Here, I am not going to introduce a new kind of discipline or field of study, because Buddhist studies has already been a well-established academic field for a long time, and very active with vast area of research nowadays. As an academic discipline, Buddhist studies is supposed to be engaged with a critical mind. That is to say, critical Buddhist studies should be a default mode of inquiry into the subject. In other words, it is redundant to use critical Buddhist studies in academia. The field should be critical by its nature.
However, studying Buddhism in Buddhist countries looks less critical than it should be, particularly in universities directed by the Saṅgha (under control of the government). Moreover, the critical attitude is anathema to those who study the religion in monastic settings or devout communities. So, Buddhist studies is less likely to be critical in Buddhist countries, particularly outside the academic environment.
Now I will define what I mean by Critical Buddhist Studies (CBS onwards). CBS is not a specific discipline, but rather it is the studies of Buddhism directed by critical thinking, usually engaged by Buddhists to gain the best understanding of the religion. So, the target users of CBS are the adherents, not students in universities whose life has nothing to do with Buddhism.
Critical Buddhist Studies is the studies of Buddhism directed by critical thinking, usually engaged by Buddhists to gain the best understanding of the religion.
Why do Buddhists need CBS? This is a pressing problem in our time, which is called post-truth era. In short, If you are not critical enough on everything nowadays, you are likely to be a victim of manipulations. Apart from politics, from which the notion of post-truth originated, religion is also one of the most active domain that reality is manipulated, or ignored completely, for various benefits, sometimes not the benefits for the adherents themselves but just for those who control the narration of truth.
Most religious adherents normally believe, without using proper reasoning, that what is told from authorities is the unquestionable, unchallengeable truth. That is a sign of unhealthy condition of their being, because they can be moved in any direction, or do anything complying with the controllers’ will and benefits.
In religious world, manipulation normally looks subtle, particularly Buddhism, in which many things look very reasonable comparing to other religions. Still, when certain domination is formed over the religion, the reasonableness is subject to manipulation eventually.
However, it is also true that not every manipulation is bad. Certain kind of social management (by using religious means) can end up in solidarity and well-being. The very problem is the management often goes surreptitiously (as a good Machiavellian style of ruling). Critical attitude sees this as a sign of danger or unhealthy condition.
Therefore, CBS encourages every Buddhist to use reasoning over everything related to the religion to get the most transparent understanding. When the best understanding is obtained, they are the adherents themselves who should decide what is worthy to incorporate into their living, not decision from the power position.
Characteristics of Critical Buddhist Studies
Now I will describe marked characteristics of CBS.
1. CBS uses critical thinking
The most important aspect of CBS is it firmly relies on power of reasoning. And it holds that Buddhism itself is a reasonable religion that can be understood by rational means. That is to say, if we study Buddhist text rigorously and apply logical thinking upon it, we will know eventually what Buddhism really tries to teach us.
To clarify, we have to distinguish first between understanding and achieving the goal. Understanding comes from studying, both textual and non-textual materials, whereas achieving the goal needs practice based on that understanding. It is true that the goal of Buddhism cannot be achieved by reasoning alone. Without good understanding, however, we cannot tell a viable practice from the bad one.
Once proper understanding is established, proper practice is ensured. Therefore, at the very beginning, good understanding is the most important. I avoid here the term right understanding, commonly used to mean the first item of the noble eightfold path, because it has specific meaning that does not sound quite ‘right’ to me.
Good or proper understanding, to me, is the understanding coming from critical thinking process. By adopting critical attitude to any teaching, not taking anything for granted, we can reach the true understanding of the religion, even if what we get is exactly the same as told. Contradictions can be the case as well, and we accept that.
If the result of critical thinking does not agree with what has been told formerly and you reject it, then you lapse into the post-truth condition. If it is so, CBS is likely to fail, and it is not suitable to you.
Why that can happen if we are rational beings? As modern cognitive sciences tell us, however, we are normally not so reasonable. Because using reasoning is costly, and we tend to be lazy when thinking about things. Psychologists therefore see our way of thinking as a dual process, widely called System 1 (intuitive processor) and System 2 (conscious rule interpreter).
