..續本文上一頁t”s when he concludes that he”s found his bull elephant. In explaining this simile, the Buddha identified all the preliminary steps of the practice—going into the wilderness as a monastic; adhering to the precepts; developing restraint, contentment, and strong concentration; seeing past lives and gaining vision of the beings of the cosmos dying and being reborn in line with their karma—as simply footprints and scratch marks of the Buddha”s Awakening. Only when you have your own first taste of Awakening, having followed his path, do you really know that your faith in his Awakening was well placed. Touching the dimension where suffering ends, you realize that the Buddha”s teachings about it were not only true but also useful: He knew what he was talking about and was able to point you there as well.

　　What”s interesting about this simile is the way it combines healthy faith with honest skepticism. To act on this faith is to test it, the way you”d test a working hypothesis. You need faith to keep following the footprints, but you also need the honesty to recognize where faith ends and knowledge begins. This is why, in the Buddhist context, faith and empiricism are inseparable. Unlike a monotheistic religion—where faith centers on the power of another, and skepticism implies a rejection of that power—faith in the Buddha”s Awakening keeps pointing back to the power of your own actions: Do you have enough power over your intentions to make them harmless

　　 Do harmless intentions then give you the freedom to drop intention entirely

　　 The only way you can answer these questions is by being scrupulously honest about your intentions, to detect even the slightest traces of harm, even the slightest movement of intention itself. Only then will you know the deathless, totally unconditioned by intention, for sure. But if you claim to know things that you don”t, how can you trust yourself to detect any of these things

　　 You”ve got to make your inner honesty worthy of the subtle truths you”re trying to prove.

　　This is why science will never be able to pass valid judgment on the truths of Awakening, for the path deals in matters that outside experimenters can”t reach. Although others may sympathize with your suffering, the suffering itself is an experience you can share with no one else. The honesty and skillfulness of your intentions is an affair of your internal dialogue, something that is also purely your own. Scientists can measure the neurological data indicating pain or intentional activity, but there”s no external measurement for how the pain feels, or how honest your intentional dialogue may be. And as for the deathless, it has no physical correlates at all. The closest that outside empirical measurement can get is to pictures of the footprints on the ground and the marks in the trees. To get to the bull elephant, you have to do what the Buddha”s disciple Sariputta did. He kept following the path, without jumping to dishonest conclusions, until he saw the elephant within. Then, when the Buddha asked him, “Do you take it on faith that these five strengths—faith, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment—lead to the deathless,” Sariputta could answer honestly, “No, I don”t take it on faith. I know.”

　　As Sariputta stated in another discourse, his proof was experiential but so inward that it touched a dimension where not only the external senses but even the sense of the functioning of the mind can”t reach. If you want to confirm his knowledge you have to touch that dimension in the only place you can access it, inside yourself. This is one of two ways in which the Buddha”s method differs from that of modern empiricism.

　　The other has to do with the integrity of the person attempting the proof. As in science, faith in the Buddha”s Awakening acts like a working hypothesis, but the test of that hypothesis requires an honesty deeper and more radical than anything science requires. You have to commit yourself—every variation on who you feel you are—totally to the test. Only when you take apart all clinging to your inner and outer senses can you prove whether the activity of clinging is what hides the deathless. The Buddha never forced anyone to commit to this test, both because you can”t coerce people to be honest with themselves, and because he saw that the pit of burning embers was coercion enough.

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