| The clash between religion and science, of course, | | | | Actually, the findings of science are step by step |
| goes back a long way - from Galileo's suppression by | | | | corroborating the truths about life and the universe |
| the Catholic Church, to the famous Scopes trial, in | | | | and the way our lives work that Buddhism has |
| which William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow | | | | expounded for millennia. |
| duked it out over Darwin's theory of evolution. | | | | Buddhism has always taught the inseparability of |
| The logical conclusion of the idea of a universe | | | | one's life and the environment. Our environment |
| governed solely by natural laws was to make a | | | | mirrors our life. |
| Creator, in the end, unnecessary. Isaac Newton, and | | | | This has very practical consequences. It means that |
| those who followed, conceived of the universe in | | | | if we want to change something in our environment - |
| totally mechanistic ways. The universe was inanimate, | | | | a relationship, for instance - then we have to first |
| existing outside of human beings. If the laws of | | | | change ourselves. We have to make a change within, |
| nature, one by one, could be uncovered, then nature | | | | and then the outside - the environment - will |
| and the universe itself could be used and controlled, | | | | automatically change. |
| with Man as its Master. | | | | The mirror of the environment reflects our own life. |
| But the extraordinary developments of quantum | | | | Buddhism offers a means also of clearly seeing the |
| physics at the turn of the twentieth century | | | | mirror of our own internal life - our pattern of |
| uncovered a universe quite different than that which | | | | thoughts, words, and actions that are causing our |
| scientists had heretofore imagined. Electrons, quarks, | | | | suffering - and also tools to effect changes in those |
| relativity theory, dark holes, vibrating strings - these | | | | patterns. |
| were new players in an increasingly strange universe. | | | | If we do not like what we see in some areas of our |
| One conclusion drawn inevitably from these scientific | | | | life, then it is up to us make the changes that will |
| developments was that human beings are not | | | | result in different circumstances in our environment. |
| separate from their environment, but are actually | | | | Buddhism teaches that men and women have the |
| inextricably bound up and connected with the | | | | power within them to change any problem, and to |
| universe around them. We live in a participatory | | | | develop a powerful state of life that will allow anyone |
| universe. At the deepest level of life, we are | | | | to live a happy, joyful life no matter what the |
| connected to everything around us. | | | | circumstances. |