when you've obtained enlightenment, well, most people are nowhere near enlightenment And so are no where near seeing this truth. But is it an order, okay? Is this truth, does this really qualify as an unseen order? Now that's an important question, because many religions they, they assert the existence of an order. In the sense of a kind of divinely imparted plan, say the universe embodies this divinely imparted purpose, this plan. And then you know, the people who are adhering to that religion that, that's where they get the meaning in their lives. Their, their place in the plan is what gives their lives meaning. It's what gives them moral orientation, and it's what inspires a very powerful commitment to this religious world view. Well Buddhism, even religious Buddhism, doesn't say that there's an all powerful creator god who, who imparted purpose and a plan to the universe. And certainly this naturalistic Buddhism doesn't say anything about some kind of divinely imparted plan. So the, the question arises you know, can this naturalistic Buddhism assert the existence of, of, of an unseen order in, in somewhat the sense that other religions may mean the term and in a sense that does have power. That does inspire commitment. Well I think you know, you can, you can argue that that that is the case. That, that when you look at the, the order that is asserted, it, it, it does have some of that kind of inspiration and, and that kind of potency. Now first of all this unseen order is literally orderly, right? I mean, we, we, we've just seen that that enlightenment, as we imagine it, would, would give you a view of the world with tremendous kind of continuity. There would be more continuity among the different things in the world. And there would be more continuity between you and the world. So, so, where there previously had been fragmentation, you would now apprehend this, tremendous unity. So, this is, this is literally an unseen order. There is a second and maybe deeper sense in which this, this qualifies as an unseen order. When we look at that checklist in the previous segment of this lecture you know you had two columns, the truth about the world and moral truth. And the idea was, the path to enlightenment is the path to both. Right. There's an alignment between these two truths, and that brings us to something that we talked about early in this course, right, which is that, that is the Buddhist, assertion. That if you see the world clearly Respond appropriately to it. You do align yourself with moral truth. As we saw, this is embodied in the word dharma. Dharma ref, refers to both kind of the natural order and the moral order, and it refers to the teachings about how you should respond to the natural order to the way things are. And responding in that manner, in the prescribed manner, does align you with the moral truth. So, I would say this alignment between the truth about the world, the world, and moral truth, is itself a kind of unseen order at a very deep level. And you know, you, the universe didn't have to, presumably, didn't have to be built this way, right? You can imagine a universe,uh, where learning the truth about the world brings you no closer to the moral truth. Or, or if you respond to the truth about the world in ways that bring you happiness. That doesn't bring you any closer to the moral truth. Or to moral behavior. That the universe didn't have to be built this way. But according to Buddhism, it is, there is this alignment between kind of, the truth about the world, moral truth and you know, your, your fulfillment, the end of your suffering. So, it's really kind of the trifecta, right? Is built into this universe, and that's kind of a, amazing thing, if true, right? Something something worth marveling at. So I guess I would say that even though Buddhism doesnât talk about an order in the sense of a divinely imparted plan that inspires awe and commitment in virtue of it being Godâs will Nonetheless, there is a kind of order asserted in, in Buddhism that is in its own way awe inspiring. In its, and in its own way does really bring commitment and, and does provide, you know, an, an incentive to be devoted to the prescribed path. Now, there's one other thing that William James said about religions. James said that religions in general tend involve first of all a sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand, an uneasiness. And a sense that we're saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers. Well, Buddhism obviously features the first of those, right? The sense that, that there's something wrong, right, duka, you know, suffering, unsatisfactoriness. But what about the, the, the second thing, the sense that, that you can be saved by, by contact with a higher power? well, certainly, especially with the naturalistic form of Buddhism, this wouldn't be contact with any kind of deity. but, I think there is the sense among very serious meditators that sometimes they're making contact with a, a higher form of awareness in a certain sense. A much purer awareness than was previously available. And, that's certainly an interesting scenario, an interesting thing to contemplate. And it suggests a view of our evolutionary history that has almost a mythic quality, okay? because, as far as we can tell, consciousness, subjective experience can only be created on this planet, at least, through natural selection, right? But we've also seen that natural selection, in