Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 72-minute seminar, Ilia Durovic explores the biological paradox of altruism and its implications for Buddhist philosophy. Beginning with Darwin’s own discomfort about altruism as a challenge to natural selection theory, Durovic examines striking cases across animal kingdoms: the self-sacrificing honeybees and Brazilian forest ants, naked mole rats of Somalia with their eusocial structure, and experimental evidence of spontaneous altruism in albino rats. He dissects the inadequacy of sociobiological explanations—kin selection, group selection, haplodiploidy—showing how these theories strain to account for widespread altruistic behavior that enhances no individual’s genetic fitness. Durovic then pivots to human behavior, demonstrating how sociobiology cannot account for monasticism, asceticism, or the bodhisattva ideal of universal compassion for unrelated others. He proposes reincarnation as a more parsimonious explanation than gene-centered mechanisms, cites recent neuroscientific evidence of mirror neurons and innate ethical awareness in pre-verbal infants, and concludes that culture and karmic habituation across lifetimes offer a simpler framework than ultra-Darwinism. The talk closes with Q&A on Buddhist-Christian dialogue and the demands of authentic spiritual practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Ilia Empathy and KIndness 2 – IS.mp3
UUID: f3e9e0b2-85d0-4980-be71-a10b3ed142a1
Teacher: Ilia S. Durovic
Collection: Ilia Seminars
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~7,969
So, we now are going to be addressing the very crux of this conference, which is the paradox of altruism. It is a paradox from the standpoint of biology that there is such a thing as altruism. And it is a paradox of which the biologists are keenly aware. A huge amount of effort in modern biology has been has been dedicated to giving an account of altruism. Not altruism in humans where it can be understood in the light of culture, but clear unambiguous altruism in animals.
All animals from insects all the way up through mammals. And the issue is so sensitive that Stephen Jay Gould, who was one of the leading biologists of his generation, says, the vexatious problem of altruism, previously the greatest stumbling block to a Darwinian theory of social behavior. Altruistic acts of the cement of stable societies. Until we could explain apparent acts of self sacrifice, note the apparent. Biologists are profoundly uncomfortable with the notion of self sacrifice, so it has to be apparent.
As potentially beneficial to the genetic fitness of the sacrifice, in other words the transmission of the genetic code of the sacrifices themselves, propagation of genes with the enhanced survival of kin for instance, the prevalence of altruism blocked any Darwinian theory of social behavior. In other words, Stephen J. Goode himself acknowledges that on the basis of the data regarding altruism, it is difficult to formulate a social theory of Darwinism, a theory of behavior behavior in in the the light light of of Darwinism. Darwinism. Attempts have been made to explain this altruism.
So we will first cover several instances of altruism, which are clearly established and then see what the rationales, the biological rationales are and whether these rationales make sense. I think we will find during this conference that many rationales have been explained, have been provided. Provided, not many make a lot of sense. The first of which is instances of altruism among insects and the famous case is that of the bees of which Darwin himself was aware. Queen bees after mating with their drones, would generally die shortly after, are the sole bees in the hive which reproduce.
They therefore are the sole bee in the entire hive which transmits its genetic material. And they are surrounded by workers who do not reproduce and whose capacity to reproduce is actually inhibited by a pheromone within the saliva of the mandible of the queen bee. Now the behavior of these workers is from a strict Darwinian standpoint irrational. The workers are sacrificing their life, their work, their energy without any genetic gain, any possibility to transmit their own genetic code, in other words any increase in genetic fitness. The queen herself has a dramatic increase in genetic fitness, since the totality of the hive is dedicated solely to the transmission of her own genetic code.
Now this has been explained in the case of Hymenoptera, bees among others, because of a very specific phenomenon which is called haploidy. Which basically means that the siblings of a queen bee, in other words the workers which are her siblings, are more closely related to her genetically than her own offspring. And therefore one can make a case that there is an advantage, a genetic advantage for the workers in not reproducing and taking care of the queen bee, because thereby they transmit through her large swathes of their genetic patrimony. Now, I can see in your faces you find this rather contrived, it is rather contrived. But this is the sort of acrobatics which Darwinism, the modern synthesis and sociobiology have to do to make sense of behavior which at first sight makes no sense at all.
