Welcome to Project Buddha Society
Buddha developed a profound and detailed, universal theory of unity, which accounts for everything related to mind and consciousness. How mind and consciousness work and why, etc. Buddha obtained his deep insights by means of mental techniques and training. Using his own mind as both research equipment and research object, his approach was at least as scientific as that of modern science.
Contemporary quantum physics and cosmology are close at a universal theory of unity of everything. However, before a scientific theory is entitled to be called truly universal, the phenomena mind and consciousness must be accounted for by that theory. The crucial thing is that only a properly trained mind itself can experience and ponder mind and consciousness empirically.
So far, the scientific approach of physics has led to a profound understanding of realms of reality, which are way beyond the imagination of most non-physicists. What seems to be lacking at the frontiers of contemporary physics is an empirical-scientific exploration of mind and consciousness. The overall purpose of this site is to explore to which extent the Buddhist empirical mind explorations can assist at these frontiers.
Excerpt of the Day
Each day we bring a new excerpt from our Favorite Books Online.
Dependent Origination
by P. A. Payutto
All facets of the natural order -- the physical world and the human world, the world of conditions (dhamma) and the world of actions (kamma), the material world and the mental world -- are connected and interrelated, they cannot be separated. Disorder and aberration in one sector will affect other sectors. If we want to live in peace, we must learn how to live in harmony with all spheres of the natural environment, both the internal and the external, the individual and the social, the physical and the mental, the material and the immaterial.
To create true happiness it is of utmost importance that we not only reflect on the interrelationship of all things in the natural order, but also see ourselves clearly as one system of causal relationships within that natural order, becoming aware first of the internal mental factors, then those in our life experiences, in society, and ultimately in the world around us. This is why, of all the systems of causal relationship based on the law "because there is this, that arises; when this ceases that ceases," the teachings of Buddhism begin with, and stress throughout, the factors involved in the creation of suffering in individual awareness -- "because there is ignorance, there are volitional formations." Once this system of causal relationship is understood on the inner level, we are then in a position to see the connections between these inner factors and the causal relationships in society and the natural environment.
