Modern Koans – Why Our Questions Are More Important Than Our Answers

Modern Koans is an ongoing series that recognizes that good questions are often more important then their answers.

The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. ― G.K. Chesterton

 Why Our Questions Are More Important Than Our Answers

What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning – Werner Karl Heisenberg

Whatever a monk keeps pursuing with his thinking and pondering, that becomes the inclination of his awareness – Majjhima Nikaya 19

Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow – George Clinton

Answers can be dreary, disappointing, limiting, and most importantly wrong.  It can be argued by observing science, that all answers are wrong.  Every theory that we’ve developed has room for improvement.  In fact Kurt Gödel‘s Incompleteness  Theorem proves that there will always be a gap between theory and reality.

So why bother?  Well, there is progress. Humanity has benefited from the incremental success of the experimental method for hundreds of years now.  Pacemakers, pharmaceuticals, space ships, modern agriculture, and the internet are the product of science’s relentless pursuit of answers. But I think there is something more important that we’ve gained from trudging on – better questions.

Werner Heisenberg uncertainty principle encapsulated how quantum theory introduced a mind shattering change to how we view the world.  The intuitive idea that matter is solid was debunked, quantum field theory showed that all things arise and return to nothingness (Buddhist emptiness), quantum entanglement showed that oneness is not just a pretty idea. When Heisenberg suggested that we exchange the term experimentation with participation, he was telling us how important our questions are. How we observe (more precisely how we measure) the world affects what we are able to observe.  The classic example of the principle is that if we measure the velocity of a particle, we can have some certainty about it, but we loose certainty about other attributes of the particle (location, spin, etc).  Another way of putting it is if we’re interested in velocity, we’ll find velocity, but we loose site of location.  The question we ask limits the answer.

Let’s look at some of the questions that are  most prevalent today. Here’s whats trending on Twitter, Quora, and Facebook (I took this snapshot on January 20, 2015)

If these are our questions?  What kind of answers are we going to find?

Are There Bad Questions?

Another perspective on questions is whether or not we’ve learned what bad questions are.  The Buddha was adamant about being silent on certain questions. These are called the unanswered questions. Different traditions call out varied questions.

What am I?
Am I or Am I not?
Did I exist or not exist in the past?
What was I in the past?
Shall I exist or not in future?
What and how shall I be in future?
Whence came this person?
Whither will he go?
Is the world eternal or not?
Is the world (spatially) infinite or not?
Is the soul identical with the body or not?
Does the Tathagata (a perfectly enlightened being) exists, not exist, both, or neither after death.

There are few things common to these questions.  They are unanswerable, because they lie outside observation.  We cannot observe the past or future. These are only memories or anticipation.  The question of what the self is lies at the center of Buddhism.  Suffering itself is predicated on our misunderstanding of what we are – the problem  of self.  What’s more important about this mistake is that we cannot correct it.

In day to day life many of our critical questions are set up for failure because they’re not answerable.

Which political party’s  platform will produce the best results for the future?What does God think about professional  sports teams?What laws can we enact to ensure people act responsibility?How should we educate our children to ensure that they are successful?

These are hard questions, in part because they don’t have answers. But are they bad questions?  No, we have to answer them  everyday.

So what do we do with them?  How do we approach them?  What expectation can we have after we’ve answered them? Can we and should we change our minds when things don’t turn out the way we hoped?

What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

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