If in a strict Darwinian model the goal of every individual is to the goal, the function is not a goal, the function of every individual is to transmit their genetic material and the individual best adapted to a given environment is able to transmit it, then individuals who refuse to reproduce are engaging in anti Darwinian behavior, which should be forbidden. Now there’s an even more extreme example of this which has come to light just in the last one or two years, which is a case of altruism among Brazilian forest ants, which is a first known case of preemptive suicide to defend a community where Brazilian forest ants will actually seal the entrance of their nest from the outside, accepting their own death, because if they stay out of the nest all night, the odds of their basically being killed are astronomical. So they are not just protecting their nest against an attack, they are preemptively anticipating a threat to the nest and sacrificing their own lives to do this. This was established by Polish researcher, Tofilski Adam, just a bare two or three years ago. It is again behavior which is problematical from the standpoint of sociobiology and is again explained in terms of what is known as the theory of kin selection, where the ant which sacrifices itself gains in its own sacrifice, because so many of the ants of the rush or the hive are closely related to it, that large parts of the individual genetic material of that ant will be transmitted.
Again, obviously the ant is unaware of this, it sounds like a very poor rationale for self sacrifice. Go to the front young ant, small bits of your genetic code will be transmitted by others perhaps, but this is a sort of rationale which is advanced. And we have an example among mammals, among the naked mole rats of Somalia, which are one of the most interesting animal communities, because even though they are mammals, their lives in community resemble strongly that of the Hymenoptera, of the bees or ants. They live underground in Somalia, Kenya, in The Sudan, are practically blind, and only one of the naked mole rats in a community of some 70 will reproduce, the queen mole rat. The others have genetic apparatuses, genetic functionality, but do not reproduce and they show strong community behavior to a degree which really reminds one sometimes of the behavior of citizens of a big city.
City. For instance, as we said only the queen reproduces, they are strongly territorial and what is of importance from a sociobiological standpoint is that it is the most inbred species of mammal recorded. So this means once again that if you accept the theory of kin selection, this is a species in which kin selection would make sense, because the genetic code of the various individuals is very closely related. They will sacrifice their own lives for the colony. If a snake tries to enter the colony, one of the naked mole rats will block the entrance with its own body and be devoured by the snake.
And anyone but a biologist would say that they have language. They have a complex set of vocalizations which is being studied, the full range is not understood, vocalizations for defense, to warn against territorial aggression for mating and so forth. They show behavior which seems to indicate that they anticipate the future. They, for instance, will never eat the totality of tubers which grow inside the barrow, but will only eat a portion at time allowing the tuber to continue to grow and nourish the colony and even have a very strong sense of hygiene. They have a special toilet section in the burrow.
Access is divided by gender, which is very sweet. And I am not terribly sure what the sociobiological explanation for that is, but I’m sure one can be fine one can be found with enough effort. You see from a Buddhist standpoint such behavior is a behavior of a community of sentient beings. There’s no particular problem. Sentient beings with less development than humans, but you have a community, there’s a language, there is some anticipation of the future, distribution of tasks, self sacrifice but none of this can be taken on board by contemporary biology.
And that is why we are covering these remarkably artificial theories to account for for very surprising behavior from the standpoint of biologists. And then finally the countless cases of altruism among primates. I just took the case of the vervet monkey, who will give an alarm call to warn fellow monkeys of the presence of predators at the cost of his own life. Now these are not isolated occurrences. Altruism is not exceptional among mammals, it is standard among all social mammals, the degree varies.
Then among insects altruism seems to be indispensable for the creation of a society. All social insects show altruistic behavior. So one is left to wonder what sort of a biological theory Darwin would have created, if instead instead of building biology on natural selection, he built it on altruism. It would have been a very different biology and the data is is there. The data showing the existence of altruism is at least strong as the data showing that animals are controlled by instincts and desperately attempt to perpetuate their own self.
It’s a matter of pre selection of the data in the construction of theory. And what we try to point out during the first part of this conference is that Darwin, like all of us, came from a culture. There were certain cultural a prioris. He was a product of Victorian England and the industrial age and he read nature in that light. This is what we have inherited.
What is very striking, as you will see in your bibliography, is the amount of effort which has gone at trying to understand altruistic behavior. There are two major articles by Rice in the article section of your bibliography, which are some of the foundational articles in attempting to understand altruistic behavior among albino rats. When one studies the experimental procedures which Rice used to try to understand and explicate the existence of altruism, it leads one to the question who is the beast? It is very striking. These are the procedures which were adopted to study altruistic behavior in rats.
I’m relying here on Masserman’s article which was a development of Rice’s article. In one test 10 out of 15 animals, the animals were in a cage, they could choose between pulling a chain which did not inflict an electric shock to another rat and gave them only half the food, or pulling a chain which inflicted an electric shock to another rat and gave them double the food. 10 out of 15 animals preferred to pull a chain which did not inflict an electric shock, even though this resulted in half as many food food rewards as pulling the chain. Of the remaining five animals, the five in question, one completely stopped pulling the chain for twelve days and starved. The other stopped for five days after witnessing the screams of the shocked animals.
