How the Buddhist practice of accepting blame can improve dialogue between scientific and post-truth perspectives

Abstract

ABSTRACT Disregard for scientific evidence in favor of opinion and personal belief is dangerous and dominates post-truth perspectives, indicating scientists need new ways of cultivating cooperation for a healthy and sustainable future. Post-truth crises such as climate change denial and vaccine hesitancy reflect learned, non-scientific ways of thinking and so blaming proponents is unhelpful. A solution for improved dialogue may lie in the traditional Tibetan mind-training practice of “drive all blames into one,” in which blame is counterintuitively accepted and transformed into compassion through deep contemplation. The practice is rooted in the Buddhist teachings that all manifestations are empty of separate-self and interdependent, which reflect parallel scientific principles in ecology and evolutionary biology—namely, that organism and environment co-arise, and all life derives from a common ancestor. The practice brings awareness to the fact that all evidence is partial and blaming others reflects illusion of separation and ignorance of interdependence, which causes conflict and suffering. We discuss how practicing “drive all blames into one” can help to improve dialogue between scientific and post-truth perspectives.