Religions have had a very hard time adjusting to the paradigm shift engendered by the European enlightenment with its emphasis on rationality and empirical, public verification of claims. In Western circles, this difficulty has usually been seen as a conflict between religion and science, perhaps most vividly played in the controversies about evolution versus creationism that regularly plague school policies and politics in the United States. Buddhism, however, has many fewer problems with science, given that it already envisioned a universe of endless space and time filled with multiple worlds inhabited by diverse creatures. The Dalai Lama’s keen interest in and approval of modern science increases this impression that modern science and Buddhism can easily get along.

There has been far less discussion of compatibility or conflict between traditional Buddhist narratives and modern historical study, perhaps because no one with the Dalai Lama’s stature has taken up this issue. Regarding Buddhism and science, the Dalai Lama is famous for his claim that “If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims”d. I make the same claim for the relationship between modern historical studies and Buddhism.

I would also suggest that the implications of modern methods of historical study are more serious than modern science, not only for Buddhism, but for all religions. There are at least two ways in which modern historical methods create doubt about some claims commonly made in traditional narratives. The more serious is the way in which modern historical studies demonstrate, or at least claim, that religious texts, practices, and beliefs are the result of human cultural creativity and evolution. They are products of historical development, not of supernatural intervention into history. In other words, religious texts, practices, and beliefs do not drop, fully formed and nicely bound between two covers, from some other realm into the human realm. The more superficial doubt involves skepticism about the miracle stories so common in traditional religious narratives.

Religions usually resist claims that their forms—their verbally expressed conceptual beliefs and their rituals—are due to human creativity. Every religion, including Buddhism, at least sometimes claims that its forms derive from a seemingly more authoritative source than human creativity. Sometimes, especially in Buddhism, that source is only Tradition, with a capital “T”. Many contemporary Buddhist teachers are as submissive before the authority of Tradition as are believers in revealed religions before the authority of their scriptures. “It’s established. We can’t tamper with those forms” seems to be their mantra. That even a non-theistic religion which does not usually claim to be derived form divine revelation nevertheless relies on an inflexible source for its forms indicates how desperately many humans long to deflect responsibility for their religious forms to some non-human source, or at least some source other than themselves.

However, serious historical and comparative studies, especially if one studies several religions, make it difficult to resist the conclusion that all religious forms, without exception, are human attempts to articulate our relationship with our existential situations. For one thing, it is impossible on any rational and universally relevant basis to adjudicate among the many claims competing to be authentic revelations from beyond the human realm. In a situation of relative religious and cultural homogeneity, which prevailed in most of the world until after global exploration began in earnest in the 16th century, one could be much less aware of these competing claims to be authentic revelation. It is now impossible to avoid awareness of religious diversity and the theological adjustments that all religions need to make in the light of that diversity. But one of the great advantages of living in contemporary times is the adjustments such knowledge requires. When thinking about the religions of others, it is very easy to see them as products of human aspirations and foibles; it is egotistical and perverse to exempt one’s own religion from that process. I often remember the logic of some of my university students. Their assignment was to apply Black Elk’s statement about sacred narratives to two traditional stories, one familiar and the other unfamiliar. The student wrote something like: “The Greeks had very illogical stories that they obviously made up, such as that a mare could become pregnant by turning her hindquarters to the wind. Everyone knows that’s impossible. Christians, by contrast, have sensible sacred stories which we didn’t make up, such as the Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and had no human father”.

Is a dharma tradition such as Buddhism harmed by giving up claims that its teachings transcend human time and space? I think not. In fact, I would claim such a view is more in accord with foundational Buddhadharma than its alternative. I would make this claim on two counts. First, basic Buddhist teachings, such as all-pervasive impermanence and interdependent origination, do not accord well with the supposition that there are eternal verities capturable in words and concepts. Things, including doctrines and rituals, should be expected to change and those changes come about because of changing constellations of causes and conditions. As taught by Nāgārjuna in his famous work the Mūlamadhyamaka Kārikās, even the appearance of a Buddha occurs only by the workings of interdependent origination, by the working of the same processes that govern everything else in our human world, not as the result of something transcendent to that world.

Second, I would claim that Buddhism has always taught something also demonstrated by modern historical studies of religion—all religious forms, the words, concepts, practices, and rituals—are human constructions that are culturally relative. In this regard, I see very little difference between the results of modern historical studies of religion and steep/profound Buddhist teachings. I have been very careful in my wording throughout this essay. I have not claimed that there is no ultimate, ineffable, transcendent dimension in human experience; I have claimed that all words and concepts, and so forth, used to point to it are human constructions and should be held lightly, not taken too seriously. The great failing of any religion is always to take its own forms too seriously, to claim that they have ultimate rather than relative significance. Though many Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike often miss the point, in my view, all schools of Buddhism claim that, while teachings and views are necessary and useful tools to be used on the path, ultimately they will be left behind when true insight dawns upon one. Or, as many Buddhists like to say, silence is the ultimate truth—not an uninformed, unpracticed silence, but the silence born of deep contemplation. The silence of not being so attached to words, views, rituals, practices, or any religious forms is ultimately and intensely liberating.

