On My Belief

While most will know that I am a Buddhist, I have never sought to explain or espouse my views in public and hardly even in private as well. However, I chanced upon an excellent article in The Straits Times today, that amazingly seemed to write out of my own brain. Honestly, I was very excited to read it, seeing my thoughts expressed so well and succintly by someone else. Entitled 'The neural Buddhist', it is written by Mr David Brooks and originally published in the New York Times.

"In 1996, Tom Wolfe wrote a brillant essay titled Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died, in which he captured the militant materialism of some modern scientists. To them, the idea that the spirit might exist apart from the body is just ridiculous. Instead, everything arises from atoms. Genes shape temperament. Brain chemicals shape behaviour. Assemblies of neurons create consciousness. Free will is an illusion. Human beings are "hard-wired" to do this or that. Religion is an accident.

Wolfe understood the central assertion in this kind of thinking.: Everything is material and "the soul is dead". He anticipated the way the genetic and neuroscience revolutions would affect public debate. They would kick off another fundamental argument over whether God exists.

Lo and behold, over the past decade, a new group of atheists has done battle with defenders of faith. The two sides have argued about whether it is reasonable to conceive of a soul that survives the death of the body and about whether understanding the brain explains away or merely adds to our appreciation of the entity that created it.

The atheism debate is an example of how a scientific revolution can change public culture. Just as The Origin of Species shaped social thinking, so the revolution in neuroscience is having an effect on how people see the world. And yet my guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it's going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.

In recent years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosuncratic network of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development.

Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuition. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment. (Indeed these were my immediate reactions after reading The Selfish Gene!)

Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Professor Andrew Newberg of UPenn has shown that transcendent experiences can be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.

This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant athiesm. Instead, it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is. (I couldn't have summed this up better myself.)

In their argument with atheists, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. (YES!!!) It's going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.

In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That's bound to lead to new movements that emphasise self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revalation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They're going to have to defend the idea of a personalized God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behaviour day to day.

We're in the middle of a scientific revolution. It's going to have big cultural effects."

To wrap up however, I wish to state my only main contention with the article, which is its belief of a 'scientific revolution that will have big cultural effects'. Firstly, in my own circumstances, it was not the cognitive revolution or anything to do with science at all that made me have such thoughts from a relatively young age of about 10 years ago, it was more of me trying to understand myself and human beings. And it is this same belief in my understanding of human beings that leads me to think that it is highly unlikely that the new cognitive movement will bring about a change in thoughts as far as religion is concerned, because I do not think it is innate in the average (by average, I mean the general population, with no referral at all to intellect) mind to go beyond the black and white of reason and faith, into the grey of truth.

Pictures from Scotland

I know this is not done really well and some of the pictures are cut off, but I really have no time to edit now, so I will do it when I am free. After I get through the next week of sleepeless nights of coursework, that is! =p In the meantime, enjoy and wish me well!

My Family's Scottish Links

Before you go away thinking that I have any sort of Scottish blood flowing through me, let me reassure you that I don't. By Scottish links, I mean family friends who are Scottish, but the history does go slightly deeper and more interesting than that, as I will elaborate.

In spite of my incredibly tight schedule of deadlines to meet in the coming week, I decided to find time over the past weekend to make good of my promise to visit an elderly couple who live up in the Scottish Borders, in a little town called St. Boswells. Now, the history and links bit - In the 1950s, the elderly lady stayed in Singapore, with her mum. My grandfather, was then the cook who worked for her mum. So, this lady, Gillian, used to work on assignments with my grandfather and hence knew him rather well. She left Singapore permanently in 1960, only returning for a short period when her mum passed away in 1963. My grandfather himself passed away in 1965. My father kept in contact with Gillian, who has now married to Ian Skinner, and thus they were known in the family as 'The Skinners'. Ian himself had worked in Singapore for 5 years during the 1950s and had served the British army in Hong Kong prior to that. When my father graduated from the UK in 1983, he together with my mum, grandmother and aunty went up to Scotland Edinburgh to visit them. 15 years later, I would repeat the trip across Wales & England into Scotland, but this time not to Edingurgh, but to St Boswells, where they had moved to.

During my short stay of 3 days from the 1-4 May, the Skinners spent some time showing me some really interesting and precious bits of my family history which I'll share here. There were pictures taken in the 1950s of my grandmother and my newly-born aunty Kim Hui, pictures of my parents visit in the 1980s, as well, as pictures of a young me in 1993 when they visited our family in Singapore. Most special of all perhaps was a Guestbook they had kept for visitors that visited their household. Gillian had kept the book since the 1960s, so it was quite a surprise to me when she showed me the page where my parents had signed off in 1983! I duly signed into the latest page, the first visit of 2008! A few moments were also spent with the Skinners telling me more of Colonial Singapore and Hong Kong, of which they would have a very different perspective as the locals in Singapore.

