A Survey of the Theology of Zen Buddhism in the Framework of Lakatos, s Research Program, with an Emphasis on

The present thesis aims at stating that the structure of religious science is similar to that of the science. In the other words, as all the schools of philosophy of science are in search of re-identification of empirical science, we, too, are trying to re-identify the structure of religious science. The theology of Zen Buddhism is one of the fields of study in the realm of religious science, with a structure similar to that of the empirical science. After a research amongst various schools of philosophy of science, we selected research program of Lakatos. According to Lakatos, empirical science is a research program, consisting of a hard core theory and auxiliary hypotheses. Having discovered the relationship between the data and theory, he congruously explicates the structure of empirical science. In order to put the theology of Zen Buddhism in any research program it must be noticed that Buddhist literature enjoys a travelogue-like structure which contains the factors of an empirical theology, i.e. such a structure includes a personal compliment and a general one. The origin of personal compliment found in Zen Buddhism is experience. General compliments are the beliefs and doctrine of the followers of Zen Buddhism with an unknown and not-to be-known cognitive origin. As a result, they might be rejected or nullified throughout the time. So they are temporal, valid and in the same longitude.

In order to re-identify the structure of the theology of Zen Buddhism through a research program, It uses  Forman’s theory analysis in the Zen Doctrine of No -Mind. There, Forman divides the experiences into two kinds of intuitive and mystical. According to Forman, mystical experiences are pure while the intuitive ones are replete with theories that make them temporal and being neglected throughout the time. Therefore, the atomic theory explicates the mystical experiences of the founder of this school, and the auxiliary hypotheses explicate his intuitive ones.