Dear Gunnar

You wrote:

> A few years ago, I bought a copy of the report of the Panadura
> Controversy. It turned out that, during this debate, the Buddhist side
> insisted about the actual existence of Mount Meru, and firmly asserted
> that this giant mountain is situated at the North Pole.
>
> Well, at the time, no human eye had yet seen the North Pole (nor the
> South one), but nowadays it is more easy to control this assertion.
> Just click at
> <http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np.html>! Evidently, the North
> Pole is one of the flattest places on Earth - just water and drifting
> ice...
>
> So let's remember that the Buddha did not teach us geography, history
> or cosmology, but just dukkha and the end of dukkha. Whatever stories
> he told were not primarily intended to give us scientific facts, but
> to help our liberation.

Well, what follows may be just an opinion of a superstitious monk.

Mount Meru is only one instance of things not seeable by human eyes yet
mentioned in scriptures. We have no experimental proof of the past lives
or future ones; and, of 31 spheres of existences mentioned in
Abhidhammatthasa'ngaha, only two are directly known to us --- the sphere
of animals and that of men. Whether such invisible things really exist
or not is an open question in science since they cannot be confirmed nor
refuted using scientific methods. Perhaps the progress of science in
future may get something to tell us.

In the meantime, what would be the proper attitude for us?

To quote Sayadaw U Silananda, "The structure of Buddhist doctrine (He
means Theravada, of course) is consistent and self-contained, excepting
some minor details. The Doctrine is just like a set of dominoes. The
whole pile would crumble if you try to remove a single item. You can
take it or leave it --- as a whole but not in part".

Take the concept of the Cycle of Birth, for instance. It cannot be
scientifically validated. But if you try to reject it, the law of kamma
would go with it. Why? If we decide to limit our scope to the present
life that common sense admits, the law of kamma cannot be said to be
universal --- with many merits go unrewarded and many sins unpunished.

The whole Buddhist doctrine and practice is based on the law of kamma.
If we admit exceptions in that law, it would in effect mean accepting
exceptions in the doctrine and practice as well.

What I wish to stress here is that we should be very careful if we
decide to reject or ignore any doctrinal detail that we consider to be
unsound and unimportant.

Then what should we do? Should we accept them in blind faith?

No. We should be pragmatic in our approach. If these things don't
disturb you in your practice of dhamma, you can safely forget them,
without believing or rejecting them. Past and future lives may exist, or
may not, but only the present belongs to you. If you can practise
dhamma, and live per dhamma, in the present, you are a follower of the
Buddha, whether you proclaim it or not.

However, different people have different attitudes. For some persons,
the doubt over unverifiable things may extend over the whole doctrine,
making them unable to properly practise the dhamma. For such persons,
there are practices called Samatha explained in Visuddamagga to achieve
insight into such matters. Of course, it cannot be guaranteed that
everyone would get 100% success in these practices. But one can at least
hope to get some insight unavailable otherwise, and use inductive
reasoning to quell one's doubts concerned with things still out of one's
reach.

>From a purely logical point of view, inductive conclusions are not

100% valid. But we have got to live with it since even the sun rising
tomorrow is only an inductive guess.

After a lengthy intro, let's go back to Mount Meru, our present problem.
According to Buddhist cosmology, Mount Meru is the home of two planes of
existences, namely, the Realm of the Four Great Kings
(caatumahaaraajika), and the Realm of the Thirty-three Gods
(taavati.msaa). If these realms are invisible to human eyes or
instruments, we cannot hope to see Mount Meru even if it actually exists
at the North Pole.

Whether Mount Meru really exists or not is the part of a larger problem
--- whether all these realms exist or not, and subsequently, whether the
Cycle of Birth itself is a reality or not.

with metta

Ven. Pandita