Buddhism | | Page 20

Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

The Buddha’s concept of paticca-samuppada, or “dependent origination”, expresses an idea that everything in the world around us comes into being with a concurrence of causes and conditions. Involving, as it does, a concurrence of causes and conditions, anything that exists does so only as a composite entity in the context of a specific configuration of causes and conditions. Or to put it another way, nothing in the world around us exists by itself, which is the Buddha’s conception of sunyata, or “emptiness”. As such, “dependent origination” can be construed as summarily expressing the Buddha’s view of the evolutionary process of change and transformation for all composite entities, which he calls sankharas: “It is by a process of evolution that sankharas come to be.”¹ Moreover, as the products of a dynamic, evolutionary process, sankharas are subject to anicca, or “impermanence”: “All compound things are transitory: they grow and they decay.”²

As the life of all composite entities is subject to the cycle of birth and death in the Buddha’s view of the world, it comes as no surprise that the existence of all life involves “struggle” of one kind or another. Thus, the Buddha states, “Struggle must be, for all life is a struggle of some kind.”³ In this statement, though it was expressed in the context of his warning against those of us who struggle in clinging to our non-existent self, we can see how close the Buddha comes to expressing an idea that evolution is a process that involves the struggle for existence for all living beings—an idea that would be translated into the theory of “natural selection” by Charles Darwin (1809-1882).

The theory of natural selection developed by Darwin—and Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)—is a theory about the mechanism by which a new species emerges in the natural world. Darwin realized that a phenomenon such as the emergence of a species could not be explained by following the Cartesian mode of acquiring knowledge of the world around us, which involves partitioning and segmentation of the world into non-interacting parts. Thus, Darwin states, in Introduction to his Origin of Species, an event such as the origin of species can be made comprehensible to us only “by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could have any bearing on it.”⁴

“All sorts of facts which could have any bearing on it” literally include all sorts of factors that are behind evolution—biological, chemical, geological, cosmological. In other words, “all sorts of facts” that Darwin talks about are nothing but the whole collections of “causes and conditions” that are behind the appearance and disappearance of composite entities in the world around us, a biological species being one example of such composite entities. In this sense, Darwin’s theory of natural selection can be regarded as an application of the Buddha’s idea of “dependent origination” to a specific class of phenomena, namely, the phenomenon of the emergence of a new species in the natural environment, or the world of “name and form”, as the Buddha put it.

While Darwin himself acknowledges the influence of the idea of the disparity between population growth and food production developed by Robert Malthus (1766-1834), neither he nor his biographers tell us about the possible influence of the Buddha’s idea on the formation of his theory of natural selection. Considering, however, how nicely this theory fits into the idea of “dependent origination”, we may perhaps be justified to designate Darwin’s theory of natural selection as a variation on a theme composed by the Buddha, namely, the theme of paticca-samuppada.

Designating Darwin’s theory of natural selection as a variation on a theme by the Buddha does not, in any way, diminish the importance of Darwin’s original contribution to the body of our knowledge of the world around us. It is a remarkable theory in that it explains the emergence of man as a species following the same mechanism of natural selection as all the other species without any need for an intelligent designer. It is a culminating achievement of the power of science, as Richard Dawkins (1941- ) explains: “Natural selection not only explains the whole of life; it also raises consciousness to the power of science to explain how organized complexity can emerge from simple beginnings without any deliberate action.”⁵ In a way, it is ironic that Darwin was the one who appealed to that power of science in explaining the emergence of species, for he was headed for the clergyman’s career when he decided to enter the Divinity School at Cambridge at the suggestion of his father. What prompted Darwin to pursue the career of a naturalist were his encounters with such people as John Henslow (1796-1861) and Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) at Cambridge who roused his interest in botany and geology, two scientific disciplines that played crucial roles in formulating his theory of natural selection.

It must be said to have been a courageous act on the part of Darwin to suggest the idea of natural selection in the cultural environment of Christianity, for it presented a direct challenge to the Biblical account of the origin of species, which grants man a special status in the natural world. Darwin’s theory, in contrast, says that there is nothing special about man, being just one species in the natural world teemed with all sorts of living organisms. Is this not the same as saying that man is just a sankhara, destined to follow the same cycle of birth and death as all the other sankharas, though we are prone to delude ourselves into thinking that we are somehow special, clinging to our illusionary self?

To add a final note—no pun intended—just as we can detect what is definitely Brahms’ sound in his “Variations on a Theme by Haydn” or “Variation and Fugue on a Theme of Handel”, we can detect what is definitely Darwin’s science in his theory of natural selection. For, what Darwin does in his Origin of Species is to carefully and cautiously develop his theory against the background of patiently accumulated empirical evidence, while expanding on a theme by the Buddha.

Carus, Paul, Gospel of the Buddha, Oxford: Oneworld, 1994, p.158.
Ibid, p.158.
Ibid, p.148.
Darwin, Charles, The Origin of Species, New York: Hill and Wang, 1979, p.46.
Dawkins, Richard, The God Delusion, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008, Chapter 4.

Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

The spring equinox is a joyous day for the people living in the Northern Hemisphere as it signifies the end of long dark winter nights with daylight hours, which have been slowly getting longer day by day since the winter solstice, finally catching up with and overtaking nighttime hours as the day passes. With the Sun crossing the Earth’s Equator, the Northern Hemisphere is now blessed with warm sunlight showering over fields and gardens, inviting trees to shoot out their buds and flowers to come out of the earth.

