So this evening I'm going to consider what a secular wisdom might look like So let's start by offering a very rough guideline, definition I'd suggest that a secular wisdom, whether we call it pāññā or whether we call it sophia in greek is primarily concerned about how to live wisely in this world rather than seeking to gain knowledge or insight into what lies behind appearances that we call truth or reality and in english that would be truth with a capital T and reality with a capital R and this approach would lead to letting go of metaphysics and metaphysical beliefs altogether and adopting what we might consider as a pragmatic and therapeutic skepticism now when I use the word skepticism or skeptical or skeptic put out of your minds the conventional meaning of that word as in the sentence oh you're so skeptical this skepticism is a philosophy that goes back to the ancient Greeks and it's been a current in western thought right up to today and arguably lies behind the whole attitude to scientific research is to constantly inquire and question skepticism in greek means to investigate as for metaphysics a word that is often bandied around I think we can describe this quite simply as any view or opinion about what is not evident to us so this would be for example believing in the existence of God we don't know God or see God or have any direct knowledge of God but we believe or theists believe that God is somehow at the root or the ground or the origin that lies behind the apparent world of what we see, hear, smell, taste and touch and so on but it's also a metaphysical belief to accept the theory of the big bang which we know just as little about experientially as we do God it's a theory explains things but it's outside of our experience altogether and then if we look to buddhism and we hear claims like all conditioned things are impermanent or craving is the origin of suffering or the ultimate nature of reality is emptiness these are all metaphysical beliefs in other words they are propositions that we might regard as true but they're not things that we know directly and evidently for ourselves all conditioned things are impermanent is a buddhist dogma and when for example we hold a diamond in our hand it doesn't look remotely impermanent and yet as buddhists we believe that it is in other words the reality of the diamond is that it's impermanent even though it appears to be permanent and perhaps closer to home we have the sense at least I have the sense that me Stephen doesn't change that the same person who's speaking to you now was also the little boy who played with his toys at the age of five as far as Stephen's concerned that hasn't budged it feels as though it's exactly the same person hasn't changed but as buddhists or as even neuroscientists we'd say oh but that's just an appearance it's not the reality so a thoroughgoing skepticism is leads you basically to view yourself and the world by introducing a split between what appears what's evident through the senses through the mind and what lies behind the scenes not what we call reality or truth now this way of looking at the world whether or not we are philosophers or theologians is so deeply ingrained that it makes it quite difficult to really grasp what this skepticism means and what it implies it's difficult to understand this in some ways we are default ontologists that we have a kind of instinctive sense that there is a reality a true self truth in some sense that is out of our sight out of our reach out of our grasp but it must be there for everything else to be somehow supported or held up in some way or given meaning and legitimacy now let's first look at the roots of skepticism as we find in greek philosophy first remember that for the greeks philosophy was a practice what they called ascesis where we get the word ascetic asceticism but ascesis means much the same word as the Pali word sikha which means training or discipline philosophy was a practice for the greeks and it was a practice that had as its goal healing the philosopher was compared to a doctor a therapist a physician much in the same way as the Buddha was regarded as a physician someone who healed the suffering of our existential condition and of the ancient greek schools we find the school of skepticism that starts with a man called Pyrrho Pyrrho of Elis he lived in the 4th century BC he was initially a painter and he later studied with a philosopher called Anaxacus who we probably haven't heard of but together with Anaxacus Pyrrho travelled with Alexander the Great to India and in the greek records it says that he associated with the naked philosophers of India the gymnosophists which was what the greeks broadly called the sadhus and the monks and the philosophers they met when they arrived in India and again according to the records particularly that of a man called Diogenes Laetius Pyrrho is said to have practiced philosophy in a most noble way introducing that form of it which consists in not knowing and the suspension of judgment now very little survives of Pyrrho's own words he didn't write anything like Socrates, like the Buddha he taught orally to his students so we only have some fragments of things that were written down by people who studied with him his main pupil was a man called Timon and this is how Timon summarizes Pyrrho's teaching he says whoever wants to be happy should consider three questions how are things by nature? what attitude should we have toward them? and what will result from having such an attitude? Pyrrho according to Timon said that things are equally undefinable unmeasurable and un-pin-downable that's my paraphrase therefore neither our sensations in other words what we see and hear and smell and taste and touch nor our opinions tell us truths or falsehoods so we should not put the slightest trust in them in our senses, in our opinions but we should be without judgment without preference and unwavering saying about each thing that it no more is than is not or both is and is not or neither is nor is not and the result for those who practice this attitude will first be speechlessness and then untroubledness ataraxia sometimes translated as peace but the word literally means untroubled and it seems quite close in many ways to the Buddhist equanimity or even nirvana so this is a practice it's a practice of not regarding anything we can directly experience or any opinion that we can hold about that as giving us any claim to the nature of what is real or true or the nature of being or the nature of God for Pirro all we have available to us are appearances the apparent evident world to make a claim a truth claim about something which is not evident which is hidden is to indulge in metaphysics and is for Pirro simply unjustified he says or one of his followers says that appearance extends everywhere so even if we as scientists for example get down to understanding the atomic and subatomic nature of matter that is still in the realm of appearance it's just another layer of appearance it's what's apparent to us what's evident to us it doesn't say anything about anything else that might lie behind, beyond or in the inner essence of those things Pirro therefore practiced what's called epoche the suspension of judgment putting aside our beliefs, our opinions, our prejudices our biases, our views and learning to simply encounter our own experience both our inner experience our sensory experience without any preconceived beliefs or notions about their nature but he didn't say that reality was unknowable that we cannot know reality because that would be just another opinion another view another judgment he practiced skepticism he practiced an ongoing open-ended inquiry founded in the sense of I don't know