Necessity, Chance, or Design: What, or who, will determine human destiny?

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Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

Jacques Monod (1910-1976) is a French biochemist known for his seminal contribution in the scientific field of molecular biology as exemplified by his pioneering work on the genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis. He is also known for coining “chance and necessity” as the term that describes the dual mechanisms behind evolutionary process, which he spelled out in his 1970 book, Le Hasard et la Necessite: Essai sur la philosohie naturelle de la biologie moderne (Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology). The term was an elegant way to describe how evolution is led by necessity, or natural selection, as well as by chance, or mutation.

Natural selection proposed by Charles Darwin (1809-1882) as the concept that describes evolutionary process has certainly been among the most controversial concepts in the history of science. Yet, the conception of nature as a dynamic process that exerts a selective force on every species if it is to maintain its viability in that changing environment is now widely accepted, with increasing understanding of the mechanism by which that selection operates, thanks to the development of such modern scientific disciplines as molecular biology and genetics.

Advances in these scientific disciples have been so phenomenal that scientists are now aware of the vital role human intervention plays in influencing the process of evolution for human species. In fact, Edward O Wilson, whose expertise on the subject of evolution is widely recognized, goes as far as suggesting that natural selection may be on the way out as far as human evolution is concerned: “We are about to abandon natural selection, the process that created us, in order to direct our own evolution by volitional selection—the process of redesigning our biology and human nature as we wish them to be.”1

What Wilson is suggesting is really a scary prospect for us humans. This is so because life, including us human species, has evolved by interplay of dual mechanisms of “chance” and “necessity”, between “spontaneous order” and “natural selection”, as Stuart Kaufman explains: “Life and its evolution have always depended on the mutual embrace of spontaneous order and selection’s crafting of that order.”2 But volitional selection goes beyond the mechanism of self-organization that creates spontaneous order. It is a new mechanism of “design” as a driving force behind human evolution. As the process guided by chance and necessity, humans have reached the stage where we are at by an accumulated series of fortuitous events during evolution and not by any kind of divine intervention or by purposeful action. In other words, human evolution is not, as Wilson points out, predestined to reach any goal. This means that where we are headed as a species now depends very much on what we do with our newly acquired capacity for volitional selection.

The possibility of volitional selection is already with us, for the precise DNA editing at the moment of conception is now known for mice, though not yet for humans. What this implies is that the birth of “designer babies” is no longer an imaginary conception of science fiction writers but may soon become a real possibility for medical scientists. While the possibility of producing human babies genetically modified for health and intelligence sounds like an exciting news, it raises a challenging question for us as to who will determine what sort of qualities are to be endowed in those designer babies. It is true that we have promoted and developed finer qualities such as compassion, equanimity, generosity, and love, thanks to the insights and teachings of our humanistic thinkers and spiritual leaders. But the fact of the matter is that we still carry with us the remnants of our reptilian past in our brain. Where we are headed as a species will therefore depend crucially on whether we can overcome what Wilson calls “the Paleolithic Curse”: “We are hampered by the Paleolithic Curse: genetic adaptation that worked very well for millions of years of hunter-gatherer existence but are increasingly a hindrance in a globally urban and technoscientific society.”3

  1. Wilson, Edward O., The Meaning of Human Existence, New York: Liveright, 2015, p. 14.
  2. Kaufman, Stuart A., At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, p.9.
  3. Wilson, op. cit., p. 176.

What does taking refuge in the Three Jewels mean today?

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Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

As His Holiness the Dalai Lama points out in his recent book, Buddhism: One Teacher, Many Traditions, taking refuge in the Three Jewels of the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha can be considered “the demarcation of becoming a Buddhist” that transcends the diversity of Buddhist traditions that has sprung from one teacher.1 Having no direct access to the historical Buddha, nor to his teachings except in the form of expositions and interpretations given by generations of Buddhist scholars and teachers, what it means “to take refuge in the Three Jewels” is different today from its original meaning.

The starting point of the Three Jewels is the appearance of the historical Buddha. To be more precise, the Three Jewels came into being when the prince Siddhartha of the Sakya clan became the awakened one, or the Buddha, after realizing enlightenment in Uruvela, and delivered his first discourse about the truth of the world, or the Dharma, to a group of five ascetics in the Deer Park in Isipatana, who would become his first disciples. This is when the Sangha as a community of shravakas, or “word-hearers” who directly heard the Buddha’s discourses, was born. Two important additions to the Buddha’s early Sangha were Maudgalyayana and Shariputra, who would become the Buddha’s chief disciples.