In short, System 1 is quick, automatic, and unconscious process, while System 2 is slow, deliberate, and effortful. The two systems are suitable for different tasks: in daily routine we mostly use System 1, in solving a Math problem we use System 2, for example. Both systems are the source of our beliefs. We can believe many things by our ‘intuition’ or by our conscious reasoning. Unfortunately, System 1 or ‘intuition’ often wins and causes more problems in life.
Therefore, we have to use conscious thinking more when considering religious (and other) matters that affect our life, and be careful with the autopilot thinking directed by System 1. That is why critical thinking matters for CBS.
Some may see our reasoning differently. For example, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber contend that the two main functions of our reason are (1) to explain and justify ourselves, and (2) to persuade others.
That may explain why good evidence cannot help someone from being a post-truth victim. Because we normally attach to our dear beliefs; we are on guard to rationalize our actions and beliefs. This even shows that critical thinking skill is really important to rescue us from irrational world.
Another reason I want to stress why critical thinking matters is about consistency. To maintain our integrity, hence “say what we do, and do what we say,” we must keep our thinking consistent. Those who have good critical thinking skill normally also have high integrity. For religious people, integrity is a crucial characteristic. Otherwise, they are just hypocrites.
To sum up, critical thinking skill is indispensable to CBS. It is really necessary nowadays and should be used in every aspect of our life. And we have to practice it. Here is the intended definition of the term, the most widely used.
Critical thinking is reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do.
How to think critically, then? If we take the subject seriously, it will be a lot of things to know, like logic, fallacies, psychology of thinking and decision, and those kinds of thing. And it is worth investing your time and effort to study these rigorously. But I think reasoning with our commonsense is enough in most cases. We just have to be aware of it and acknowledge our ignorance, prejudice, and hypocrisy. “Do not judge beyond evidence” is a simple but crucial rule.
2. CBS incorporates critical Pāli studies
To know Buddhism, any kind of Buddhism, is essentially to know its scripture. And beyond Buddhist sectarianism, the Pāli canon is the common asset, the best preserved text in the Buddhist world. This does not mean it is impeccable, but rather it is the most complete set of text we have. To understand Buddhism critically therefore we have to understand the Pāli text critically as well. So, knowing Pāli well is necessary.
The main problem of learning Pāli is it is made (unnecessarily) difficult by the tradition, to keep its authoritative status unchallenged, I think. And learning Pāli from the Western world, mostly from Sanskrit scholars, looks irrelevant from the tradition’s point of view; it is hard to penetrate the mindset of the tradition. Moreover, Pāli studies in both the West and the tradition is seriously outdated. I solve the problem by developing a new approach to the language, as shown in the two volumes of Pāli for New Learners.
When students of Buddhism know Pāli by themselves, not resorting to various translations, they can see what is really said in the text, and they can judge its credibility impartially. To have a clear critical view, mediators like translators has to be taken as supplementary, not primary source of information. Students have to understand Pāli text by their own reading, so to speak.
So, learning Pāli is a critical task of CBS. And it has to be learned critically as well. This means nothing is taken for granted before a text is read, and every presumption has to be assessed by critical attitude. The goal of critical reading of text is not to reject it as rubbish, or accept it mindlessly, but rather to clearly understand it first. Whether the reader will believe in the truthfulness of the text depends on the result of the critical assessment. This can be difficult sometimes to have a definite answer, but to understand it as such is the most important.