They were able to see their fellow rats being electrocuted when they satisfied their own desire for more food. And this is from Rice’s articles on the subject, in which albino rats were hoisted by pulleys from the ground. When albino rats were faced with the suffering of a fellow rat hoisted off the ground, they consistently pressed a bar to reduce the subject’s distress. Then Rice tested inflicting great fear on the rats to see how this affected their altruistic reaction and would electrocute rats and see how the other rats behaved. And I regret to say it is profoundly human behavior.
They typically retreated to the corner of their boxes, farthest from the distressed squeaking and dancing animals and crouched their motionless for the greater part of this condition. This is how altruism distress is tested by scientists. And this is, I’m afraid, where the road of Buddhism and science separate completely. Completely. So these are the Darwinian rationales for biological altruism.
We have group selection, which was Darwin’s answer, which was initially rejected in the twentieth century in favor of kin selection, where one is studying the sum total of the genes which are shared among kin. And our group selection seems to have a bit of a return in favor. In every single case altruism is explained as enhancing genetic fitness, as enhancing the transmission of one’s own genetic code. I think if you see the cases we covered, altruism among bees, altruism among the Brazilian forest ant, altruism among the naked mole rats and the behavior of albino rats, this is not a convincing explanation. Something else is afoot and it is striking to me that biologists are so uncomfortable addressing the something else, which is simply what we call empathy.
So uncomfortable. And this led to Hamilton’s synthesis, which I will not enter into great detail into. It basically hinges on the fact that in the community with strong altruism has been demonstrated in the insect world, a high degree of genetic interconnectedness is generally the rule and specifically haplodiploidy. In other words, greater genetic connectedness between siblings than in the parent offspring relationship. And this is used by Hamilton as a rationale for explaining or perhaps you could say explaining away altruistic behavior in which one of the siblings sacrifices himself, because parts of that genetic material are transmitted by the others.
Unfortunately for Hamilton, since the 1960s a series of species which do not show haplodiploidy have been discovered and at present basically the jury is out. The question now is what if anything does sociobiology have to say regarding human behavior? Now, this is from its inception the unstated claim of sociobiology, that we are basically glorified animals and that the finest aspects of human behavior when all is said and done are purely a means of optimizing the transmission of one’s own genetic material in one form or another. Sociobiology cannot account for certain aspects of human behavior. Specifically, sociobiology cannot account for asceticism, in which one voluntarily deprives oneself of food, beverage and so forth.
There is no sociobiological account for monasticism in which one refuses to reproduce. One refuses to reproduce without in any way favoring kin who would transmit one’s own genetic material. So there is no justification from a Darwinian standpoint for this behavior, yet monasticism is very widespread historically. It was widespread in the West and in the East. There is no sociobiological account for any ideal of universal altruism, such as a Bodhisattva ideal.
Since once again, using either group selection or kin selection, one cannot provide an account. A bodhisattva is one who ceaselessly dedicates himself to others, sacrifices himself for others, and he sacrifices himself for indifferent others who are not related to him. He’s not part of a hive in which everyone is very very closely related genetically. So these are cases of behavior and we would say actually, most of us would say that these represent some of the highest levels of human behavior, where the sociobiological explanations simply collapse. And yet they are extremely widespread.
So human sociobiology must address a series of issues. The first is there is very limited evidence regarding the genetic transmission of behavior in human beings. There’s actually very limited evidence in general regarding the genetic transmission of behavior. Among mammals the evidence is very limited. Even among insects one yet has to identify the individual genes.
In addition, there is a second mode of non genetic adaptation in humans which is much more important than the genetic one and it is culture. Cultural adaptation has major advantages. It is faster, there is greater modifiability and faster diffusion through inculcation and imitation. Culture is a main mode of adaptation of human beings and actually my personal suspicion is that culture is also the main mode of adaptation of most living beings, certainly of the primates and the mammals. I personally suspect that our refusal to see culture among insects is purely biased from our own side.
All the behavior of Hymenoptera, of bees, of ants and of termites indicates highly developed cultures. There is clear evidence of language among the bees. If by language we mean a coded means of transmitting information, as you know from Lorenz’s studies, bees indicate through a dance the position of fields of flowers to other members of the hive. The dance indicates the distance, the orientation with respect to the Sun and sometimes the types of flowers or their colors. This qualifies as language.
If this does not qualify as language, our opponents have to say why it doesn’t. So we are dealing with communities which have language, which clearly have highly codified behavior, which has led them to adapt to their environment, strong elements of self sacrifice, then we can speak here of a culture. Not to speak of a culture in my opinion is a clear case of materialistic bias. And one must beg the opponent for an explanation of how and in which degree our culture differs from these other cultures, animal cultures. There’s no particular reason not to have animal cultures.
