Buddhist Biology: Ancient Eastern Wisdom Meets Modern Western Science

Conceived without its supernatural elements, modern Buddhism coalesces “in outlook and insight” with modern biology, says evolutionary biologist Barash (Homo Mysterious). Buddhism’s rejection of absolutes, its empiricism, and its emphasis on experience over dogma are only a few of the ways it mirrors biological disciplines. And its “Big Three” tenets “are built into the very structure of the world”: anatman (not self), anitya (impermanence), pratitya-samutpada (connectedness). Both Buddhism and biology see the individual as less important than the ever-changing natural world: in Buddhism, the individual is the result of eons of karma; in biology, the individual is the result of eons of evolution, or “gene-based karma” We matter less than our genes, which matter less than all genes. Buddhism, unlike Judeo-Christianity, preaches reverence for nature; for mammals that “use sonar to hunt moths on the wing... bacteria that can prosper in superheated underwater deep-sea vents, eagles that can make out the face of a dime while hovering a hundred feet in the air.” Biology and Buddhism part ways where the former reserves compassion for kin while the latter urges compassion for all. Barash proclaims Buddhism as biology’s sentient partner, not its servant, in this provocative and poetic riff on spirituality and science. (Dec.)