For the Japanese, too, this astronomical event a joyous occasion that signals the official arrival of spring. In fact, it is designated as a national holiday as “the day to praise nature and love living beings”. But the spring equinox, along with the autumn equinox, is also an important occasion for the Japanese to be reminded of their Buddhist heritage.

In Japan, an equinox is also known by its traditional term, higan (彼岸). As an equinox occurs twice a year, with hot summer and cold winter in-between the two equinoxes, the Japanese often talk about “atsusa samusa mo higan made”, which can be translated as: “No heat wave, or cold spell, lasts beyond the equinox”. This popular saying attests to the keen awareness on the part of the Japanese of the passage of seasons, which they also exhibit in their haikus. For example, Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927), known for his novel Rashomon, composed the following haiku on the occasion of the spring equinox: “take no me mo akane sasitaru higan kana” (Bamboo buds, too, start reddening with the light of the spring equinox).¹

As used by the Japanese, higan does not refer to a single day but to a seven-day period around an equinox, with three days before and three days after the equinox. The first day of higan is called higan-iri, or “the start of higan”, and the last day higan ake, which means “the end of higan”. The spring equinox in 2015 in Japan occurs on March 21, meaning that higan for the Japanese this year starts on March 18 and ends on March 24. During the higan week, the Japanese are expected to perform their duties and obligations as Buddhist practitioners. An equinox’s connection with their Buddhist heritage comes from the meaning of its traditional term, higan, which means: “the other shore”.

For the adherents of the Pure Land sect of Buddhism, the spring equinox is designated as the day on which they visit the graves of their ancestors, who are in “the other shore”, or the Pure Land for them, which is believed to be in the west, the direction in which the Sun sets on the day of the spring equinox. The custom of visiting graves of ancestors on the day of the equinox, in spring and in autumn, is said to have begun during the Heian period (794-1185), when the Pure Land Buddhism gained influence among the Japanese against the background of great social strife and turmoil, which led them to believe that they were living in the latter days of Buddhism.

For Buddhist practitioners in general, higan signifies the period during which they remind themselves of their resolve to accomplish the goal of “reaching the other shore”, whose Chinese expression tohigan (到彼岸) comes from the Sanskrit term “paramita”. Paramita is also translated as “perfection”, suggesting that the term refers to the final state of accomplishment in Buddhist practice. During the higan week, practitioners are supposed to go through six paramitas, three paramitas of danaparamita (generosity), shilaparamita, (morality) and kshantiparamita (patience) before, and the remaining three paramitas of viryaparamita (diligence), dhyanaparamita (meditation) and prajnaparamita (wisdom) after the day of the equinox, which is set aside for rest and reflection. The reason six paramitas are chosen for this occasion is because they are regarded as the key practices in Mahayana Buddhism, known as the six bodhisattva practices for crossing to the other shore. The practice begins with danaparamita (generosity), which the Buddha uses in Vajracchedika Prajnaparamita Sutra, known as The Diamond Sutra, as an example to show Venerable Subhuti how the happiness beyond conception and measurement can be obtained from the practice of generosity without relying on any form, sound, smell, taste, tactile object, or dharma.

The custom of practicing six paramitas during the equinox week, according to Nihon Koki, an official history of the country compiled during the early Heian period, begun in 806. It was this year that the higane (彼岸会), or “a Buddhist prayer service during an equinox”, was held for the first time in Japan. The occasion was to pacify the spirit of Prince Sawara, a younger brother of Emperor Kanmu (737-806), who starved himself to death on the way to his exile in Awaji in protest against the charge that he was involved in the assassination of Fujiwara Tanetsugu, the chief architect of the Emperor’s new capital at Nagaoka. With the death of the Emperor’s wife and other family members and a number of natural disasters such as pestilence and volcanic eruptions that followed the death of Prince Sawara, Emperor Kanmu was compelled to hold a proper Buddhist ceremony to honor Prince Sawara, who was a devout practitioner of Buddhism, by inviting Buddhist monks to recite The Diamond Sutra.

Some may consider the custom of practicing six paramitas just twice a year during the equinox weeks another evidence of the decline of Buddhism as a spiritual guide for the Japanese. On the other hand, there may be others who argue that practicing six paramitas twice a year may be better than not practicing at all, for what is important is the Mahayana idea of crossing the river together to the other shore in a large vessel. What is most challenging for Buddhist practitioners today everywhere, not just in Japan, is the widening of the river that separates this shore from the other shore. Standing, as we do, on this shore full of violent conflicts and confrontations in the globalized world today, we need to practice six paramitas every day of the year if we are to cross to the other shore, as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests: “The practice of the paramitas can be the practice of our daily lives. We are on the shore of suffering, anger, and depression, and we want to cross over to the shore of well-being. To cross over, we have to do something, and that is called paramita. … We can practice “perfection” every day.”²

The original Japanese expression are as follows:「竹の芽も茜さしたる彼岸かな」
The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, New York: Broadway Books, 1999, p. 192.

Category Archives: Buddhism

Natural Selection as a Variation on a Theme by the Buddha

Crossing the river—twice a year—to the other shore