What is Real? Both Science and Eastern Traditions have spent many centuries trying to work out the answer to this simple question. Modern Science is now in agreement with Buddhist thought on the nature of Reality. The development of Quantum Mechanics declares that what we perceive as “Reality doesn’t exist.â€
Fritjof Capra(1975), a well-known theoretical physicist, has shown how present-day physics has almost completely abolished any solid concepts of our world, with the exception of energy. In a summarizing statement, he says[1], “In modern physics, the universe is thus experienced as a dynamic, inseparable whole which always includes the observer in an essential way. In this experience, the traditional concepts of space and time, of isolating objects, and of cause and effect, lose their meaning. Such an experience, however, is very similar to that of the Eastern mystics.”
What we interact with is mostly empty space. The right causes and conditions when present merge a few bits of matter with space to form an object. We label these objects with names like people, tables, cars, birds, etc. Yet the underlying nature of all objects, which appear different, is the same. To the Physicists, there is no longer any single object; everything is one and the same object. My favorite representation of this in eastern terms is Indra’s Net.
The bridge between Science and Eastern Traditions is getting increasingly smaller. Many Scientists are now calling both “complementary roads to the same knowledge, supplementing each other in providing a fuller understanding of the universe”(Capra). The acceptance and merging of Eastern and Western concepts is the acceptance of universal law, or Dharma. The once oxymoron Buddhist Scientist is no longer.
[1]A Way of Being – Carl Rogers
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Buddhist Scientist may not be an oxymoron, but “Solid Reality” might.
Great pickup there. It actually played the words together on purpose
Peace,
Wade