I will show an example of a critical reading of a Pāli passage. In the Vinaya, this passage is written:
Sace, ānanda, nālabhissa mātugāmo tathāgatappavedite dhammavinaye agārasmā anagāriyaṃ pabbajjaṃ, ciraṭṭhitikaṃ, ānanda, brahmacariyaṃ abhavissa, vassasahassaṃ saddhammo tiṭṭheyya. Yato ca kho, ānanda, mātugāmo tathāgatappavedite dhammavinaye agārasmā anagāriyaṃ pabbajito, na dāni, ānanda, brahmacariyaṃ ciraṭṭhitikaṃ bhavissati. Pañceva dāni, ānanda, vassasatāni saddhammo ṭhassati. (Cv 10.403)
If, Ānanda, a woman had not obtained the going forth from home into homelessness in the Dhamma and Vinaya declared by the Thus-Gone, Ānanda, the religion [brahmacariya] would have lasted long, the true Dhamma would have lasted for a thousand years. But since, Ānanda, a woman has gone forth from home to homelessness in the Dhamma and Vinaya declared by the Thus-Gone, now, Ānanda, the religion will not last long. Now, only five hundred years, Ānanda, the true Dhamma will last. (my translation)
This instance asserts that, by the Buddha himself, the true teaching had already vanished, regardless of the Bhikkhuṇī ordination. How should we do with this kind of statement? Here are my suggestions:
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You have to read it by Pāli as I show you above. Various translations can be your guideline, but you have to understand every word of it. This passage is relatively easy to read, and we cannot translate otherwise. The message is clear as stated.
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You have to accept the evidence that The Buddha once prophesied the longevity of the religion, the true teaching. And the textual evidence suggests that what we have today as Buddhism is not the original version. If you deny this evidence, you fall victim to the post-truth condition.
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You have to check your presumptions related to the issue. For example, according to the reliability of the canon, you have two choices: the passage is authentic, or it is a later addition. By my assessment, the former case is possible because it is less likely that later generations would kill their religion this way.
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If the authenticity of the passage is the case, you have another two choices to decide: whether what the Buddha said always is true or not. If you hold that the Buddha was always right, you accept that Buddhism you know is not the real one. Otherwise, you have to accept that the Buddha was wrong sometimes. The consequence of this decision is significant and can shape our view on the religion.
From the example above, we can see that the most important aspect of the reader is honesty. We have to accept things as they are, not as the way we want them to be. And this is the very spirit of critical thinkers.
Is learning Pāli difficult? In fact, learning any second or third language is always challenging. It takes time and effort. But learning Pāli is easier than living languages because of its dead nature—the language changes no more. For European languages’ users, learning Pāli can be easier than non-Europeans because the structure of the language is recognizable.
You do not need to master Pāli in all respects to do CBS, though. You just know how the language works and how to use tools properly. We already have several good translations now. These can be a good helper that speeds up your learning process. So, to know Pāli enough to do critical thinking about it is not that difficult nowadays.
3. CBS needs scientific literacy
Logical thinking works on facts. Without good data, critical thinking only yields garbage. In computing domain, it is called GIGO (Garbage In Garbage out). Where do good data come from? The only answer here is science. Physical reality presented in the Pāli canon cannot be regarded as good data nowadays because many things are simply wrong.
A marked example is the idea of cosmology which has a huge mountain (sineru/sumeru) at its center. That picture is downright false. If we accept that the Buddha could be wrong about the world, the science-like accounts of reality in the canon should not be taken seriously.
Scientific knowledge nowadays can shape our view on reality in a significant way. If we do not know what is going on in modern sciences and insist on the traditional beliefs, we can fall into a post-truth victim who denies good evidence.
When talking about Higgs boson, discovered in 2012, many religious people ignore it or see it as a fancy of scientists. But the discovery of the Higgs is indeed showing that knowledge about quantum physics in our time is remarkably progressing, and quantum physics is undeniable reality.
When we take quantum physics as real, even if our knowledge about it is incomplete or scanty for most ordinary people, our view on religious matters should be changed accordingly. For example, at the fundamental level, the quantum world is indeterministic. This means that finding the very first cause of a particle’s behavior is futile. This can imply the belief that everything has its fundamental cause can be false.
Good knowledge of science can also yield better understanding of religious doctrine. Thinking of karma, for example, we can explain it in terms of complex system, which is far more intelligible than the traditional account.
Still, I often meet religious persons who look down on science. They think that science is inferior to the knowledge given in the Pāli canon. For example, a Buddhist writer argues that Near-Death Experience (NDE) is real and can prove that the life after death exists. The writer sees explanations from brain sciences irrelevant, and prefers a spiritual account instead.