And then, as we said at the beginning, Darwinism from its inception had a strong ideological component. Darwinism has in the last fifteen to twenty years permeated popular culture in the form of ultra Darwinism. Darwin’s inquisitors, Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, the American philosopher who is Dawkins’ main popularizer. Izer. I couldn’t resist the straight is the gate and narrow is the way.
But what is striking is that Dawkins is more Darwinian than Darwin. As we saw in Darwin’s letters, Darwin is profoundly hesitant with respect to natural selection. He acknowledges natural selection as a mechanism, so do I, there’s no doubt. But he is uncomfortable with the idea that it is a totality of the mechanisms at work. However, when we pass to the ultra Darwinists, Darwinism is used as the criterion for an assessment of human behavior, which leads to the most striking positions.
Stephen J. Gould, who is a critique of Darwinian fundamentalism, describes the position of Dawkins, the leading ultra Darwinian, as the following. Dawkins would narrow the focus of explanation even one step further to genes struggling for reproductive success within passive bodies under the control of genes. A hyper Darwinian idea that I regard as logically flawed and basically a foolish caricature of Darwin’s generally radical intent. So as we said, Dawkins is after all professor of zoology at Oxford.
Dawkins Richard Lewontin in a series of biologists were some of the foremost critiques of sociobiology. Dawkins is a Darwinian, but he considers that other factors are at work, and in human societies especially culture of which we spoke. Now we see what ultra Darwinism leads to and since this is a religious community, it was interesting to bring out Dawkins’ views of religion, which he has made very public. I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus, but harder to eradicate. Faith being belief that isn’t based on evidence is a principal vice of any religion.
Consolation is harder for science to provide. I can vouch as a translator at the Buddhist Center, Kensho Center Buddhist student, that science does not provide any consolation. We have an endless stream of students who searched for consolation in science and who come here after being turned away from the hospitals or being told their condition is terminal. There is no consolation in science. There are other values.
Unlike religion, science cannot offer the bereaved a glorious reunion with their loved ones in the hereafter. Those wronged on this earth cannot on a scientific view anticipate a sweet comeuppance for their tormentors in a life to striking what Dawkins sees religion as, isn’t it? It could be argued that if the idea of an afterlife is an illusion, as I believe it is, the consolation it offers is hollow. If consolation comes that cheap, science can weigh in with other cheap additives such as painkilling drugs. This is what is on offer.
Then the question we have to ask at the end of this long presentation of a non-Buddhist topic, which however was important as we said because it is part of the culture we are basically raised in and we do want to be able to deconstruct it, is Buddhism and the Darwinisms. Are there common grounds and if so what are There are more common grounds than people would think. The Buddhist vision of cyclic existence is quite compatible with Darwin’s pessimistic view of relationship between living creatures. Unlike the Christian view of creation, which is an optimistic one, that of a fallen but worthy creation, The gem is cracked but it is still a gem. The Buddhist view of the cycle of lives is one of a of meaninglessness.
This is not incompatible with Darwinism. As we said, Darwin himself did not consider natural selection as the sole mechanism of transformation of species. And therefore, there could be a meeting ground between the Buddhist presentation of cyclic existence and certain Darwinisms, certainly classical Darwinism. There could definitely be a meeting ground, or for that matter the modern synthesis. Now, the Buddhist vision of animals is fundamentally different from the Darwinist vision of animals.
Animals are persons, animals can think, they have their own language, more or less sophisticated. They can have a culture, in some cases an extremely sophisticated one, and therefore, and I think Peter Singer has gone a long way towards establishing this in a just society, animal would have animals would have legal rights. So since we have little time, I will skip over the presentation of the Buddhist explanation of innate behavior which is pretty evident, which is simply that innate behavior comes from past life habituation and present a model, which is just a suggested model of how perhaps evolution and karmic causality could coexist. You have here the generations of individuals of a species, generations one, g two, g three. And here you have the what we would call the continuum of the form aggregate.
This is the individual from generation g one who reproduces, gives rise to individual G2, who would give rise to individual G3, individual G4 and so forth. Now biologically, these individuals are at the intersection of three determining factors: genotype, their genetic code, their physical environment to which they adapt and culture, which I think is sorely neglected in most biological presentations. However, in addition to these streams of physical causality, which are partly accounted for by the theory of evolution, you have a stream of mental causality. Causality. Since generation after generation, the mind in blue, the mental aggregates, four mental aggregates, pass from one individual to the other, within one species or without the species.
Now the precise details of how evolutionary causality and karmic causality could coexist and function together are beyond me. However, I think the two presentations are far from incompatible. And then there are some tentative correlations I would suggest to you. If we try to read some of the key terms in sociobiology in terms of Mahāyāna Buddhist concepts, we find some correlations. The instinct of self preservation seems to correspond to self-cherishing.
