Download Buddhist Biology: Ancient Eastern Wisdom Meets Modern Western Science AudioBook Free
Many high-profile public intellectuals - such as the well-known "New Atheists" Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and the later Christopher Hitchens - have argued that religious beliefs and science are highly antagonistic, two views of the world that are absolutely incompatible. David Barish, a renowned biologist with thirty years of experience, mainly agrees with them - with one very big exclusion. And that exclusion is Buddhism. With this fascinating publication, David Barash highlights an intriguing patch of common surface between clinical and religious thought, illuminating the many parallels between biology and Buddhism, allowing listeners to see both in a new way. Indeed, he demonstrates there are numerous places where the Buddhist and biological perspectives coincide. For example, the cornerstone ecological idea - the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things - is incredibly like the fundamental information of Buddhism. Indeed, a significant Buddhist text message, the Avatamsaka Sutra - which involves ten insights in to the "interpenetration" between beings and their environment - may have been written by a tuned ecologist. Barash underscores other similarities, including a distributed distrust of simple cause-and-effect analysis, a reputation of life as transient so when a "process" rather than permanent and static, and an understanding of the "rightness" of aspect plus a reputation of the anguish that results when natural techniques are tampered with. After ages of removing predators to protect deer and elk herds, ecologists have belatedly come to a Buddhist realization that predation - and even forest fires - are natural techniques that have an important put in place preserving healthy ecosystems.Buddhist Biology sheds new light on biology, Buddhism, and the impressive ways the two perspectives come together, like powerful searchlights offering complementary and valuable perspectives on the earth and our place in it.
