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(Continued from page
11)
Biology has an evolutionary vision, and so does
Buddhism, perhaps alone among the world
religions. Biology concentrates on lower
evolution, while the main concern of Buddhism is
higher evolution. It suggests methods and
viewpoints designed to open one to
self-transcendence, methods consolidating the
self-reflective level of consciousness,
particularly by mindfulness practice and ethical
awareness. It also offers approaches for
establishing types of awareness that are in a
sense super-human, using meditation, contact with
the wise, and the purging of selfish biases from
one's mind so that one can contemplate deeply the
significance of one's experience of life.
...
All this may sound very
fine, but the possibilities described in Buddhist
texts need to be manifested in real people's
lives if they are worth anything in practice.
Indeed the Buddha asked his followers not to take
what he said on trust, but to test it against
their personal experience, as a goldsmith tests
the purity of a piece of gold. With a book such
as this, a reader can do little more than assess
the cogency of its arguments and the
reasonableness of its evidences. It is too easy
to imbibe vast quantities of second-hand
experience from the written word, rather than
choose a suggested course of action that appears
reasonable, and test it thoroughly for oneself.
From Ch. 1 of The
Evolving Mind, by Robin Cooper.
Illustration by Andy Gammon
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