Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

“A miracle may be accurately defined,” wrote David Hume (1711-1776) in his essay titled An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1748, “as a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent.”¹ Great infidel that he was, seeing nature as the work of “some deity who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance”, Hume was unlikely to have turned to the Deity as the miracle worker. And as a dominant figure of the Enlightenment who had an unfailing faith in the power of reason, Hume was also unlikely to have sought some invisible agent behind miracles. This leaves us with but one conclusion: that the above definition was actually Hume’s way of negating the existence of miracles. In fact, later in the same essay, Hume goes on to say, “No human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle and make it a just foundation for any such system of religion.”²

Hume’s negation of miracles must have posed a bold challenge to the theological tradition of the West, which had been dominated by doctrines sanctioned by the Church. Even Spinoza (1632-1677), known as the great rationalist philosopher of the seventeenth century, was ready to admit that the Bible, which is full of stories of miracles, must be treated as an exceptional, privileged document because people in biblical days were limited in their powers of observation and reasoning. As a matter of fact, the existence of miracles had been—as indeed it still is—sanctioned by none other than the authority of the Church. The strongest expression of the Church’s position on miracles can be found in the following statement from the First Vatican Council in 1870: “If anyone shall say that miracles can never be known for certain, or that the divine origin of the Christian religion cannot properly be proved by them: let him be cast out.”³

In negating the existence of miracles, Enlightenment thinkers like Hume went to the other extreme with their firm conviction that all natural events and phenomena could ultimately be made intelligible by rational inquiry. Their conviction has been bolstered by the development of modern science, as scientists have steadily expanded their body of knowledge of the natural world with discoveries of the laws of nature. The success of classical physics since Newton (1642-1727), in particular, should be noted as it set the stage for the emergence of “determinism”, an idea initially formulated by Laplace (1749-1827), a pivotal figure in the development of mathematical astronomy, which would completely eliminate miracles from the natural world. As Hawking and Mlodinow explain, “determinism” is the notion that “given the state of the universe at one time, a complete set of laws fully determines both the future and the past. This would exclude the possibility of miracles or an active role for God.”⁴

“Materialism” is a strong version of “determinism”, for it asserts that matter is the fundamental constituent of the universe and that the motions and behaviors of all material objects can ultimately be understood in terms of fundamental particles and the forces governing them. It was not until the emergence of quantum mechanics in the early part of the twentieth century that scientists started to raise doubts about “materialism”, as they came to recognize the essential role of the observer in the discovery of the laws of nature. Some modern scientists are ready to argue that consciousness must be included as an essential aspect of our descriptions about natural events and phenomena. However, they have not quite converted other scientists to their view who still cling to the materialist view of consciousness as a derived phenomenon that emerges from the workings of the material brain.

Turning our attention to the tradition of Eastern thought, Buddhism shares certain aspects of “determinism”, for it, too, excludes the possibility of miracles or an active role for God. However, Buddhism certainly rejects “materialism” as it, like quantum physics, recognizes that consciousness is an essential aspect of the evolution of the universe, as the Dalai Lama explains: “Buddhism … explains the evolution of the cosmos in terms of the principle of dependent origination, in that the origin and existence of everything has to be understood in terms of the complex network of interconnected causes and conditions. This applies to consciousness as well as matter.”⁵

The principle of “dependent origination”, or paticca-samuppada, is the theory of evolutionary change in Buddhist thought. It is a universal principle in that it applies to every possible event or phenomenon in the universe. This does not mean that we can identify all the causes and conditions behind a specific event or phenomenon. What we do know is that every event or phenomenon comes about as a result of the concurrence of all possible causes and conditions. To the extent that dependent origination is a universal principle, there is no place for any miraculous event or phenomenon that cannot be explained by this principle. Does this mean that it is un-Buddhist to talk about miracles?

Not necessarily, for we have none other than Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay), a recognized authority on Buddhist thought today, talking about miracles. However, when Thay talks about miracles, he is not talking about the kinds of miracles recounted in biblical stories. “People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—or our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”⁶ To walk on Earth—mindfully, that is—is what Thay means when he talks about a miracle. To walk mindfully is a miracle because sati, or mindfulness, enables us to transform ourselves to see things as they are and to see ourselves as we really are.

While mindfulness is a miracle, no external authority will sanction that we have accomplished this miracle. Although a seasoned master can be a guide in our practice to transform ourselves, it is up to us, individual practitioners, to realize that we have reached the level of accomplishment that can be called a miracle—a miracle that can only be described as the miracle of transformation.

1. Hume, David, On Human Nature and Understanding, New York: Macmillan, 1962, p. 120.
2. Ibid., p. 133.
3. First Vatican Council (On Line).
4. Hawking, Stephen, and Mlodinow, Leonard, The Grand Design, New York: Bantam Books, 2010.
5. The Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality, New York: Broadway Books, 2005.
6. Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness, Boston: Beacon Press, 1975.