Quantum Mechanics and Buddhist? The Connection?

DaltheJigsaw

Is there a connection between the two?
Specifically, rebirth and reincarnation?
Can Quantum Mechanics help us understand Buddhism even further?

juanorellana

Yes and no, to put is simply quantum mechanics is the study of the very small. however it is based on theory and we are not advance enough to draw any clear conclusions. reincarnation and has something i guess to do with it but i dont see any clear connection. i could make some assumptions and come up with a conclusion but it would not be true since i dont know if my assumptions are correct. but i believe that yes that we are all energy and we never disappear and that our consciousness is a result of existing in this reality filled with quantum particles or energy. i could even go further and say that in the future we will discover that we can exist as pure anergy with a consciousness. are brains are just machines that are able to hang on to one consciousness. while the whole universe is conscious being. we might not know it now, but we are pure light trapped in human vessel. and our conscious mind that we know it to be now is reflection of that. i hope i didnt go to far with this but its just what i think.

Cloud

We understand best when we stop asking. It is then that we notice discomfort, and when we trace that discomfort to its source, there we find the root of all our frustrations (and the answer to this question and many more).

zidangus

"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics"

Richard Feynman

Daozen

If you think there's a connection, you either don't understand buddhism, or quantum mechanics, or possibly either.

This kind of comparison is the worst form of far-fetched analogy that insults both traditions.

Cinorjer

The connection? Our desire to know for certain running into reality's tendency to say "maybe".

budding_flower

Dear All,

I have stopped scientificating (if such a word exist and if it doesn't you got the message ) metaphysics along time ago. That doesn't mean that I haven't made my research on how physics begin to realize things that the old masters have figured out thousand years ago...

So I don't think that comparison of Buddhism with quantum physics is an insult to any of these approaches of reality. For me studying a little bit of science first gives my mind something to grasp in order to live me alone when I’m trying to do these spooky and absurd things like meditating, and also to have a good ground for conversation with a sceptic...

zidangus

buddhanet has a .pdf on this

http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/rebirthscience.pdf

BuckyG

I like Grupp. He's a connect the dots kind of thinker. Like Robert Anton Wilson, who always connects Buddha to quantum stuffs (eg. Promethues Rising, Quantum Psychology. Two very worthwhile reads).

SCIENTIFICATING does exist. It's what Freud and the behaviorists tried to do psychology. It's also what academic psychologists are still trying to do to psychology.

b@eze

person

They both try to understand reality. Some of the understandings about impermanence and interdependence are very similar. As far as rebirth goes there doesn't seem to be any link so far. For me quantum mechanics has helped me loosen my grasp on a solid, objectivly existing world, I don't know if that means its a proper Buddhist view though.

aMatt

There is a book called "The Quantum and The Lotus" which compares and contrasts the two topics in depth. Especially for the western scientific minded, it can help reconcile science with faith in buddhism. I've read it; its pretty intense and informative.

Malachy12

@aMatt Good book!

DaltheJigsaw

There is a book called "The Quantum and The Lotus" which compares and contrasts the two topics in depth. Especially for the western scientific minded, it can help reconcile science with faith in buddhism. I've read it; its pretty intense and informative.

Very good book!

compassionate_warrior

Is there a connection between the two?
Specifically, rebirth and reincarnation?
Can Quantum Mechanics help us understand Buddhism even further?

Well, we just recently had a thread about the latest quantum theories of mind/consciousness, that holds that consciousness is the fabric of the universe. The article said consciousness isn't generated by the brain, consciousness exists independently of the brain, and the brain is the receiver of the electromagnetic waves of consciousness generated by the mind field. Buddhism (or more precisely, HHDL in his meetings with scientists) have been saying similarly that consciousness can't be reduced to the physical systems of the body. Consciousness is something apart from the physical body. I think quantum mechanics and Buddhism can help elucidate each other.

tess

The second video is great. Maybe a bit over optimistic with linking Quantum physics with Buddhism but motivating to search further.

Thank you.

I will leave here some food for thought about reality. Make your own mind.

This one is to understand a bit better two slit experiment. I 've got even lost with explanation of interpretation in your video.




And this is about some views on consciousness and its interpretation of reality.






And now as Buddha said: exercise your own judgment.

zidangus

The quantum mind-body problem maybe a good place to start on this subject

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind–body_problem

zidangus

"Wolfgang Pauli interpreted the laws of quantum mechanics as leading to a lucid Platonic mysticism, a position intermediate between the skepticism of Western science centered on objective observer independent facts, and the philosophies of ancient Eastern mysticism which put primary emphasis on conscious experience. Werner Heisenberg reported on Pauli's position, and his own, as follows:

...Pauli once spoke of two limiting conceptions, both of which have been extraordinarily fruitful in the history of human thought, although no genuine reality corresponds to them. At one extreme is the idea of an objective world, pursuing its regular course in space and time, independently of any kind of observing subject; this has been the guiding image of modern science. At the other extreme is the idea of a subject, mystically experiencing the unity of the world and no longer confronted by an object or by any objective world; this has been the guiding image of Asian mysticism. Our thinking moves somewhere in the middle, between these two limiting conceptions; we should maintain the tension resulting from these two opposites."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind–body_problem

zidangus

here are some more good links to read on this if anyone is interested

http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9501014v5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mysticism
"
Writers on quantum mysticism have made such statements as the following;

The observer and reality are not separate and mind and body are indivisibly one. While these ideas are commonly accepted, science does not commonly attribute substantiality to mind and consciousness. David Chalmers, in The Conscious Mind (1996), used the idea of the philosophical zombie to argue in the arena of philosophy that a mechanical view of evolution cannot account for the phenomenon of awareness, while Daniel Dennett has attempted to refute this argument and to assert that the mind is an emergent phenomenon of our bodies.[29] Dennett has also coined the term deepity[30] to describe statements that have two possible linguistic interpretations, one true but trivial and the other either profound or meaningless but "earth-shattering" if true. The idea that there is an underlying consciousness or intelligence that connects everyone is commonly proposed by "quantum mystics", based on the fact that quantum fields can be interpreted as extending infinitely in space.

The body is fundamentally information and energy perceived as solid matter. The information claim stems from the "it from bit" ideas of John Archibald Wheeler which evolved into Digital physics.[31] Quantum field theory states that everything is made of quantum fields that are not to be interpreted as objects, so the term "solid" has no real meaning in this context."