The membership of the Sangha had to be expanded beyond a community of monastic disciples to include lay followers as well, as the Buddha started to attract increasing numbers of ordinary people to follow his teachings. Early entrants from the lay community include such names as Yashas, son of a well-to-do Benares business family, and his family and friends, King Bimbisara of the kingdom of Madadha, known as one who donated the bamboo grove to the Buddha’s Sangha, and Anathapindika of Kosala, a rich and generous donator known as the “Feeder of the Poor”, who donated Jeta’s Grove. Mention must also be made of Rahula, the Buddha’s son, Ananda, the Buddha’s cousin, and Mahapajapati, the Buddha’s stepmother, who all became the followers of the Buddha and his teachings.

As Thich Nhat Hanh points out in his Peaceful Action, Open Heart, the Sangha as the “fourfold assembly” (catuparisa) consisting of monks, nuns, male lay followers and female lay followers, came to be widely recognized by the time the Lotus Sutra was compiled.2 It is recorderd in the Nikayas that the Buddha himself talked about these four groups as those who “adorn” the Sangha: “Bhikkhus, these four kinds of persons who are competent, disciplined, self-confident, learned, experts on the Dhamma, practicing in accordance with the Dhamma, adorn the Sangha.”3

The four kinds of persons the Buddha recognized as those who adorn his Sangha still adorn the Sangha today. As Bhikkhu Bodhi points out, there is no question that the Sangha is “the visual representation of the Buddha in the world” today.4 However, unlike those people who joined the Sangha as “word-hearers”, those of us who decide to join the Sangha today do so through indirect exposure to the Buddha’s teachings by reading books and articles written by Buddhist scholars, by listening to talks given by Buddhist teachers, or by attending retreats given at many Buddhist practice centers that are now to be found in many parts of the world. This means that we become members of the Sangha not as “word-hearers” but as “dharma-practitioners”, based on what we perceive to be the Buddha’s Dharma as expounded by these scholars, teachers, and retreat organizers.

Because our exposure to the Buddha’s Dharma is vicarious today, there are a number of ways in which we become “dharma-practitioners”. We may be “dharma-practitioners” in the sense that we commit ourselves to observing the Five Precepts. Observing the Five Precepts, needless to say, is just the entry level when it comes to Buddhist practice. The next level of Buddhist practice would be to follow the Noble Eightfold Path, which the Buddha taught as the path that would lead to the cessation of suffering. But the relevance of the Noble Eightfold Path need to be reexamined in the context of the realities of the world today if it is to serve as a guide for “dharma-practitioners” today. Or to put it differently, the Dharma that members of the Sangha need to practice as “dharma-practitioners” must be the “living Dharma” that is relevant to our daily living in the world of 21st century.

What, then, is the “living Dharma”? According to Thich Nhat Hanh, the essence of the “living Dharma” is “mindful living”: “When you practice mindful breathing, mindful walking, mindful sitting, you bring peace and serenity into yourself, you get understanding and compassion, and you radiate peace while you walk, sit and speak. Love understanding, and peace can be seen, and that is the living Dharma.”5 To the extent that the Sangha practices the living Dharma, we can have confidence in its role not only as the third jewel of the Three Jewels in the 21st century but also in its role as the promoter of love, understanding, and peace that we so desperately need in the world today. Such a Sangha can indeed be declared the best kind of Sangha that the Buddha talked about: “To whatever extent there are Sanghas or groups, the Sangha of the Tathagata’s disciples is declared the best among them … Those who have confidence in the Sangha have confidence in the best, and for those who have confidence in the best, the result is the best.”6

  1. Tenzin Gyatso, Bhiksu, and Bhiksuni Thubten Chodron, Buddhism: One Teacher, Many Traditions, Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2014.
  2. Nhat Hanh, Thich, Peaceful Action, Open Heart: Lessons from the Lotus Sutra, Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2008, p. 19.
  3. Anguttara Nikaya 4:7.
  4. Bhikkhu Bodhi, “The Challenge of the sangha in the 21st Century”, Bodhi Monastery Bulletin, July 19, 2006.
  5. Nhat Hanh, Thich, and the Monks and Nuns of Plum Village, One Buddha Is Not Enough: A Story of Collective Awakening, Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2010, p. 213.
  6. Anguttara Nikaya 4:34.