Likewise, what is known as biological altruism, in other words, the tendency for, let us say, an ant to sacrifice itself for the community, corresponds to what is called Mahāyāna Buddhism as partiality. In other words, bias towards one’s own community. There is no correlate in sociobiology for other cherishing, which is valuing others who are not a member of one’s community above oneself. That is actually not acknowledged in sociobiology. And we do see a fundamental connection in the pessimism regarding motivation.
Sociobiology considers that all apparently altruistic acts are motivated by the enhancement of genetic fitness. From a Buddhist standpoint, the acts of ordinary beings are always contaminated by egotism. We may think we are behaving altruistically, but behind that altruism there is always an element of clinging to one’s own inherent existence and to that of others. The deed in ordinary beings as opposed to ārya beings who are on the path of seeing and above is never pure. One can also propose a correlation between the sevenfold cause and effect, cause and effect generation of bodhicitta and a presentation of altruism we have not had the time to talk about, which is Trivers’ presentation of reciprocal altruism, which is perhaps the biological presentation of altruism Buddhists would be the most comfortable with.
For Trivers, altruism occurs because of empathy and empathy is a fundamental factor in the creation of a society. Now, much recent data from neurobiology has gone towards confirming some of Trivers’ intuitions. It has instance been demonstrated that we have powerful empathetic circuits within the human brain connected with the insula, which actually enable an individual to mirror the physical or emotional experiences another is experiencing within himself. This has just started to be studied by professor Davidson at the University of Wisconsin. The existence of physiological circuits, those actually parts of the brain indicates that this is not a minor mechanism.
It is a fundamental mechanism, which is probably indispensable for the creation of a society. And then, as we come to the end of this conference, I wanted to bring up some breaking data which is of extreme interest for the Buddhist presentation and which is also related to our topic today. In the last couple of years there has come to be clear evidence of pre verbal ethical awareness in infants. These are infants which are of the age of six months or even three months of age. And much of this research was done by Karen Wynn and Paul Bloom at the Infant Cognition Center at Yale University.
They found that pre verbal infants aged six to ten months of age prefer someone who helps another to one who hinders another. This is unlearned behavior. The infant is pre verbal. And the same, just in a study last year, demonstrated, the same bias was demonstrated in infants aged three months of age. The reference to both studies is in your bibliography.
This seems to demonstrate that an ethical sense is innate. There is no clear account for that in the light of sociobiology. As a very simple account for it in Buddhist terms, which is simply past life behavior, which has influenced present life behavior and manifests at the pre verbal level. Therefore, as a synthesis, and it was a topic of the two last conferences, there are two major hurdles any materialistic presentation must overcome. The first is a personal experience of consciousness.
All of us are conscious and we are convinced of the fact. And I would have a very hard time convincing you you are not conscious. You would have a very hard time convincing me I’m not conscious. So this experience of consciousness flies in the face of a materialist account, it’s a private experience. The second is a prevalence of altruism.
If materialism is a reality and if biology is ruled exclusively by survival of the fittest, altruism makes no sense. Now as we said the experience of consciousness is private and ultimately unverifiable. However, the experience of altruism is public and verifiable and has been verified over and again. We pointed out that altruism and empathy are widely present in mammals and altruism is clearly evinced in all social insects. It seems to be the building block of society.
Society. The mechanisms, as I have hoped to have pointed out, proposed by sociobiology to explain altruism are ingenious, but unconvincing. However, if one were to apply Occam’s razor, the principle of simplicity, reincarnation is a simpler, a more synthetic and a less contrived explanation of the prevalence of altruism, of empathy and of an innate sense of fairness in infants than either group selection or kin selection. It is quite striking the short shrift which is given to reincarnation. We have leading researchers such as Stevenson, who have studied over two thousand five hundred cases of children recollecting past lives, have eight hundred verified cases.
This is verifiable. This provides a very solid explanation for the presence in early infants of an ethical sense. It provides a solid explanation for the presence of altruism, which would basically be habituation from past lives. It is testable, it is a simple hypothesis, and yet it is never taken into account. We will be laughed out of scientific seminars if we try to talk about it.
So reincarnation provides a clear mechanism for the transmission of behavior, which social biology does not provide. For the time being there has been no study which has been able to posit a group of genes with the exception of, excuse me, of rats cleaning their whiskers. But apart from that there’s been no study positing groups of genes controlling behavior. So a reincarnation provides a clear mechanism for transmission of behavior and it provides a simple rationale for behavior which is disadvantageous for personal survival. Group and kin selection struggle with both issues.
