从黄巾起义到狭义相对论：佛教思想的科学性

昨天把《佛祖到底说了什么》这本书剩下的最后一些章节看完了。应该说这是一本写得非常通俗的好书。而且看得出来，作者虽然对佛学了解很多，但他本身并不是佛教徒，所以他对佛学的讲解也更加通俗客观，没有玄乎其玄的东西，还可以拿生活和现代人的常识来进行类比。更难能可贵的是，这本书讲佛教的发展脉络是结合中国历史的线索来讲的。可以看出，佛教和佛学思想对中国历史和社会演变产生了非常重大的影响，甚至在中国一直被统治阶级所推崇，占据主导地位的儒学在其发展的后期，也是很大程度上借鉴了佛学的思想。

这本书开头讲到的并不是释迦摩尼在印度的故事，而是从大家耳熟能详的开启三国乱世的黄巾起义。黄巾起义并不是典型的农民起义，而是一次宗教色彩非常浓厚的暴动。起义的发动者张角兄弟，实际上是模仿了印度传入的佛教的教团形式，发展和组织起自己的信徒，并最终动员他们造反。在这里加上一点我的个人思考。应该说在佛教传入中国之前，中国本土的宗教是没有成体系、有组织的。中国本土宗教道教的前身，实际上就是这种借鉴外部佛教组织体制组建的五斗米教、太平道之类的组织。所以说，当秦皇汉武建立起庞大的大一统帝国的时候，并没有一个强有力的宗教势力与之抗衡。虽然汉武帝搞“罢黜百家，独尊儒术”，确立了儒教的统治地位，但作为中国的本土宗教势力，儒教是非常缺乏独立性的。而且严格来说，儒教并不能算是一种宗教，因为它只是一套礼法和规矩，并没有自己完整的世界观和神话系统，而且孔子强调“子不语怪、力、乱、神”，“未知生，焉知死”，没有教人们如何面对死亡，对人类自身缺乏终极关怀。所以儒教也只能在那些希望通过学习儒家学说，获得功名进入朝廷体制内的读书人之间流传。而佛教和道教，更关注普通人的终极问题，提供一套完整的世界观，也注重在普通人之间发展信徒，建立组织系统，所以具有一定的独立性，成为可以制约皇权的力量。

西方文明能够在罗马帝国崩溃以后，建立起有一定秩序的封建社会，并最终迎来文艺复兴，很大程度上，基督教和天主教会在其中发挥了维护社会秩序的作用是分不开的。中华文明虽然不断经历朝代兴替和轮回，但能仍然能够保持文明的延续性，不少也是和像佛教这样的相对独立的宗教势力存在有一定的关系。

上面从一个很大的角度说了佛教对中国历史的这个影响，现在还是回过头来。说到佛教的理论，大家总是和魔法呀、神迹呀联系在一起，觉得玄之又玄很难理解。其实佛教的理论一点都不神秘，甚至还很科学，非常注重逻辑，有些类似于欧几里德的几何学，从有限的几条公理推导出一个复杂的知识体系。佛学的公理更少，只有两条，第一条叫做“万法缘起”。这句话听起来很高大上，只是因为这些字词的用法现在不太常见，其实稍加解释非常容易理解。所谓“万法”，就是世间的万物；“缘”就是因果关系。世间的万物并不是凭空产生的，都是因果关系的条件具备之后，才能存在于这个世界之上。就像先有父母才有孩子，先有木匠、木材、进行组装，才有桌椅板凳。所以任何事物都是由因果关系、因果条件聚合而成的，这些因果关系中缺少了任何一环，那么这个事物也就不存在了。所以由“万法缘起”这一条就可以推导出这个世界万事万物是在变化中的，没有什么东西能够永恒存在。因为只要组成这个东西的因果条件发生了变化，那这个东西也就消失了。也就是我们常说的“世事无常”。如果你认真学习过爱因斯坦的狭义相对论，就会发现，这种说法与科学是完全兼容的。狭义相对论也有一条重要的公理，那就是光速不变，并推论出光速是宇宙中所有运动速度的上限。为什么会这样呢？因为如果超过光速就会破坏因果律。如果在某个参考系下超过光速的话，那么在另一个参考系中就可以观察到事情的结果发生于原因之前，那么整个宇宙也就崩溃了。是不是很神奇啊？

