If we follow the advice of an authentic teacher, we must come to our own understanding of what is taught. We should examine and contemplate, ‘just as a goldsmith would test his gold’. 1
Applying this means that we must come to our own, first hand, knowledge of what is true. If you put in the work and effort—thinking, contemplating, reflecting, analysing—then you can come to a certain understanding of what is actually true.
Our so called scientific knowledge, usually comes down to just believing what someone else has said. If we are honest with ourselves, most of what we believe is what someone tells us to believe. We take a lot of our beliefs on the consensus view.
Is the world 10 million years old? Yes? How do you know? Someone said so. Why do you believe them? Because I trust them. There's a statue of them in Prague.
I am, of course, being a little facecious here and I do accept that, if they are reputable scientists and the work has undergone proper peer review, then we can check what they say and we can have some degree of certainty as to the veracity of their statements. However, in reality, we don't ourselves often look too closely into these statements ourselves. Most the time we rely on trust and consensus. If most people seems to agree with something, and especially if it is in a text book, we tend to accept it as true. We probably could prove it to be true, but most of the time we don't bother.
The difference in Buddhism is that this kind of acceptance isn't enough. We are compelled to look into what we believe and it is imperative that we, ourselves, come to a thorough and certain understanding of what is true truth.
Which leads me to think that Buddhism might be a more rigorous science than science! I'd love to hear your thoughts below.
- Buddha said, "Monks and learned ones, Just as gold is burnt, cut and rubbed, Examine my words carefully and Do not accept them simply out of respect." ↩