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Quantum Physics and Buddhism
Joshua
Veteran
Are they truly proving each other? 
0
Comments
It hasn't been shown to be true yet. I think it will be a while.
I would have to agree that it's the most probable relationship I have seen yet, but that's just me. It is my opinion/belief that consciousness precedes biology or maybe even causes biology (Francisco Varela, Autopoesis), but that's just my opinion. But I don't know if one can validly posit a causality with the available evidence. I am more inclined to believe a co-existent relationship, like consciousness existing along with or inside of or together with superstrings, but that's all just idle speculation and just my opinion/belief.
If I'm following you correctly you are inclined towards some sort of dualistic concept? But one not like Dharmakirti's quasi-quantum idea but something else? Could you elabourate, I'm very interested in philosophies foreign to me. I thought superstring theories were no longer popular with mainstream science, not that mainstream science knows what the fuck it's talking about..
(I have an unpredictable internet signal so if I don't come back tonight, that's why...)
It would mean my sheer conviction in transcendental meditation to reach liberation rather than a vice to remedy a life without significance.
Do you think dualism is nonsense?
Not on the conventional level. I wouldn't say "nonsense" anyway. I would just say it's not applicable in this conversation, that what we're talking about is beyond dualism.
I believe in this case we're talking about something that needs to be approached as non-dualistic. I like elegant unified theories, but that's just my belief/opinion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj_i7YqDwJA
However I agree with Mountains here, how would it be anything other than entertainment? Let's investigate the truth here; could there ever be an absolutely verifiable truth? Let's say that even if we proved there was a quantum field, that we were all ultimately interconnected, that this reality we perceive was merely an illusion created within our minds. What would that mean? We'd still be stuck here. Wondering. Shrouded by mystery scientific rationality can never touch. It may be able to label and manipulate but nothing beyond that.
So conventionally it's okay to think of the universe in terms of dualism because I can apparently perceive things around me, but your conviction lies in an ultimately nondual universe?
As someone said on these forums in a parody of Descartes:
"I think I am, therefore I become."
lol..
What I'm looking for is conviction, I'm a doubting Thomas, I confess it!
What will motivate me if this universe we live in is indeed a non-dual one, a monism of matter, and when I meditate until I'm a saint only to die and return to dust when I could have lived life more intimately with the middle-way? But what if this universe and I are one, what if I'm a partition of the great cosmic consciousness and I pissed this life away because I couldn't finger Jesus' wounds?
Right. Dualism on the conventional level, non-dualism on the ultimate level.
It's really the classic 'which Abrahamic faith is correct'
only with transcendental religions it's more accurate to say, how the hell are they all correct when Buddhism is implying in it's humility that it's superior..
Ah, sorry if I'm coming off as imposing.
Personally, I'm not at all sure that Buddhism is a religion anyway. Religions, as close as I can tell, require a transcendent being who is, at the very least, the Creator. But I can't speak for all branches of Buddhism. Any Buddhist tradition have a Creator?
I'm have no money
I'm a poor, poor mendicant, whatever shall I do without a pirateable copy?
Hm.
I know pondering the imponderable is futile and useless 'cognitive obscurations' but nevertheless, my own logic tells me that my sheer physical birth didn't beget my consciousness (unless, of course, you're suggesting a monism of matter, in which case I'm not atheist) so I'm forced to speculate where my consciousness originated and I seriously doubt I'm the progenitor of Maya, that implicit in my own ignorance, within my own mental continuum lies that truth that I am 'god'. At the same time I respect every individual's autonomous consciousnesses while at the same time I will not resolve to believe that everybody could potentially be 'god', therefore I think it's much more likely that there be a collective consciousness whereby we all participle in creating god with an equal piece of the pie, no? Isn't that fair?
I'd really like to know if there's a fallacy in my logic. Because in all factuality the entire foundation of my interest in Buddhism lies with implications of a collective consciousness, because that is sadly all my mind has the capacity to conceptualise. But that is, of course, the nature of why I'm on these forums, for collective input.
Then you'll need to explain to us the logic by which you arrived at the concept of "collective consciousness". It's an elegant theory, but I don't think that one's been proven yet.
Go without.
What does it matter in the end?
Listen to the Buddha:
"I come to teach the Origin of Suffering and the Cessation of Suffering".
Get a handle on your 'suffering' and go from there, I guess....
It's that basic, that plain and yes, that frustratingly, infuriatingly simple.
You came to the wrong place then
I thought I had.
Hm.
Let me say I have no convictions, that's why I'm asking for anyone's favourable assertions.
My logic says there's no dualism as ultimate reality, therefore my logic says I'm left with only two more options:
1. Non-dualism of mind
2. Non-dualism of matter
Of these one must select one out of sheer faith or dare I say experience.
For the sake of this forum let's eliminate the latter; thus I've necessarily concluded that reality must be a product of mind.
On this basis I have enough information alone to accept the tenets of Buddhism, the notion to further investigate would certainly lead to cognitive obscurations and unanswerable questions. Nevertheless, to continue on with impossible conjectures of the ultimate nature of consciousness I will have to speculate the origin of all minds--yours and mine alike. Thus I posit:
1. I am God
2. You are God
3. We are God
(4. None of us are God [for all conventional purposes this was already eliminated along with dualism])
Whereby God is obviously no sky daddy, but a conventional term to denote the transcendental consciousness, that is, Maya.
The first seems arrogant, the second seems nihilistic, but most importantly semblances certainly are no real representation of absolute reality and therefore cannot be ultimately eliminated. Therefore, unfortunately, I'm left with the only fair alternative that 'We are God'.
