Daruma, also known as Bodhidharma (the one who brought the dharma) was the last Patriarch from Inda and the first in China. While Buddhism had come to China centuries before, its path had been on land around the mountains perhaps through Persia, however Daruma brought the “Direct Pointing to the Mind” Buddhism “directly” across the water, i.e. direct from India to China, known as Dhyana in India, Chan in China and Zen in Japan.
Georg Whilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-18310) was a German philosopher. Most Americans living now, even if they are college educated, do not comprehend philosophy and certainly I am one of “most Americans.” I do not know if we can understand philosophy, perhaps we have outgrown it.
But as Hegel says in the above quote,“…what in former days occupied the energies of men of mature mental ability sinks to the level of information, exercises and even past times for children…”
It is difficult to grasp the “pre modern”mentality when knowledge was defined by rote learned categories handed down from Aristotle, instead of personal experience. Doctors practiced medicine based on pre existing standards from Greek knowledge while 14th and 15th century philosophers were busy trying to grasp empirical methods for experiencing the universe. Doctors who examined patients and made decisions based on what they observed, an unacceptablepractice, were call “empirics,” a term simply translated might mean what we call “quacks.”
Philosophers argued about subjects and objects, was the eye actually experiencing a tree,or the tree experiencing the eye? How did we even know if what the eye experienced has any kind of relationship to any kind of Reality? These argument took hundreds of years , and even St Augustine stepped in, at his own peril, to suggest that religious teachings should be examined under rational standards
Science uses the empirical methods for experiencing the universe because it can be tested. People generally have similar physical capabilities, such as eyes to see, And yes, some people are blind, some are more or less blind, some have different experiences perceiving color but generally, say on a “normal curve,” most people see the same thing.
So if you have scientists who separately perform the same experiment , i.e. their behavior follows the same methodolgy, follows the same rules, and they see the same thing at the end of the experiment, then science accepts that as scientific knowledge.
I do not think there is a better way of building a knowledge database for understanding the universe—Because it is based on the empirical commonality of human experience which is a benchmark which can be tested and verified.
Now it still may not be “TRUTH.” But take “religion” for example. All through history people in religions have claimed they have experienced the word of God and yet there is little if any similarity between what they have expressed regarding this experience. Certainly one would expect if God were communicating with people there would to only be a similar understanding of the experience it would be the same.
In fact often what they have “experienced” is not only different but usually a justification of superiority resulting in legitimizing unethical and immoral behavior towards others of another religion and even those of no religion.
There is no benchmark to establish the truthfulness in the religious experience of the individual yet in science restricting acceptable information to what humans can experience through the five senses (and the extensions) and the method in employing those five senses, science has established a benchmark for knowing the universe which is open to criticism by any duplicating the experiment by using those same methods.
This still does not mean scientific knowledge is TRUTH, as Kant so well expressed we have no way of knowing if human experience has anything to do with the TRUTH, i.e. we have no way of experiencing what is outside our ability to experience. Still, many of you might have thought my shado images started with digital era, no such way, this last image is from a previous walk, the rise in the foreground of autumn leaves, which is the media for the shado, is about two feet in depth and the house is quite far back with a long field between the top of the rise and the house which makes the shado approach a vertical feeling while still the eye is willing to accept that the leaves are on a more horizantal ground.
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