S.
Hawking & L. Mlodinow "God, Science and the Origins of the
Universe"
Ignorance of
nature's ways led people in ancient times to postulate many
myths in an effort to make sense of their world. But eventually,
people turned to philosophy, that is, to the use of reason—with
a good dose of intuition—to decipher their universe. Today we
use reason, mathematics and experimental test—in other words,
modern science.
Stephen
Hawking
and Leonard Mlodinow, The
Grand Design.17.
Ignorance of
nature's ways led people in ancient times to invent gods to lord
it over every aspect of human life. There were gods of love and
war; of the sun, earth, and sky; of the oceans and rivers; of
rain and thunderstorms; even of earthquakes and volcanoes. When
the gods were pleased, mankind was treated to good weather,
peace, and freedom from natural disaster and disease. When they
were displeased, there came drought, war, pestilence, and
epidemics. Since the connection of cause and effect in nature
was invisible to their eyes, these gods appeared inscrutable,
and people at their mercy. But with Thales of Miletus (ca. 624 BC-ca.
546 BC) about 2,600 years ago,
that began to change. The idea arose that nature follows
consistent principles that could be deciphered. And so began the
long process of replacing the notion of the reign of gods with
the concept of a universe that is governed by laws of nature,
and created according to a blueprint we could someday learn to
read.
Joseph Campbell.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces. (33-34).
38The point is that Buddhahood,
Enlightenment, cannot be communicated but only the way to
Enlightenment. This doctrine of the incommunicability of the
Truth beyond names and forms is basic to the great Oriental, as
well as to the Platonic, traditions. Whereas the truths of
science
are communicable, being demonstrable hypotheses rationally
founded on observable facts,
ritual, mythology and metaphysics
are but guides to the brink of a transcendent illumination, the
final step to which must be taken by each in his own silent
experience. Hence one of the Sanskrit terms for sage is muni,
'the silent one'. Sakyamuni (one of the titles of Gautama
Buddha) means 'the silent one or sage (muni) of the Sakya clan'.
Though he is the founder of a widely taught world religion, the
ultimate core of his doctrine remains concealed, necessarily, in
silence.
— Kimura
Kyūho,
On the Mysteries of
Swordsmanship, ca. 1768
“Everything written symbols
can say has already passed by. They are like tracks left by
animals. That is why the masters of meditation refuse to accept
that writings are final. The aim is to reach true being by means
of those tracks, those letters, those signs — but reality itself
is not a sign, and it leaves no tracks. It doesn’t come to us by
way of letters or words. We can go toward it, by following those
words and letters back to what they came from. But so long as we
are preoccupied with symbols, theories, and opinions, we fail to
reach the principle.”
“But when we give up symbols and opinions, aren’t we left in the
utter nothingness of being?”
“Yes.”
— Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor
“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.”