In his wonderful Buddhist blog, Wandering on the Way, Jeb has another excellent post, this one on “Why and How”. Jeb points out that these questions tend to get conflated: “Why is the sky blue?” is answered by an explanation involving the spectrum of sunlight and the differential absorbtion and refraction of light rays. But that is really an answer to a different question: “How is that the sky appears blue?”
Both science and religion are prone to such conflation, but religion does it more often, and to more disorienting effect. Jeff ends his essay by pointing out some differences between Christianity, which makes little distinction between “why” and “how”, and Buddhism, which pretty much ignores the former and focusses all its analytical attention on the “how” of experience.
Christians tend to assign the ultimate “why� to God, but they’ve just made another object to hold the mystery. But in the final analysis the “Why God?� question is one they can’t answer. Buddhists were never offered an explanation for a “why;� in a real way that now seems to be wisdom rather than evasion. Science can only penetrate to a deeper how. At the end of the day, there is no answer to: “Why something, rather than nothing?�
Why is there suffering?
Why is there evil?
Why do I exist?
Why should I exist?
For the lack of why, we must descend into a graspable “how.� . It is interesting to look at how the questions are transformed when the context is switched from why to how.
How does suffering arise?
How does evil arise?
How do things come into existence?
How do I arrive at the conclusion I should continue to exist?
The angst disappears, and the questions become a useful inquiry into the nature of things.
richard | 31-Mar-06 at 10:28 am | Permalink
I have been pondering this note for days…will come up with intelligent comments soon now…Chris