Kin selection for instance struggles with a justification of altruism in groups in which haplodiploidy, in other words, high level of genetic interrelatedness between siblings is not present and these groups are well known. Now finally the occurrence of Stevenson’s cases of the reincarnation type from human to human as we said are well known, they are studied, they were studied by Stevenson at University of Virginia. Sociobiology’s explanations tend to be ad hoc, they are after the fact. We have this all encompassing theory, which is superimposed on phenomena and as Popper pointed out, is broadly speaking unverifiable. Hence, I personally feel that there are areas of reincarnation studies which can be open to scientific investigation.
It is a reincarnation from human to human. I also feel that broadly speaking sociobiology is narrative and unverifiable. It is also very worrisome in terms of its social and political impact. Therefore, I am surprised at the impact sociobiology has had in popular culture. How many of you have Dawkins?
In Australia, how many people swear by Dawkins? There is nothing there except a narrative which has yet to be corroborated as a theory and which is criticized by other leading biologists. And I wanted to conclude with a picture which says everything. This is an elephant, I believe her name was Agatha, who as a young elephant lost her mother. Her mother was killed by hunters and it was studied by Franz de Waal, it’s in one of his books.
Every year, at the time of her mother’s death, this elephant returns to where her mother was killed and turns over her mother’s skull, which you can see here. If this is not mourning behavior, I really don’t know who it is. What account can we provide for this? What account is proposed by sociobiology for this behavior? The only difference between us and this elephant is a difference of appearance and perhaps, perhaps of intellectual sophistication.
So that is what I wanted to cover with you today and we have kept half an hour for questions if you have questions to ask. Exactly. It is correct. I mean, the Nazi, the National Socialist Party, drew heavily on Darwinism to create their racial hierarchies, their fantasized racial hierarchies, to justify. Darwinism has been used to justify horrific policies.
I mean social Darwinism has been used to justify colonialism, then Darwinism was used by the Nazis. It is not value neutral. It’s not value neutral. And this is why when Wilson, Edward Wilson, the author of sociobiology, the founder of the discipline, gave a conference on the topic at Harvard, I think it was in 1977, a committee of opponents to sociobiology constituted among others of other biologists broke in and they emptied a jug of water over poor Wilson’s hand. Feedings ran that high because many biologists, especially those with a left wing inclination, felt sociobiology could be used to justify all sorts of extremisms.
And it can. It can. In the last twenty years in America, we’ve had a bevy of books which have drawn on sociobiology to justify discriminatory policies. I mean, leading sociobiologists have taken position in favor of Eugenics, which as you know was one of the policies of the Third Reich. That’s why it’s a discipline which is a very dangerous discipline and what is striking is it is basically not well corroborated.
Unlike the theory of evolution where there is a lot of data. In the case of the transmission of behavior by hereditary, that’s in the sociobiological position, the jury is not in, the data isn’t there. There. Does it answer your question? Are there other questions?
They are connected. Christians and Buddhists agree that there is something after this life. Then we disagree on the number of somethings. So the Christians say there’s only one something, the Buddhists say it’s many somethings, many future lives. Understand what you’re trying to very interesting.
I mean, traditional Christian theology considers that mankind is cleansed of the original sin by Christ’s vicarious sacrifice on the cross and if we believe in Christ we participate in that cleansing operation. Now, there’s always been, this is not a Buddhist position, but there’s always been extraordinary extraordinary sympathy, I think it’s the word, between Mahāyāna Buddhists and Christians, especially between the Mahāyāna Buddhist monastic traditions and Christian monastic traditions. Because beyond the theological differences, which are very important, I mean Christians believe in a God, Buddhists do not. Christians believe in one future life, Buddhists believe in many. But beyond the differences, in terms of what we know as a method aspect of the path, practice of compassion and love, there is considerable similarity.
And I remember when I was very young, I was living at a monastery in Switzerland, a Buddhist monastery, and there was a Trappist monk. This is one of the most severe orders of the Roman Catholic Church. Trappist monks are held to evolve silence for their life. Know, it’s a Belgian Trappist monk who came regularly to visit the monastery, well in his seventies. He had dispensation from his superior to come and he became a student of my teacher Geshe Rabten.
And I was very surprised. So we became friends he and I and I asked him once, I said, but why do you come here? I said, you remember you were Roman Catholic, you were a Trappist monk, what is there in our tradition which is is of relevance of interest and he had the most extraordinary answer. He said to me, I have never met so many highly realized beings as in Tibetan tradition and I want to know why. It’s that which made a big impression on me.