The second way in which modern historical studies cast doubt on traditional narratives is much less serious in my view. Buddhist texts are filled with claims and narratives that are as difficult to believe in literally as either stories of mares becoming pregnant by turning their hindquarters to the wind or of a human child being conceived without a human father. But given that even the most profound teachings, in their verbal and conceptual forms, are tools rather than ultimate truths, it is clearly not necessary to try to take such stories seriously as factual accounts of events, that is to say, to take them literally. Rather, they should be understood as products of their own cultural situation and as relevant in those situations. There are times and places in which stories of miracles and magic make sense to people and have a great deal appeal. But we do not live in such a time and place, so trying to force us to take these stories as factual accounts simply makes it harder for us to take the profound teachings of Buddhism, or any other religious tradition, seriously. These are not documents that function well in our contemporary cultural context, post-European enlightenment. In this, I am not claiming that the paradigm of the European enlightenment is an ultimate truth that will stand for all time; it probably will not. Nevertheless, we cannot help standing in that paradigm, which means that our great need to make peace between the prevailing worldview of our culture and the deep and profound teachings of our dharma traditions, not to try to hold onto every single tale of magic and miracles. I myself do not think that the profoundly enlightened masters who wrote texts that include such stories would have written them as they did if they had lived in our cultural situation. That is also to say that whoever is writing the equivalent texts today is probably not going to use miracle stories to prove his or her point.

Actually, regarding stories of magic and miracles, I can find such stories as delightful as anyone else under certain circumstances. Only when they are put to certain uses do I find them misleading and even dangerous. Two ways of using miracle stories are especially problematic. The first is to conflate and confuse story and history. Keeping this distinction clear is extremely useful. Modern history is a scientific, empirically based discipline. Stories are simply stories, not science or history. That science and history have such prestige in our current culture is not a good reason to try to force traditional narratives into that mold. That happens whenever such stories are taken literally, or whenever people seek empirical proofs for traditional narratives, such as, in my favorite example—sending out search parties to find remnants of Noah’s ark, as if finding them would prove anything.

The second way in which miracle stories are often used by religions, including Buddhism, is much more problematic. Often a miracle story is used to try to prove that the teachings of a certain leader are indeed true and correct or even that a specific religion is the “true” religion. Countless young university students thought they had defeated me in debate when they proclaimed, “But you can tell that Christianity is the true religion because Jesus performed miracles.” They were easily defeated by apprising them of the fact that miracle stories are a dime a dozen, widespread in all religions and, therefore, prove nothing. Given the universality of miracle stories in religions, how could one claim that the miracle stories of one’s own tradition prove its truth unless one is willing to grant that all miracle stories found in all religions also prove their truth?

I find it especially problematic when alleged performance of a miracle is taken as the supreme proof of the cogency of a philosophical position. Recently, I attended a program on the teachings of Candrakīrti, one of the foremost commentators on Nāgārjuna’s teachings on emptiness. Time after time, the teacher would summarize all the philosophical, rational demonstrations for the cogency of Nāgārjuna’s teachings on emptiness and then try to clinch his arguments by citing a story of how Candrakīrti once extracted milk from a painting of a cow. But if teachings on emptiness were not cogent, I certainly could not be persuaded to believe in them by a story about being able to milk a painted cow, especially given how many non-painted cows I have milked! And if I were to be required to believe in the story of milking a painted cow as fact, that would make me less likely, not more likely, to give credence to teachings on emptiness. (Fortunately, teachings on emptiness are so cogent that the story of the painted cow is irrelevant either way.) Why would anyone think this story would be a convincing proof of anything? Clearly, miracle stories are about something other than proving the truth of one specific religion or religious claim among others. It only cheapens both the philosophy and the story to try to use miracle stories to prove a philosophical or religious position. It makes much more sense to let miracle stories function in their own frame of reference as stories in which certain meanings are encoded. Then, our assignment is to contemplate what these stories could mean, rather than to use them as proofs for a philosophical position or to cling to them as descriptions of empirically occurring events.

Many of my dharma friends are troubled by such claims. Their counter to me is often to claim that many of the things we take for granted now—such as wireless transmission of speech and documents across great distance or air travel—are “magical” and would surely have been seen as miraculous by those who lived in earlier times because they seem so impossible. So why not the standard Buddhist miracles, such as flying through space on one’s own power, walking through walls, milking painted cows or one of the most famous Tibetan miracle stories—the story of how Milarepa was able to take shelter in a yak’s horn during a storm without himself becoming smaller or the yak’s horn becoming bigger, while his disciple Rechungpa, who had not yet developed such siddhi or supernatural power, got drenched in the rain?

I would reply to their question in several ways. First of all, the technological marvels dependent on the paradigm shift that occurred during the European enlightenment work, not by contravening physics and natural law but by working carefully within their perimeters. At present, things like walking through walls or milking a painted cow could only be a contradiction of what we understand of natural law to date. Therefore, I neither affirm nor deny such stories but retain a flexible, curious mind about them. Maybe? Show me? Perhaps some day? What would it take to convince me that such events occur in ordinary, empirical space and time? Repeated, public demonstrations of such events, such as happens whenever I use email or board an airplane.

My friends would probably reply that it takes advanced spiritual development to be able to perform siddhi, to have “magical” powers. That some people can do extra-ordinary, unbelievable things is a claim made by many religious traditions, and I think it is wiser to maintain an open mind regarding such claims than to adamantly deny that they could happen. In addition, given how many seemingly “magical” feats have become common within our lifetimes, who knows in what other ways we will learn to use physics and natural law to perform “miracles” in the future? But I also claim that it is foolhardy to adamantly affirm the veracity of such claims on the basis of hearsay reports of their occurrence—and until such feats are publically verifiable, they remain hearsay. That they are hearsay makes them supremely inadequate for demonstrating the truth claims of Buddhism. I would never attempt to convince others to become Buddhists because I have seen it rain out of clear blue sky at the most auspicious moment of a major Buddhist ceremony. Instead, I would rely on the Four Truths and teachings on emptiness for that task!