I’ve come to realise that this simple Zen quote from Adyashanti is fundamental to enlightenment.
It can easily be re-written as “Do not seek happiness, only cease to cherish opinions” because it is, by and large our opinions that stop us being happy.
The Buddha’s advice is to stop being attached to things and happiness will be unblocked. It’s exactly the same vein. We become attached to things because it is our opinion that they are important.
That importance might be because we think the thing gives us social status or because we think it helps us remember someone … but these are just opinions
The layering of opinion
Its easy to see how opinions can multiply quickly. Let’s say person A has the opinion that colored people are less intelligent than whites.
That’s a pretty stupid opinion. Ah! So now I have an opinion about person A’s opinion.
Person A thinks I am wrong to believe his opinion is stupid. Now we have an opinion of an opinion of an opinion.
If we all dropped our opinions, by recognizing that they are just that – opinions and not fact, we would certainly all be a whole lot happier.
But what about fact?
Now Person A might come to me with a ‘scientific study’ that proves his opinion and so they can conclude it is no longer an opinion, it is ‘fact’.
I can just as easily find a ‘scientific study’ to contradict his so my opinion is also ‘fact’.
Isn’t it?
No! This is a fundamental misunderstanding about scientific studies that grows every day.
Solid facts are few on the ground. A scientific study only reaches a conclusion that is confident of its results to a certain percentage.
For example, “If I drop this pencil I am 99.9999999% confident it will fall to the floor”. Science never says it is 100% confident, it always leaves the door open to be proved wrong.
Why?
Because studies themselves are full of potential pitfalls. If I travel to a poverty stricken village in rural Africa and give 20 people there an IQ test and then travel to Harvard and carry out the same test on 20 white students I can produce a ‘study’ which shows white people are more intelligent.
My ‘study’ is obviously fundamentally flawed in this case and easy to expose but most weaknesses in scientific research aren’t so easy to spot.
The case of water having memory is a case in point. There was a ‘study’ which proved it did. But as it was a study:
- It only concluded that it was x% confident that water had a memory
- The way the study was carried out (the scientists who did it knew which samples of water were supposed to have remembered things when testing them) was questionable because they tended to find what they wanted to find.
Other studies since then have been carried out – mainly once in which the scientists did not know which water samples were which) and found water did not have memory. But again:
- They only concluded they were y% confident that water did not have memory
- The way the studies were carried out can be debated by others as to whether the methods were well designed to produce good results.
So lots of science saying both things. What is fact?
Neither of them. There is more ‘evidence’ that water has no memory than there is evidence that it does. However the door is open and so water memory is simply an opinion.
Dropping opinion
So if we did like the Zen master of so many years ago suggested and ceased to cherish our opinions we would see there are remarkably few ‘facts’ and when deciding if something was ‘true’ or not we could have much less stressful debates.
I see those who believe in water memory becoming very agitated when they are questioned and presented with the ‘studies’ which suggested they believe in a phantom idea.
In truth they are simply formed an attachment to an opinion and find it difficult to let go of that attachment and so they jump to defend it.
If they followed the Buddha line and dropped their attachment they would be comfortable to say “Yes, it is just an opinion” without feeling weak, stressed or that they had somehow surrendered because the person asking would also not be attached to the opposing opinion.
The person asking would know that the idea of water not having memory was also just an opinion.
Only from there can you have the sensible conversation which discusses which opinion has more evidence and what could be done to increase the evidence on either side.