So, therein, a short section of my family history in 2 paragraphs. I took stock how far my family had come since the 1960s when my grandfather passed away. From a penniless migrant from the island of Hainan in the 1940s, to my father going to the UK to study in the 1980s, and to me now in the 2000s. That perhaps, would be the success of not only my family, but more importantly, the framework and policies set in place by the Singapore government as well since independance. But what is more magical, is the fact that both families have kept in contact over the years. The magic of humanity, I feel, is not only in the success of personal development, but even more so, in the beauty of historical ties. It is beautiful to me that 2 individuals, or families, keep in contact over years just for the sake of doing so, or because of a shared heritage and past. Friendships that look to the past, will always enthrall me, as much as friendships that look to the future, disgust me.

Finally, a little bit on the trip in Scotland itself. Despite being both close to their 80s, the Skinners are very sprightly and energetic. Ian brought me around the Border Towns on Friday, including some very pretty views of the Eildon Hills, as well as Smailholm Tower, which was a place where Sir Walter Scott grew up in. Sir Walter Scott, who might perhaps be most famous in our part of the world for writing Ivanhoe, was born in Edinburgh, but spent quite a large part of his childhood in the Borders. Looking down from Smailholm Tower into the horizon, it is easy to imagine the days when battles would be fought on the lands below, as the Borders was a place of intense fighting between the English and the Scots in the days before the Union of the Crowns. The terrain has largely stayed unchanged, as it is in the country and from top of the tower, you probably could say that the sight was pretty much the same sight as Walter Scott looked at more than 200 years ago!

Saturday was a packed Scottish Schedule. In the morning, we went to the little town of Melrose, where the Skinners were involved in a fayre for their church. As they were at the fayre, I took the opportunity to explore Melrose Abbey, which is the first Cistercian Abbey in Scotland, founded in 1136. I picked up a free audio guide which brought me round the grounds with commentary. I had previously been to Tintern Abbey in Chepstow, so I found the way of life of the Cistercian Monks bit familiar. The Cistercian order is a Christian order that was first established upon the teachings of St Benedict of Italy, and places high priority on simplicity, discipline and meditation to get close to God. It sparked off a few ideas on the general idea of religion in me, but I will discuss that in another post as there simply is no space here. I found the audio guide very helpful though, and thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Melrose. In the afternoon, we attened the Scottish Cup Rugby Final Match at Murrayfield Stadium in Scotland. The Skinners were supporting the local team Melrose, which eventually won the cup, much to everyone's joy. Interestingly, I have now been to 2 of 3 major rugby grounds in the UK, (Millenium in Cardiff was the other one), even though to start with, I was never a big rugby fan!The evening was spent watching a concert in the Queen's Hall in Edinburgh Old Town. The programme included Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann, and I was reminded how long it has been since the last time I attended a concert. It was a good, polished performance by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. But I shant dwell on that either. More interesting to me, was seeing how an elderly couple in the UK could pass their time so well. Getting involved in sports, music, and local affairs, is indeed a good way to inject excitement and appreciation into one's life! To round off the night, we had dinner in Karen Wong's - the favourite Chinese restaurant of the Skinners, which I liked alot too!

At the end of Saturday night, I was exhausted, and could not help sleeping on the way back to St Boswells, but the 2 elderly folk were still clearly awake and energetic, a clear testament to their good health and spirit! These are things which I look at now when I am young, and hope that I can emulate when I am old. Sunday morning, I left on a coach to Edinburgh again for my train back to Cardiff. Before taking the train though, I found time to visit Edinburgh Castle. I went on one of the guided tours and again, had a very good historical overview of this magnificent castle. And mind you, Edinburgh city centre , is perhaps the most awe-inspiring built-up place I have ever seen. A real pity I had no camera to take in the sights, but I bought some postcards of the sights which I wanted to take pictures of.

There is really so much to say, but I really dont want to keep this post going on forever. Perhaps, I might revisit some of the topics here in the future, perhaps, I might revisit the Skinners sometime real soon after a most enjoyable and relaxing weekend getaway. There are always many perhap-es in life, but perhaps the only certainty is the past. And it is always nice to be able to look back and recollect sometimes. I told the Skinners, 'Having a good memory always makes time slow down that little bit, because you can go on and on and on about all the things that have happened, and instead of saying, 'Oh! I didnt realise time flew by so fast!', you'll say 'Goodness ! I didnt know I had done so much in that little amount of time!!"

Onboard the train from Edinburgh back to Cardiff,
Cexiang
4 May 2008 @ 3pm GMT