BUDDHA THE PHYSICIST
I've been thinking this morning (it's 11:59 a.m.) about
Buddha the man as a quantum physicist. His whole understanding of the universe
is so Michio Kaku! When Buddhism is or
seems to be arcane, esoteric, difficult, it's because he saw deeply into the
same contradictions and mysteries that today's quantum physicists (and macro
physicists as well) talk and theorize and puzzle about. Parallel universes, wormholes, the curvature
of space-time, the absolute limit of the speed of light, what "makes"
gravity?
It's in my mind because I learned to chant a sutra: "
The Boddhisattva Avalokita …[considered] the five skandhas and found them
perfectly empty." Skandha is one of
those words almost always left
(stupidly?) untranslated from the Pali or Sanskrit (?who knows, who cares?) in
contemporary Buddhist literature.
It means "heap." Or "pile." And it refers to the fact that if you heaped
up a pile of pillows or books or rocks, it does not create a thing, but a
conglomerate. (A pile, a skandha) So
when a physicist is looking at the material universe, he discovers that what
seem like things are actually conglomerates.
Take the oxygen and hydrogen out
of water and you don't have a "water thing" left. There is no water separate from the oxygen
and hydrogen. Water is a
conglomerate. And if you take apart an
oxygen molecule, you don't find something you can identify as oxygen: you find electrons, protons, neutrons and
(today) a host (heap?) of other little thingish things: quarks, meaning
less-than-physical-thingies.
And even an electron is not definitely a
"thing"--but it might be just a wave (of energy-ish stuff) although
sometimes it acts like a particle (thing) and sometimes it seems to be a
wave. And that nucleus of assorted
thingies reveals even more of that kind of "thing." A nucleus can have a 'photon' which is either
a packet of 'light-energy' or maybe not.
I think.
Mostly what an oxygen molecule is made of is nothingness, or
space, or ??
Here's the way Buddha's teaching puts all this:
"Form is emptiness and emptiness is form; form is not
other than emptiness and emptiness is not other than form." Matter is mostly empty, and emptiness is
mostly – not empty.
All very provocative considerations, except that Buddhism
applies this same kind of analysis to the human being: there is no separate thingy called
"Juanita" when you get right down to it. For instance. take away the oxygen and you don't have an oxygen-purified
Juanita; you have rapidly disassociating "thingies," all of which are
equally made up of the void or space in a molecule or atom and all the
not-quite things that make up an atom.
"I" am a pile of material and energy of the
universe. I change. (If you are younger than 50, take my word for
it: you will not be "the same"
one day.) Constituent parts fall off,
get heavier, change form, erode and grow.
But in the end there is no erosion, no growth of any"thing"--the
pile shifts. The pile is really there
but it's not made up of some actual stuff that can't be taken down to
constituent elements.
There's therefore no
birth: no appearance, suddenly, of a new
'thing.' Just a new assemblage of the
ineffable. And no death: the components will recycle in infinity. I was always full of the universe and will
always be full of the universe. Or of
hot air?
Buddha & Michio Kaku,
or--if Michio is too out-there for you--just Stephen Hawking. The yin and the yang that curl around and
come to the same non-place: form is
emptiness & emptiness is form.
Here's the teaching (sutra; sermon; lesson) from Buddhist ore.
The Bodhisattva
Avalokita,
While moving in the deep
course of Perfect Understanding,
shed light on the
Five Skandhas and found them perfectly empty.
After this
penetration, he overcame ill-being,
[Bell]
Listen, Shariputra,
form is emptiness
and emptiness is form.
Form is not other
than emptiness; emptiness is not other than form.
The same is true
with feelings, perceptions, mental formations,
and consciousness.
[Bell]
Listen, Shariputra,
all dharmas are marked
with emptiness.
They are neither
produced nor destroyed,
neither defiled nor
immaculate,
neither increasing
nor decreasing.
Therefore in
emptiness there is neither form, nor feelings, nor perceptions,
nor mental
formations, nor consciousness.
No eye, or ear, or
nose, or tongue, or body, or mind.
No form, no sound,
no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind.
No realms of
elements (from eyes to mind consciousness),
no interdependent origins
nor no extinction of them
(from ignorance to
death and decay).
No ill-being, no
cause of ill-being, no end of ill-being, and no path.
No understanding and
no attainment.
[Bell]
Because there is no
attainment,
the Bodhisattvas,
grounded in Perfect Understanding,
find no obstacles
for their minds.
Having no obstacles,
they overcome fear;
liberating
themselves forever from illusion, realizing perfect nirvana.
All Buddhas in the
past, present, and future,
thanks to this Perfect
Understanding,
arrive at full,
right, and universal enlightenment.
[Bell]
Therefore one should
know
that Perfect
Understanding is the highest mantra, the unequalled mantra,
the destroyer of
ill-being, the incorruptible truth.
A mantra of
Prajnaparamita should therefore be proclaimed:
Gate gate paragate parasamgate, bodhi svaha* (3 times)
[Bell, Bell]
* could be paraphrased as: "Going, going, almost gone, almost completely gone: awakening YES."
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