creating consciousness tends to warp it. It, it tends to create these various distortions that we've talked about in, in perception, in cognition and certainly, in moral judgment. And it's interesting to think that maybe natural selection, having created consciousness and warped it in the first place. Nonetheless eventually gives rise to these kind of self-reflective beings, that would be us, human beings, who figure things out and manage to kind of rid themselves of, of these distortions. Many or even all of these, these distortions you know, they, they kind of manage to, to liberate consciousness in a certain sense from, from the, the, the, the distortions that its, its creator initially imposed on it. Now of course, you know, again most of us are not going to, going to attain a, a pure form of, of awareness. Presumably that's the kind of thing that, that would be associated with enlightenment. If you ever got there. But, I do think there are very serious meditators who wouldn't make any claim to having been enlightenment, to having been enlightened, who, who nonetheless have had a sense of contact with that kind of purity of awareness, you know, moments. In meditation where you feel you're really in touch with the real truth about things, and that you perception is just no longer kind of distorted by the normal distortion, and I think those experiences those those those moments of seeming contact with the real, the real truth about things. Do inspire commitment to the practice that is some ways comparable in its power to the commitment that is inspired in other religions by kind of their version of, of of, of a connection with higher powers. So this is naturalistic version of Buddhism a religious worldview, is it a spiritual worldview? I'll let you make the call. I would say that if you look at the way William James framed the thing it does ar, arguably qualify. You know, there is the, the, the belief that there's an unseen order and a fairly profound sense in that, in that yes, our supreme good lies in adjusting ourselves to the order. Also that yes, there is a sense that there's something fundamentally wrong in the human condition, something fundamentally awry And that the remedy lies in, a connection with, in some sense, a higher power. Not a higher power, in the sense of a deity, but a higher form of awareness that is itself, very powerful. So, I would say, you know, as a naturalistic kind of substitutes for religion go this one is, you know, not bad. I'd also say that even if you're not looking for a substitute, you know, even if you've already got your own religion in a traditional sense This the, you know, this kind of naturalistic Buddhism probably also works as a kind of a supplement, right. I mean the practice of meditation and the basic philosophy that we've seen accompanying it I think is compatible with various religious traditions. And I would, I would even say that there's a kind of a synergy between it and, and the major religious traditions. I think all of these traditions have kind of themes and precepts that really resonate with the world view we've been describing. I mean, my own upbringing was in the Christian tradition, and so, you know, I think of, for example, Jesus saying, basically, you know, why are you so focused on this, this speck in the eye of this other guy when you've got, you know, a, like a log lodged in your own eye. In other words, the idea is that, you know here you are obsessing over this, this minor perceptual distortion that other people may have when you've got a pretty major one yourself. That's obviously a very consistent with kind of this, this world view, we've been describing and I know that all the major religions, you know, have these kind of thematic synergies with this world view. Anyway, whatever you want to call this world view we've been talking about over these last six weeks. You know, this meditative path, informed by Buddhist philosophy. Whether you want to say yes, it's a religion, or no, I don't think it qualifies as a religion, but it's a spiritual world view. Or you just want to say it's a therapeutic perspective. Or whatever. I would say the following. If you look at the human condition from the standpoint of modern psychology, and in particular, evolutionary psychology. And you look at the way our evolutionary history has afflicted us with perceptual distortions and moral biases, and dissatisfaction, and out and out suffering, and you ask well is there a world view that address this problem? Well there are a lot of world views, and, and many of them do it effectively. There are religions, there are therapeutic traditions, but, I am not personally aware of a naturalistic world view that addresses the problem as straightforwardly, and as honestly, and as unflinchingly, as the one we've been talking about. Now, I, personally, am going to keep exploring this worldview for some time to come in one sense or another. Maybe some of you will too. But whether or not you do that. I want to thank you for sharing in my exploration of it. I've gotten a tremendous amount out of teaching this course, out of preparing the material for presentation. But also, more importantly out of the online interaction with students, and, and you know, getting the feedback about the ideas And the way I presented them and I can honestly say that as a result of all that, I am now seeing things more clearly than I was before, so thank you for that.