I think, in this case, if the writer is better-informed about science and more critical about the religious belief, he will more prudent when making the decision on the issue.
Seeing ghosts is a simple incidence that can test your scientific propensity. When you see something unusual happening before your eyes, how do you respond to this? If you have a firm belief in ghost, you will attribute the incidence to the spirit in no time (and make yourself fear unreasonably).
But if you have scientific mind, you will know that light makes our eyes see things. There must be a light source and the object that reflects it. You also know that by definition a spirit has no physical body that can reflect the light. So, the object you see must be something physical, but you are unsure about it. By this way of thinking, you do not make yourself fear with a poor attribution.
Moreover, if you take hallucination into consideration, you will know that even if there is no object to be seen out there, under some conditions our brain can play tricks on you and makes you see, hear, smell, or have a tangible contact of, many unusual things.
This by no means implies that science can give us definite answers of all things unknown. There are many things that science does not know, and scientists acknowledge their ignorance. That is a good thing, because it makes progress possible. When a better understanding comes, it replaces or improves the old, outdated ones. Whereas religious knowledge is normally treated as final and it resists to change.
However, when we look closely to the development of religious tenets, we can see changes nonetheless, but in a subtle way. Knowledge from the social sciences and humanities can explain religious phenomena at the social level, in the way that the traditional accounts cannot.
So, scientific literacy is important to CBS, because science itself is also a product of critical attitude. To be knowledgeable about science is not difficult today, because well-documented accounts can be found all over the Internet. Reading articles in WikiPedia, for example, is the quickest way to get the big picture of our contemporary knowledge. The only thing we have to do is spending our time and effort. Reading things is always rewarding.
4. Students of CBS practice meditation
Many students of Buddhism do not meditate. This is a sad fact. Understanding Buddhism by studying texts is one thing. Living the life by that understanding is another. To be a true Buddhist, we have to practice in what we know. For Buddhism is not a talkative religion, even though we have many things to read, its primary concern is about practice. And meditation is the hallmark of Buddhist practice.
If students do not know how to meditate, and do not meditate by themselves, their knowledge of Buddhism will never be complete. The ultimate goal of studying Buddhism, in my view, is to know why we meditate and how to do it.
The ‘how’ question is not important because it is all about techniques, and we have many of them. Different kind of individuals suits for different kind of techniques. It is your personal task to experiment and find out what is the best for you. By and large, anything works.
The ‘why’ question is more important in this regard, because it needs rigorous critical thinking over the practice and the fundamentals of the religion. Here are a list of ‘why’ people meditate I can think of.
- To get enlightened
- To be an arhat
- To destroy one’s attā
- To see the cessation of mind
- To get an altered state of consciousness
- To be in ecstasy
- To get visualization
- To get psychic power
- To see one’s past-life
- To see the future
- To see a lottery number
- To fix one’s karma
- To get relaxed
- To relieve stress
- To soothe anxiety
- To heal PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)
- To be in a peaceful community
- To get a label as meditator or real Buddhist
The list can go on and on, because research in benefits and applications of meditation is very active nowadays. Meditation is really useful to our health, but is that the reason we meditation according to the doctrine?
I give you a blunt answer here: we meditate just for the meditation itself. That’s it. If you cannot set your mind in this way, you will never, or it is will be very hard to, get the benefits from Buddhism. Moreover, contrary to a common belief, true meditation is ridiculously simple and easy to do, at least at the conceptual level. Read on in A Humble Guide to Meditation.
Conclusion
For the traditional followers of Buddhism, CBS can look like a bomb. I do not want to fight with the tradition when I propose this approach to the teaching. Rather I want to remind my fellow Buddhists that modern knowledge matters to our understanding of the religion. The gap between the ‘real’ in the traditional sense and the ‘real’ in modern sense has been growing wider and wider. If Buddhism, or exactly Buddhist authorities, cannot adapt itself to the rapidly modernized world, how it can be taught to children of the coming generations.
I hope that CBS can be a cure of irrationality in Buddhism, and pave the way for better understanding of the religion and well-being of the followers in the years to come.
Notes