Rationality and Early Buddhist Teachings

Rational features in early Buddhist teachings has had great appeal to the European mind when Buddhism came to be studied by scholars. As a result its presentation to wider readership neglected or ignored its specifically religious elements, both on popular and higher spiritual level as irrational or anti-rational. It concerned particularly the doctrine of rebirth, belief in the existence of beings in invisible worlds and the notion of nirv2!a/nibb2na, yet these tenets represent the very core of the Buddha’s message. The article argues that rational approach to and even analysis of Buddhist teachings is important and even indispensable as illustrated by the conceptual analysis of the states of consciousness in the system of abhidhamma, but maintains that those elements of the teaching which cannot be verified in the western way for all to see should not be rejected as logical impossibility. Rather they should be viewed as supra-rational propositions, made by those who claim to have verified them for themselves by individual experience, and scrutinised as to their logical probability; this should proceed in the context of evaluating Buddhism as a practical philosophy of life and a global world view whose essential component is a spiritual discipline with an outlook of finding the final solution of the riddle of existence