New Book: Tibetan Buddhism and Modern Physics

For those of you interested in the strange intersections of medieval Buddhist philosophy and cutting edge Western physics, Vic Mansfield’s new book should be just for you. I have yet to read it, but just ordered my copy and found that you can get chapters 2 and 4 through the author’s website.

Back in 2002, as a second-year philosophy student at UM, I slipped into the “senior-seminar/capstone course” for the philosophy students: Philosophy of Mind. The course was electrifying, taught by the youthful and witty professor Irene Applebaum and co-attended by my good friends Ali and Loren. Half-way through the course we had to pick a topic for our final paper and I stumbled across B. Alan Wallace, who had just published his second book discussing Physics and Buddhist Philosophy: The Taboo of Subjectivity: Towards a New Science of Consciousness.

This book changed the course of my studies (planting me firmly in Buddhist Studies, out of Western Philosophy). Wallace carefully showed the evolution of Western thought, from the pre-Socratics through the 20th century, detailing how dogmatic dualisms were first proposed and later institutionalized. The process serves to show the arbitrariness of so much of what we take for granted: the (often sharp) difference between mind and matter, mundane and divine, living and dead. What one comes to realize is that these categories are not clear things out there to be uncovered, but rather ideas and concepts in our own minds that we impose upon the world.

After seeing all of this it becomes obvious why those who have swallowed the Western dogmas cannot accept the evidence of Quantum Mechanics. This evidence tells us that there are levels of reality that cannot be clearly defined by our concepts and ideas, that mere probability is the best we can accomplish and that experimentation, wherein we impose our rules and methods upon reality, is the only way we can catch a glimpse into that hidden realm. It tells us that sharp distinctions do not exist in reality.

Those familiar with Tibetan Buddhist philosophy will already have been vigorously nodding along. “Duh, reality itself is beyond the concepts and ideas we impose upon it: shunyata (emptiness).” Wallace finishes his book with a long exposition on this realization, which began with the Buddha in India 2500 years ago and was refined over the centuries, and how it amazingly parallels the evidence of Quantum Mechanics. This realization or understanding, while very important to Buddhism, is only part of the story. It is an aspect of wisdom (prajna), which Buddhism teaches must be supported by meditative attainment (samadhi) and a moral life (shila).

Wallace has since written about half a dozen books – many devoted precisely to meditation and moral life, and I haven’t kept up with all of them, but in one of them, Buddhism and Science, Vic Mansfield offers an insightful chapter on Time and Impermanence. Until I get the book and time for a full review, here are a few bits and my thoughts from his online chapter 2, which discusses Quantum Mechanics and Compassion: Parallels and Problems, to whet your appetite:

As we will see in several chapters of this book, continuity without a unique identity or self-nature is a core principle within both the Middle Way and quantum mechanics.

This has been one of the most intriguing elements of all of Buddhist thought, and one of the most difficult for Westerners to grasp: anatman, no-self (or not-self, or non-self). It is the idea that there is no ultimate ‘who we are’ but rather that we, deep down, are always in flux or flow. Suffering (dukkha) is in large part our struggle against the flow of life or existence itself, our struggle to stop moving, or worse, our struggle to go upstream to some past ‘us’. Again, and as always in Buddhism, this is not an idea or belief to be accepted, but a realization to be lived.

The emptiness doctrine, discussed in the following chapter, denies this unique identity or self, while acknowledging a conventional identity enshrined in the identification in our wallet. (Recall that the negative formulation of emptiness asserts that all persons and things lack independent or inherent existence, while the positive formulation asserts that phenomena only exist through their interdependence or relatedness.)

It’s great that he throws in the positive formulation of emptiness, as Buddhism is too often misinterpreted as a philosophy or religion of self-denial. In fact Buddhism redefines the ‘self’ as a matter of relationship: who we are is ever-changing in part because our relationships are ever-changing. Again, the upshot is that if we let go of the ‘self’ from the past that we have been clinging to and go with the flow of where we are now, a great tension will be released. We also then turn to those around us with new appreciation and respect.

Despite our extraordinary uniqueness, which on the conventional level is never in dispute, there are fundamental ways in which we are all alike. In fact, being dazzled by the uniqueness and multiplicity all around us, there is a real danger that we will fail to appreciate in what ways we are indistinguishable.
Tibetan Buddhism never tires of telling us that everyone desires happiness and freedom from suffering. Yes, you are certainly different from me in innumerable, important ways. However, in that both of us desire happiness and freedom from suffering, we are totally indistinguishable.

This is a good meditation in itself. Call some people to mind, or next time you find yourself in a crowded subway or grocery store, and look at each one of them thinking, “ultimately, this person is just like me, wanting happiness, wishing to be free from suffering.” Once this realization becomes intuitive or automatic, it becomes easy to follow it with the heartfelt wish, “may you be happy, may you be free from suffering.” When this in turn becomes intuitive, we are far more likely to actually help out if we see someone struggling to get on the train or who dropped his/her keys in the aisle.

I consider this a bit of the head leading the heart, or in Buddhist terms, wisdom suffusing our meditation and moral activities.

Since for most of us, this top-down approach doesn’t get too far, Mansfield goes on to relate Shantideva’s meditation instructions on tong-len, or exchanging self and other. Finally, he details the Obligations of Compassion – the final move, when our wisdom and meditation translate into how we live each day. And the obligations are stark. When we realize first our ultimate similarity with others and second the amazing luxury we enjoy while so many suffer in poverty, it becomes clear that we need to turn our focus ever more toward helping others. Yet this does open an almost impossible gap in our lives, that between our ideals and our actions. Vic quotes H.H. the Dalai Lama struggling with this gap:

I feel strongly that luxurious living is inappropriate, so much so that I must admit that whenever I stay in a comfortable hotel and see others eating and drinking expensively while outside there are people who do not even have anywhere to spend the night, I feel greatly disturbed… Again, so far I have not [sold off my expensive wristwatches to build huts for the poor or adopted a purely vegetarian lifestyle] and therefore must admit a discrepancy between my principles and my practice in certain areas. At the same time, I do not believe everyone can or should be like Mahatma Gandhi and live the life of a poor peasant. Such dedication is wonderful and greatly to be admired. But the watchword is “As much as we can”—without going to extremes.

From physics to ancient India to our struggles to be generous in this crazy world of ours, strange intersections indeed.