I have lost faith in Modern Science

Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche headed the reception committee for the Global Peace March which ended its 1500 km long journey in Sarnath on August 6, Hiroshima Day, after starting in Pokhran, Rajasthan on May 11, the first anniversary of India’s nuclear tests. In an interview to Kalpana Sharma, Prof Samdhong Rinpoche spoke about the bomb, disarmament, non-violence and the violence of modern science.

Last year, after the nuclear tests, you are reported to have spoken out quite openly against them at a meeting in Varanasi. Your remarks apparently surprised several people. What did you say then?

I said that the nuclear explosions had damaged appreciably India’s moral authority. India has been champion of disarmament. I supported its stand of not signing the CTBT. But now India has no voice to preach disarmament to the world. I was looking towards India for a new moral leadership because the west has completely lost its moral strength and in the east only India has the potential. It is very rightly called “Jagatguru” by the people. It should have resumed that responsibility of Jagatguru. This is something I was hoping for a number of years. But this is action of India has shattered that hope. I also said that it is a great insult and also a kind of disrespect for the Buddha and the Buddhist to choose Buddha Jayanti for the explosion. This has wounded us deeply.

In his message in the peace march, His Holiness the Dalai Lama said, “Ahimsa is not a simple passive lack of violence. It comes into play when you actively choose not to harm someone when you have the power to do so.” Is this concept merely a re-articulating of Buddhist concepts or does it have special resonance in the Tibetan context?

The basic source of inspiration is Buddha’s teaching which is based on non violence. When Buddhist monks are ordained, we have to take four determinations or vows which are called attributes that makes you a Buddhist monk.

These say that if someone swears at you, you will not reply in similar words. If a man criticizes you, you must not criticize him in return. If someone gets angry with you, you must not be angry with him. If a person beats, you do not return that beating.

This does not mean that you will not oppose him at all, that you will not answer him. You should react with the opposition nature. If someone is angry with you, then show that person love, affection, compassion so that his anger goes away.

Because of these teaching, Buddhist are basically forced to be non violent. But we need a new rededication to non-violence the complete sense. Through the teaching of the present Dalia Lama and our tragedy with China, I have personally experienced the need for this. When I was in Tibet, non violence was a kind of religion, but it was not followed by the state. It was believed that those who run the state, the government, cannot be completely non-violent. So even though it was a Buddhist kingdom, there were fire-arms. The way it was explained was that non violence was for the individual but cannot be for the state. Many countries still have this wrong belief, like Thailand. They say they are Buddhist, the constitution is Buddhist and 95% of the population is Buddhist. Still they have a military, they have armaments, and they have a police. They say also that the state needs these things.
It is on this subject that I drew inspiration from Gandhiji. He said that in statecraft it is possible to have a completely non-violent form of governance of a country. I began looking for confirmation in Buddhist canons. I found in these canons that whether it is society, or whether it is governance of a country, there can be non violence everywhere. When China attacked us, we were not non-violent. Although we were a Buddhist country, our people had reacted very violently. That didn’t gain anything for the Tibetans, but it helped China to suppress the Tibetans very brutally.
Only after coming to India did we realize the need for a total commitment to nonviolence even for the national cause.

Coming to the question of science, technology and violence, in a sense they are connected. Governments justify certain kinds of technology, such as nuclear power or nuclear bomb, by saying that there is nothing wrong with them; it depends on how they are used. What made you disillusioned with modern science altogether?

Technology that is not based on modern science is all right. For instance, Gandhiji’s charkha is also a kind of technology. But such technology does not make man so powerful, or corrupt, or idle where you only have to press a button. It is related to man’s effort, it brings man closer to nature and there is no element of exploitation. But new modern technology, depends on modern science, is directly or indirectly violent. It is run on a system of exploitation. This is what I realized.

Was there any particular incidents that lead to this realization?

I realized that there were several shortcomings in science. Science has taken nature as a challenge. It regards it as the enemy. It assumes that man can overpower and use nature as he likes. This, I believe, is the root cause of environmental degradation and ecological imbalance.

Scientists think we can use nature as we like and if natural resources are exhausted, we can find something else or they can be substitutes. This is a wrong notion. Modern scientific inquiry is based on limited consciousness. People have not realized that the brain is after all a physical thing. Yet they treat the brain as the mind, as consciousness. They do not realize its limitations, its shortcomings, its conditioning. With this conditioned mind they have tried to search for the unlimited. But this has been an external inquiry, not an internal one. People take for granted that their consciousness, and the instrument with which they see, that is the eye, are perfectly all right. But this is only a partial reality, not the whole of it. It is a big illusion.

Without seeing the full reality, and even though people acknowledge that science is always changing, yet they assert that they say is right. But look at modern medicines. These are tested and you are told you can have them. Yet two or even 20 years later, you are told that these same drugs are harmful. With such limited knowledge, taking so much for granted, they are spreading blind faith, there is as much blind faith in science.

When they are conducting a research, scientists do not think that what emerges from this inquiry is common, public knowledge. Instead they say, if I discover this, it is my property. This talk about intellectual property doesn’t sit well with our culture. If we find something, we share that with everyone. And knowledge is universal. This effort to individualize knowledge indicates that the research is selfish. Whatever is there is mine; it should remain in my ownership. I should have control over it. So it begins with the intention of controlling nature, and if something is found, it is regarded as personal property. Now even people are being seen as a resource. Because of this attitude, I lost faith in modern science.
People say that science is neutral and that it depends on how you use it. But on one side you have unlimited development of technology, on the other you have an exploitation free society. These two concepts do not go together. Unlimited development of technology is essentially based on competition and exploitation. As long there is competition, it cannot lead to an exploitation free or violence free society.