Is there Buddhist astrology?
Can planets really affect our reality?
Remember you're asking a question about a Buddhist monk and his friends.
So, I mean, to ask such a broad question like that, I can't answer properly.
I could, but...
It's going to be one of those questions where I say, in our tradition, from the point of view of our tradition, the Buddha was against using astrology, relying on even prognostication, predictions about the future.
thinking about the future is not of interest.
Monks are not allowed to learn astrology.
We're only allowed to learn astronomy to the extent that we can predict, calculate the quarters so that we know when the full moon is going to be, when the empty moon is going to be.
But I'll go out on a limb and say that indeed the Buddha didn't deny it and
probably would have accepted the validity of Indian astrology.
They even use it.
I mean, many people do use it in Thailand.
There are astrologers in Thailand who have talked to them about it.
They've done my horoscope.
And it's always interesting to listen.
I would say just speculating that it's not that planets affect our reality it's that there's an interconnectedness to reality it's all one system so if you look at one facet of reality or one aspect of the universe you can you can recognize patterns that
on a microscopic level or on a local level actually do have an effect of some sort or are mirrored on a local level.
So humans might... human behavior might change based on the positions of planets.
That being said, I would say it's...
It's probably, I would guess that it's about 50% delusion and 50% actual recognition at best.
Because a lot of astrology is just what, positive affirmation, I don't know what the term is, but some sort of...
recognition, the wishful thinking you want to, you want it to apply to you.
Now, there was an interesting article, an interesting video that I think I even shared out on the internet with Michael Shermer, this guy who does Skeptic Magazine, and he interviewed a, what's the word, are they called Ayurvedic astrologers?
What are these Indian astrologers called?
People who study, this guy who studied Indian Hindu astrology,
and did an experiment where they had 10 people, something like 10 people, and these 10 people were to just give their birth date and I think their gender.
I don't even know if they gave their gender, but their birth date may have been the only thing that he got.
So he got the birth date, and then he recorded a video
where he gave a horoscope for each of the ten people.
And then they got all these ten people together and they put this guy behind a two-way mirror so he could watch and see what's going on so that they didn't see him.
And they played back the video for each person one by one.
And the things he said about them, they found about a 70%, something like a 70, I think, to 80% validity or correlation.
So some things were, the person would say, no, that's not like me, but 70, 80% of the things that were said were recognized as being correct.
Except for the last two people.
Because this is the interesting part of the experiment, is that
they switched the two last people's birth dates and so when it came to the last two people he gave the horoscope for the last person to the second last person and gave the horoscope for the second last person to the last person and the correlation was like twenty percent or thirty percent it was exact opposite then they told these two people that this is what they had done and then flipped them around again and right away got back up to seventy to eighty percent so
You know, it's a small experiment, but the idea that these things could have an effect, it seems to be well documented in a pseudo-scientific way.
Whether it would actually survive rigorous scientific testing is something else.