Use the Kalama Sutta. Whether it is with a teacher, whether it is with a friend, whether it is with a book, whether it is science, philosophy, religion, whatever it is, use the Kalama Sutta. Books can definitely aid a lot, especially when you haven't got a real human being next to you to talk about the practice, and even if you have people to talk about it with, books can sometimes explain a topic a bit differently. Perhaps a lot of us here, I know with me and Rosemary, our meditation started with books. So it was a very valuable way to start. As to the books that we started with, we would not recommend, because it is not as good as what we know now, but at that time in our life that book was good for us. It helped us to grow. Many other books that we read along the way have been helpful along the way, but I would not recommend them now to other people. So that is my own wisdom growth in that way but definitely books can help us.
Science and philosophy, ok, what are we are doing here? Is Buddhism a religion? Not really. It has an organization around it. The teachings themselves have an organization around them that looks like a religion similar to when we think of what religion looks like in Christianity, Judaism, and so on. But Buddhism is actually not a religion. In fact in Thailand when the Thai people ask me if I am a Buddhist, they don't ask, "Are you a Buddhist?", - in Thai "Khun bpen chao Poot, mai?" Rather they ask, "Khun naptu sasana put mai?", which means "Do you respect the Buddha's teaching?"
And when they ask people whether they are a Christian or Jew, they do the same thing, "Do you respect Christ's teaching, do you respect the Jewish teachings?" They don't basically ask, "Are you a Jew, are you a Christian?" This is interesting and points out that what we are doing is not just a religion as such, what we are doing is definitely science, it is a perfected science, the Buddha perfected it. It has philosophy in it, it has a lot of these different aspects all put together, and the Buddha mastered what needed to be mastered from them all.
He gave it to us as a package to work with. Sometimes by reading other books, whether it is philosophy, whether it is science and so on, sometimes we see things that kind of fit. After all, science is based on the Law of Cause and Effect. Everything has a cause, everything has a result. How do scientists and medical people in particular try to solve a disease? They have to figure out the cause that creates the disease, it is as simple as that. So science is based on the Law of Cause and Effect and in many ways, things in it are very much what we look at from a Buddhist perspective.
Now how much do you get caught up in other books, science and philosophy, that is where you have to be careful because books can be very interesting. Take Buddhism itself, you know the Bible is a very thick book, but the Buddhist scriptures are 80 to 90 books. Depending on how they made them it's a complete bookshelf, three rows of 30 books each. It is a lot of books! And within Buddhism there are not only the scriptures, which are basically the recorded words of the Buddha and other enlightened people, but then they have what they call the commentaries.
These are books that were written after the Buddha was alive, in the early days, they were supposedly written by other enlightened people, so these disciples added more information to the basic scriptures to explain them in full. Ok, there are hundreds of more books in there. Then we have all the books that modern people are writing, with all their thoughts. Rosemary and I have put a few books in there, too. So within Buddhism we have a hundred, a thousand, we have tons of books to look at and what happens to some people is they just get attached to reading books. That is the scholarly approach, it can be helpful at times, but that is not the real practice. We have to do the experiential work. You have heard me say in the regular retreat that book knowledge and thinking knowledge, it can be helpful, but we do have to do the experiential work to really understand how do we let go of anger, how do we let go of fear and so on. So to be careful on how much you get attached to books, that is important.