All thinking and sensible being must face these questions sooner or later: Why are we here? Where did we come from? Where we will go to? And on a broader perspective: Why do things exist in the way they exist? What is time? How is the universe working? Are there any rules or everything is chaotic?
There are many approaches to the above questions. Some start at the human being and tries to understand the mind, some start from the beginning to the now, while some others start from the here and goes to the far.
The religious method
The mankind is in the center of the religious method. Some religion tries to explain the reasons of birth and creation, tries to find the causes of illness, death and suffering, or just creates a covenant between a deity and a group of people. Some religion is based on faith and dogmas, while some others are based on experience and understanging. But there are no general answers, just many faiths and beliefs.
The scientific method
The scientific method is based on research, predictability, exploration and understanding. In the beginning of the scientific era, scientists were optimistic, they thought they would be able to find the answers to every questions. They beleived that the world and the human body is just one giant and complicated machine.
As they dug deeper and deeper, they must have been realized that every answer creates more questions. Science has gone from the concrete to the probable. Now we know that the observer modifies the observed. As time and mass became relative and the observable universe comes into being from end endless flow of probability we still do not know why we are here and why we are suffering.
The custom method
Either we are religious or follow the science we give our freedom of understanding to some priviliged person (a scientist, or a priest) and want them to answer our questions. In the same way we bring our body to a doctor when there are some signs of illness.
Are we too lazy or feeling incapable of discovering our true condition? Or we are just not curious enough, needing ready made answers. Maybe we search in vain for the beginning because there is no beginning no end.
Curious observation of the self and our environment can lead us to better understanding of how our mind and our world works.
What prevents us from this kind of deep observation? Our tendency to live in our vision of the past and future. Our tendency to avoid to look into the the mirror and see things as they are. Sometimes truth can be painful.
In my experience observation with openness and acceptence can help us to better understand ourself and our environment. True wisdom can only be achieved by experiences.
For the open observation to work properly we need some prerequisite but we will discover them in the next articles.