I don't know what this really is all I can experience is what it appears to be in other words one keeps inquiring one keeps investigating one encourages a curiosity a puzzlement a perplexity perhaps one day we will reach the end of this road but for the time being all we can do in a sense is wonder and inquire and puzzle and be perplexed and so this not knowing this suspension of judgment is the flip side of a capacity to ask questions when we ask a question when we say you know who am I? for example we are implicitly acknowledging I don't know who I am this not knowing is the underside of curiosity and wonder a sense of mystery puzzlement perhaps so this kind of approach to life is not in the business of providing us with the consolation of certainty or belief we're always in a state of puzzlement and questioning it's a way of life that releases us from the hold of opinions and views into a condition of afatos speechlessness and I take this to mean a kind of a jaw-dropping sense of wonder being awestruck by what's happening and that stopping of thought that stopping of opinion and views is what leads to the condition of an untroubled mind we're no longer preoccupied with what is the nature of myself or of things we simply settle into a wordless wonderment so where did Pyrrho get these ideas? the obvious place to begin in asking this question is to look at his own teacher the man Anaxarchus with whom he travelled to India and Anaxarchus belonged to the lineage of a philosopher called Democritus Democritus came from the very eastern part of the Greek world from a place called Abdera in the country that in those days was called Thrace or Thracy, I don't know how you pronounce it and he's known as the laughing philosopher Democritus and Democritus too according again to the Greek records also is believed to have gone to India where he too is said to have studied with naked sages but if Democritus had gone to India as the records suggest he would have been there during the lifetime of the Buddha himself when he came back from his travels he lived in a most humble manner the text says he cut himself off he cut off for himself a small portion of the garden that surrounded his house in which there was a small cottage and he shut himself up in it he used to practice himself in testing perceptions in various ways sometimes it says he would retire to solitary places spending time in graveyards and he visited Athens but he despised the glory that was given to philosophers there and did not desire to be known he met Socrates but he says Socrates did not know who he was again Democritus was a practical philosopher and the goal of his practice was the attainment of joy of human flourishing eudaimonia and ataraxia untroubledness but he was also the first materialist he was the first Greek thinker to develop an atomic theory of the universe for Democritus reality consisted of atoms and void in other words ultimate atomic particles that moved around in an empty space and the whole of reality was built up upon these atomic movements again not hugely different from the modern scientific view but this meant that he cast doubt on the reliability of our senses or our reason since neither was capable of apprehending the atoms themselves and a later philosopher called Sextus Empiricus quotes him by saying of Democritus his teaching was by convention sweet by convention bitter by convention hot by convention cold by convention colour in reality atoms and void now Anarxicus didn't study with Democritus himself he studied with one of his students a man called Metrodorus about whom we know very little but Metrodorus was the one who developed the sceptical side of democracy and philosophy it's said that he abolished the criterion of truth by claiming that we know nothing nor do we even know just that that we know nothing and this goes much further than the famous statement of Socrates which was I know one thing but I know nothing Metrodorus didn't even know that he knew nothing and this again is not just an intellectual game these people actually sought to live their lives from this perspective so you have another saying attributed to Metrodorus that says a single ear of wheat in a large field is as strange as a single world in infinite space so whether we're looking at the tiniest thing a grain of wheat or whether we're casting our eyes out into the cosmos we are equally overcome with a sense of how strange how wondrous how inexplicable that is now some of us in listening to these teachers within the Greek sceptical tradition have probably remarked wait a minute this sounds a lot like Buddhism this sounds a lot like what we've been doing on this retreat in a way just being present with what is apparent noticing it suspending judgment about what it is or what I like or what I dislike having some narrative some story about it seeking to come into a contemplative intimacy with the world as it rises stays around for a while shifts changes disappears and seeking to rest in an increasingly speechless space not to get caught up in our words or concepts but just to come to rest in the sheer wonder of life itself and it's there in that we begin to experience moments of peace of stillness of ataraxia so this led someone like Nietzsche Friedrich Nietzsche to say although a Greek Pyrrho was a Buddhist even a Buddha so I'm now going to go back to the earliest layer of Buddhist teaching and share with you passages that seem to be speaking in a very similar way we'll start with the the Atthakavana the chapter of eights it's called it's part of the Sutta Nipata which is regarded both by traditional Buddhists as well as modern scholars as the earliest layer within the Pali canon I'm not going to go into the reasons as to why they say that but they for good reasons take these texts to be probably the earliest that there are and they're very similar in their style in their language in their whole approach but in a way that somehow contrasts with many of the suttas the discourses we get in the better known collections like the middle length discourses and so on so I'll just give you some examples of that this is the Buddha speaking he says I do not say this is true that's what fools say to each other they make out their own way to be true and therefore regard their opponents as fools so again the Buddha is not comfortable with even using this word truth in this sense at all and I'll read you a a sequence of verses now that comes from one of which is section 5 of the Atthakavagga the Buddha or whoever is the author of this text is talking about a practitioner who lives in this way in which they have let go of the notion of holding on to truth he lets go of one position without taking another he's not defined by what he knows nor does he join a dissenting faction he assumes no view at all he's not lured into the blind alleys of it is and it is not this world and the next for he lacks those commitments that make people ponder and seize hold of doctrine there's no hint of contrivance in his perception of views words and ideas who can judge the priest who holds no views by what standard can you measure him? he doesn't elaborate nor does he flatten he has not taken up any doctrines you cannot gauge this priest by his rules he has gone beyond with nothing to fall back on this is remarkably similar to the sceptical approach sceptical reminding remember again in this sense of living your life as a constant process of questioning of wondering of inquiring of letting go of views and opinions but not as an intellectual exercise as a contemplative discipline and experience this is a passage that comes from the Samyutta Nikaya the connected discourses on the Buddha it's a dialogue between a man called Vajrabahu