PART V.

BUDDHISM AND SCIENCE.

325. Q. Has Buddhism any right to be considered a scientific religion, or may it be classified as a "revealed" one?

A. Most emphatically it is not a revealed religion. The Buddha did not so preach, nor is it so understood. On the contrary, he gave it out as the statement of eternal truths, which his predecessors had taught like himself.

326. Q. Repeat again the name of the Sutta, in which the Buddha tells us not to believe in an alleged revelation without testing it by one's reason and experience?

A. The Kalama Sutta, of the Anguthara Nikaya.

327. Q. Do Buddhists accept the theory that everything has been formed out of nothing by a Creator?

A. The Buddha taught that two things are causeless, viz., 'Akasha' and 'Nirvana': everything has come out of Akasha, in obedience to a law of motion inherent in it, and, after a certain existence, passes away.

[paragraph continues] Nothing ever came out of nothing. We do not believe in miracles; hence we deny creation, and cannot conceive of a creation of something out of nothing. Nothing organic is eternal. Everything is in a state of constant flux, and undergoing change and reformation, keeping up the continuity according to the law of evolution.

328. Q. Is Buddhism opposed to education, and to the study of science?

A. Quite the contrary: in the Sigalowada Sutta, in a discourse preached by the Buddha, He specified as one of the duties of a teacher that he should give his pupils "instruction in science and lore." The Buddha's higher teachings are for the enlightened, the wise, and the thoughtful.

329. Q. Can you show any further endorsement of Buddhism by science?

A. The Buddha's doctrine teaches that there were many progenitors of the human race; also that there is a principle of differentiation among men; certain individuals have a greater capacity for the rapid attainment of Wisdom and arrival at Nirvana than others.

330. Q. Any other?

A. Buddhism supports the teaching of the indestructibility of force.

331. Q. Should Buddhism be called a chart of science or a code of morals?

A. Properly speaking, a pure moral philosophy, a system of ethics and transcendental metaphysics. It is so eminently practical that the Buddha kept silent when Malunka asked about the origin of things.

332. Q. Why did he do that?

A. Because he thought that our chief aim should be to see things as they exist around us and try to make them better, not to waste time in intellectual speculations.

333. Q. What do Buddhists say is the reason for the occasional birth of very good and wise children of bad parents, and that of very bad ones of good parents?

A. It is because of the respective Karmas of children and parents; each may have deserved that such unusual relationships should be formed in the present birth.