He went beyond the dogmatic differences, he didn’t even bother to address them. He looked at the level of spiritual attainment, assessed on the basis of his own tradition and he said, he wanted to find what we could give him. I thought it was a remarkable answer and he was by no means a liberal leaning person, he was well in his seventies, a Belgian Trappist monk, he wore full robes, you know. So I feel that is the way forwards in the dialogue between the religions. Otherwise our world views are very different, but when one sees, and that was why I included the picture of Mother Teresa here, from a Buddhist standpoint Mother Teresa is in the embodiment certainly of the activities of a bodhisattva.
Then whether she actually was striving for that goal or not, we cannot say. Officially, no. Officially, she was a Christian. A true Christian is not striving for the state of enlightenment for all beings. It’s such a thing does not exist in Christianity.
But as Buddhists, we believe that there are Bodhisattvas who manifest in the other religions, and if you would forgive me for the trouble goes with the motions, for being true Bodhisattvas. They are actually striving for full enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings, but they are manifesting as Christian monks, as Muslim preachers, as Jewish rabbis and as far as externals are concerned, they are completely rooted within their tradition, but their inner state of being is actually that of a Bodhisattva. So we believe there are such beings. And whether Mother Teresa or not, we do not know. I personally believe Gandhi was, because his the Dalai Lama has said that Gandhi is his teacher.
Then if his sorest the Dalai Lama sees Gandhi as his teacher, it is difficult to imagine His Holiness having a teacher who was not a Buddhist. So as far as externals were concerned, Gandhi was a remarkable Hindu practitioner, but His Holiness, his understanding of him is that of obviously Bodhisattva. Does answer your question a little bit? Probably. I mean there are experiences.
I mean ultimately mean either there is something out there or there isn’t. If there is something, if the core teachings of the religions are true, at a certain point we shouldn’t be able to meet. Then certainly with Christians, the Christian training in love and compassion is more circumscribed than the Buddhist one, focuses on human beings. Some Christians, saints like Saint Francis extended it to animals, but the intensity is remarkable. Then obviously regarding the existence or non existence of a Creator, there are huge differences.
The monotheisms all assert the existence of a Creator. Buddhism denies the existence of a Creator. Buddhism is atheistic. However, His Holiness has pointed out profoundly true, that belief in a Creator is very beneficial for many people, I suspect for most people. Because it provides an anchor for practice and then the Creator is seen as a tool in spiritual training.
So this is I think the reason for His Holiness’s dialogue with the Christian communities. Whereas from a strict Buddhist standpoint, there is no Creator. But most people, if they were convinced that there was no Creator, would sink in some sort of nihilism. They would not be able to have any meaningful spiritual practice. Then teachings of the existence of a Creator are very helpful for those.
That’s why I I personally feel that Buddhism is for a minority. And His Holiness, as you know, actively discourages conversion, especially the conversion of westerners to Buddhism. So we are certainly the only religion in the world which discourages conversion. He discourages it because there are problems. Much conversion is verbal.
Conversion is not a matter of changing one’s clothes. It’s a very profound transformation of the inner being of the person. And then if the conversion is not authentic, if it doesn’t happen within the depths, then later on in life these beliefs may not be of help to the person. So that is why His Holiness and this has been in every teaching I have heard him in in the West, he said he encourages Westerners to look first towards Christianity and after they have satisfied themselves that Christianity is not for them, then if they want, they can look towards the Buddhist teachings. Precisely because the religion of our fathers, as the Tibetans say, is the one in which we are the most rooted.
It is something we are raised in from early childhood. It resonates emotionally at a very powerful level. Many Asians are not practicing Buddhists, but they are far more sincere Buddhists than almost any westerner in a Buddhist center. Because it is there within their hearts, it lives here. With us, it is a long process of appropriation.
It is up here, maybe even up here. The words are there. There’s little more than that. That is not enough for where we want to go, because our spiritual training is training for the time of death. At the time of death words will not be enough.
We need to have transformed our minds, then whatever helps to transform our minds is best and that the person knows. Each one of us has to check for himself what is best for us. Khensur Rinpoche is one of the most traditional teachers and Rinpoche recently speaking to the students here said, he had listened to this teaching of His Holiness and he endorsed it fully and he felt that basically practicing pure Dharma in the West was very difficult, maybe impossible. And therefore the students should choose among the various dharmas, various religious traditions would help them. So here we have tried to present pure Dharma.
Generally speaking, it has been a failure. Generally speaking, it has been a failure. It is very difficult to have a true student teacher relationship. It is very difficult to have sincere Western Buddhists. It is very difficult to move beyond mental reservation.
Now mental reservation reservation means the person has one foot in and one foot out. One can stay in that state for some time, it’s a normal state of affairs at the beginning. One cannot be in a state of mental reservation until the time one dies, because then that life’s spiritual potential will have been wasted. So at a certain point one must be able to crossover. The crossover is very difficult.