To further flirt with a disaster of rationality I'll posit that we are all manifestations of a supreme consciousness, or the Subtle Consciousness/Ground Luminosity/White Light. Partitioned quasi-souls of the Consciousness to effectively experience itself in an ultimate drama of sorts because the apparent fine line between non-reality and reality is actually non-existent. Potentiality and thus consciousness occurred as a simple means of experiencing itself because any less and reality wouldn't be. At least through the lens of a non-dualism of mind this is the case. The notion that my consciousness was created at birth is illogical because a drop of non-dualism of matter in the great ocean of non-dualism of mind still creates a dualism, which, again, has been eliminated. Thus consciousness has no inherent existence of posited by the non-dualism of matter, or it does absolutely as hereby expressed in a non-dualism of mind. Thus because "Mind precedes all mental states [and] Mind is their chief; [reality is] all mind-wrought," and therefore at the most fundamental basis, at the absolute subtlest level I must conclude that there is a collective consciousness.
Thoughts?
Frankly, I don't know what you mean by "non-duality of mind" or "non-duality of matter". Are you just asserting that reality must either be all mind (like the consciousness-only schools assert) or all matter (like the metaphysical naturalists or materialist reductionists assert)?
Your notion of collective consciousness above, though, seems to be drawing inspiration from several traditions.
1) The Hindu cosmological notion of Lila, the "hide-and-seek" whereby Brahman becomes so lost in the game that he forgets he is Brahman and must discover his divine nature again.
2) The Buddhist notion of ālaya-vijñāna, particularly as it is interpreted by the Fa Hsiang and Hua Yen traditions of Chinese Buddhism. Other Buddhist traditions assert an ālaya-vijñāna also, but it is an individual seed consciousness, not a universal one.
The traditional criticisms of ālaya-vijñāna is that it is but a reification of one (or several) of the skandhas into an atman.
Regarding 1, absolutely. Despite what I'm speculating, Buddhism would be a non-dualism of mind and modern western science is a non-dualism of matter.
Regarding 2, I have no fucking clue what you're talking about, so please give me a chance to read about them, this is exactly what I'm looking for, so thank you, regarding the Lila conception, that's not as subtle as I'm trying to describe, but is certainly in the same ball park it sounds.
I'm also looking for people to politely tell me I'm being absolutely stupid or that I'm in the right ball park, don't be afraid to throw some adjectives at my conclusions
...
After reading about Lila and considering it through a lens of Pandeism to further embellish the idea as something more attractive to my western ears, I've decided it's conventionally similar but regarding the progenitor being still deistic, even if on any conventional level, it is dissimilar to what I'm describing.
As for the Store-House Consciousness/Seed Consciousness/Eighth Consciousness, I do not disagree with this concept, in fact, I believe (though no doubt projecting my own ignorant understanding of Buddhism's tenets) that the concept is implicit within the cosmology and transmigration/reincarnation of Buddhism. Nevertheless, intriguing as it be, it by no means is as subtle as I'm attempting to seek. It hasn't even forsaken the concept of a self yet, even without karma it still has an inherent existence like a stainless, fetterless soul. Who is the ninth consciousness, the great progenitor of the eighth, the store-house of store-houses? I can't accept that the Aṣṭavijñāna is self-creating, self-fulfilling.
I still think a collective consciousness is experiencing itself through us, until every subtle form of energy finds liberation, then spontaneously reality ends and rebegins for a virgin universe, for the first Buddha to reemerge ad infinitum.
Of course.
Could you tell me some of your favourite, albeit (as you say) redundant, elegant theories?
I have a theory that the real Fourteenth Dalai Lama was supposed to have been Margaret Thatcher, and that they made a mistake.
The schools of thought that promote a concept of ālaya-vijñāna, tathāgatagarbha, and/or mind-stream argue that these are uncreated, with essences synonymous with voidness, natures that are of luminous clarity (this does not mean "a light"), and characteristics of samsara and nirvana.
Its three aspects are
Essence, nature, and characteristics
"Essence" means its emptiness
Of arising, ceasing, or conceiving.
"Nature" means unobstructed lucidity.
"Characteristics" mean the diverse appearances
on the levels of samsara and nirvana.
And even if your local library does not carry the volume, I'm sure they have an interlibrary loan department.
Back to the subject of Buddhism and QM, this is from a question session with the Dalai Lama:
Thus, the conventional identity of the wave as a particle or as energy is a function of mental labeling. This implies that the difference between a particle and energy must be understood in terms of the perceiver [and is not inherent in the object itself]. This shows the close link between cognition and matter.
I have a large secret money stash actually. I only use it if imperative to avoid having a job. Maybe this book will be imperative.
Now, in QP, science lost all connection to direct sensory experience and instead has relied on instruments and the deeply recessed inner experience of extremely specialized mathematics. Oh BTW! Even the mathematics doesn't ultimately make sense, it has to be constantly re-worked and abandoned and re-made!!
IOW, QP can't be adequately explained except by the arcane, bizarre newly invented/discovered mathematics developed by an extreme group of highly trained practitioners.
The only things QP provides to us lay people are confounding paradoxes.
QP seems equivalent to highly skilled extremely well-focussed Buddhist meditation to me!
However, he doesn't teach quantum physics, he teaches dharma.
What bugs me a LITTLE is this "promise" being held by the LHC. If we could fast forward fifty years from now we will probably be at the same level of spiritual enlightenment; no "ultimate questions" will have been answered by the LHC. 50 years from now the LHC findings will be seen as significant "ultimate answer-wise" as Fermi and Einstein are seen today. Just a thought. No biggie.
His answer was, "no".
Disclaimer: I am not up to scratch with what's going on with the LHC, so I don't know exactly what theory they're proving and what it means, but I am pretty sure it's significant.