---

I finished reading the last chapters of the book "What the Buddha Really Said" yesterday. It should be said that this is a very popular book. Moreover, it can be seen that although the author knows a lot about Buddhism, he is not a Buddhist himself, so his explanation of Buddhism is more popular and objective, there is nothing mysterious, and it can also be compared, and life can be compared with the common sense of modern people. What is even more valuable is that this book says that the development of Buddhism is based on the clues of Chinese history. It can be seen that Buddhism and Buddhist thought have had a very significant impact on Chinese history and social evolution, and even have been respected and dominated by the ruling class in China. This means that Confucianism, in its later stages of development, also borrowed heavily from Buddhist ideas.

The beginning of this book is not the story of Sakyamuni in India, but from the well-known Yellow Turbans uprising that started the chaos of the Three countries. The Yellow Turbans Uprising was not a typical peasant uprising, but a very religious uprising. The initiators of the uprising, the Zhang Jiao brothers, actually imitated the order form of Buddhism introduced to India, developing and organizing their followers, and eventually mobilizing them to revolt. Add a little personal thought here. It should be said that before Buddhism was introduced into China, there was no systematic and organized religion in China. The predecessor of Taoism, China's native religion, was actually such organizations as Brahmanism and Taiping Dao, which borrowed from the external Buddhist organization system. Therefore, when the Qin Emperor and Han Wu established a huge unified empire, there was no powerful religious force to contend with it. Although Emperor Wudi of Han established the dominant position of Confucianism by "dismissing all schools of thought and respecting Confucianism alone", as a local religious force in China, Confucianism was very lacking of independence. Moreover, strictly speaking, Confucianism cannot be regarded as a religion, because it does not have its own god, it is only a set of rites and rules, and does not have its own complete world view and mythological system, but emphasizes that "the child does not speak of monsters, forces, chaos, and gods", and lacks ultimate concern for nature and human beings themselves. Therefore, Confucianism can only spread among scholars who hope to gain fame and enter the imperial system through learning Confucianism. Buddhism and Taoism, on the other hand, pay more attention to the ultimate problems of ordinary people, provide a complete set of world views, and also pay attention to the development of believers among ordinary people and the establishment of organizational systems, so they have a certain degree of independence and become a force that can check the imperial power.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Western civilization was able to establish a feudal society with a certain order and finally usher in the Renaissance. To a large extent, Christianity and the Catholic Church played a role in maintaining social order. Although the Chinese civilization has continuously experienced the revival of dynasties and reincarnation, it has still been able to maintain the continuity of civilization, which is partly related to the existence of relatively independent religious forces such as Buddhism.

The above mentioned the influence of Buddhism on Chinese history from a large Angle, and now I will come back to it. When it comes to Buddhist theories, people are always associated with magic and miracles, and find it difficult to understand. In fact, Buddhist theory is not mysterious at all, and even very scientific, very logical, somewhat similar to Euclid's philosophy, from a limited number of axioms to derive a complex system of knowledge. There are even fewer axioms in Buddhism, only two, the first of which is called "The origin of all Fa." This statement sounds lofty, only because these Buddhist uses are not so common these days and are actually quite easy to understand with a little explanation. The so-called "Dharma" is everything in the world; "Karma" is causality. All things in the world are not created out of thin air, only after the conditions of causality are met, can they exist in this world. Just as there were parents before there were children, carpenters, wood, assembly, tables, chairs and benches. Therefore, everything is made up of causal relations, causal conditions, and without any link in these causal relations, the thing does not exist. Therefore, from the article "the origin of all Fa", it can be inferred that everything in this world is changing, and nothing can exist forever. Because as soon as the causal conditions of the composition of the thing change, the thing also disappears. This is what we often say, "the world changes." If you have studied Einstein's special theory of relativity seriously, you will find that this statement is perfectly compatible with science. Special relativity also has an important axiom that the speed of light does not change, and it follows that the speed of light is the upper limit for all motion in the universe. Why is this? Because if you exceed the speed of light, you break the law of cause and effect. If the speed of light is exceeded in one frame of reference, then in another frame of reference it can be observed that the effect of events occurs before the cause, and the whole universe collapses. Isn't that amazing?