So I think the situation of most Western is a very difficult one. We are in a massively materialistic society focused on money, a society which exhorts desire, a society which encourages us not to think about tomorrow. Then any attempt at a spiritual life is met with ridicule or at sometimes even with contempt. Many of the students here face considerable hardship from their families and friends regarding their practice. So that is our state of affairs, our predicament.
Then we have to see what is most helpful to us. So we are very fortunate I feel that Khensur Rinpoche presents presents a very powerful and authentic presentation of Buddhism. It is not watered down. This is what the Buddha taught. It’s up to us to accept or not to accept.
That is our freedom. And honesty in that process is critical. If we are honest and we really can take on board these teachings, we want to take them on board without mental reservation, then we will benefit tremendously. If we cannot take them on board, it is important to be honest with ourselves. It is extremely important not to make a soup.
A soup, a big mixture of everything does not help us. So I’m sorry. I developed a lot on your question. Excuse me. Do we have any other questions before we close?
Yes. How does Buddhist look like without mental reservation? Forceful. The basis of Buddhist practice is realization of the precious human rebirth and death and impermanence. That’s the foundation.
If you realize the precious human rebirth, you know you can practice. If you realize death and impermanence, you know you must practice. And there are three realizations which go with that. Realization of the certainty of death, you must practice. Realization of the uncertainty of the time of death, you must practice now.
Realization of the fact that at the time of death nothing is of benefit, you must practice purely. A true Buddhist is someone who has no time to waste. This is a precious opportunity and there is very little time for anything else, but that is rare in the monasteries you find. A true Buddhist, I think, does not really correspond to the Western fantasized idea of what a Buddhist should be. Very groovy and going with the beat.
In the monasteries, the Tibetan monasteries, the real monks very intimidating characters. Providing a? Yes, that’s what Rinpoche has said. I mean, we may go further. It’s up to us.
But who does? Who does the long retreats? Who puts in, who in this room does one, two, three months retreat a year? Nobody. Without meditation where do we get?
Who does the studies? Studies? You know, the moment we try to push studies people run away, right? So then Buddhism is a hard religion. In Buddhism we are alone.
The teacher teaches but it’s up to us to practice or not to practice. Then this is not for everybody by any means. It is not for everybody. So I I personally have tremendous respect for Christianity because I think it’s a religion which is very helpful to the normal person. Unfortunately, doesn’t work very well.
Prayer as an antidote to delusion does not work. But if people are not going to meditate anyway, then it’s better than nothing. It’s simpler. Buddhism is not like that. No.
Your Buddhism is different to mine. Yes. Every one of us from the Buddhist standpoint has to practice himself or herself alone to transform transform his his or or her mind. If we don’t do the practice, it doesn’t happen. Prayer would not cause from a Buddhist standpoint the transformation to occur.
This is a harsh message. Message, it’s not easy. To transform our minds first we must study to understand how to transform our minds. Then we must appropriate the studies, that is thinking, we appropriate the studies. Then we must meditate on the studies.
There is barely enough of twenty four hours in a day to do this. Then to think that we can have a full time job, have a family life, go on vacation and attain and gain realization of emptiness is a fantasy. It’s a fantasy. It is not possible. Something has to give.
When I was translating for a very great Kagyu teacher in Estonia, Garchen Rinpoche, it came very much to the thought, it was a big big conclave at the National Library and there was this lovely Estonian Buddhist in the back, very good man, three children, a job, And Garchen Rinpoche had spent twenty years in a Chinese jail and then the rest of his life in solitary retreat. And this Estonian gentleman asked him, he said, basically, Rinpoche, don’t you think that a layperson with a full time job, if he generates a good motivation, can reach the same types of realizations as a hermit in a cave who puts tremendous effort? So I translated this for Rinpoche. And Rinpoche looked at me, he said, what am I supposed to tell him? And I said, Rinpoche, fudge.
How do you say Rinpoche? Fudge. The truth of the matter is obviously no. Obviously, someone who is ordained, lives as a khenpo, has done the studies, meditates fifteen to eighteen hours a day, will go very far on the path and may gain attainments and someone who does not study and puts in ten minutes on odd days of meditation will not. There’s no mystery about it.
So that’s a little bit the the harshness of the Buddhist message, but the strength of the Buddhist message is that it is true. If we we follow this path, we will get to the goal and that is what this Trappist monk was alluding to. If you live in the monasteries, if you meet the monks, you meet people who have reduced or eliminated the afflictions. One sees. One one meets people who have memories of past lives, clear memories, demonstratable memories.
One meets people who have single pointed concentration in keeping with the great texts. It does work, but it’s very hard. How does that answer your question? So I think we have to stop here for today. Thank you very much, and I hope it wasn’t too difficult.