Zen and Quantum Mechanics meet

A

Andre'

Guest
I had to intiate this thread because I am taken back by the recent claims by certain authors and scholars in the amalgamations with Zen and Quantum Physics. Let's start off with this issue: Recently reading Evan Harris Walker's Physics of Consciousness I have been truly impressed with some associations; although he did not go on the the extent that I wanted him to about the correlations between the two, between the two. The book is basically a synopsis of the "state vector collapse" issue in physics, moreover the measuerment problem that is arising. Photonic behavoir with Bell's Theorem is so intersting that one doesn't being to understand the parameters of physics as they did. I decided to post this thread in a religious forum, because the science I understand, but the Zen I don't. I'm textually smart on Zen, but I would never claim to know about Zen to any extent. Basically, I know the terminology, principles, and techniques, so feel free to use all the terminology one needs to discuss, but experentially I don't know. Where I stand on Zen Buddhism to the level to which I undersand, is it is almost totally unexplainable and to even begin to ask what true Satori is, is in it's self ridiculous. What I want to know is if within the meat of Zen, are there associations to particle physics that I'm totally unaware of. I have to know from people who know Zen, unlike myself, why these claims are being made. Please post any correlations you know of.
 
Andre' said:
I had to intiate this thread because I am taken back by the recent claims by certain authors and scholars in the amalgamations with Zen and Quantum Physics. Let's start off with this issue: Recently reading Evan Harris Walker's Physics of Consciousness I have been truly impressed with some associations; although he did not go on the the extent that I wanted him to about the correlations between the two, between the two. The book is basically a synopsis of the "state vector collapse" issue in physics, moreover the measuerment problem that is arising. Photonic behavoir with Bell's Theorem is so intersting that one doesn't being to understand the parameters of physics as they did. I decided to post this thread in a religious forum, because the science I understand, but the Zen I don't. I'm textually smart on Zen, but I would never claim to know about Zen to any extent. Basically, I know the terminology, principles, and techniques, so feel free to use all the terminology one needs to discuss, but experentially I don't know. Where I stand on Zen Buddhism to the level to which I undersand, is it is almost totally unexplainable and to even begin to ask what true Satori is, is in it's self ridiculous. What I want to know is if within the meat of Zen, are there associations to particle physics that I'm totally unaware of. I have to know from people who know Zen, unlike myself, why these claims are being made. Please post any correlations you know of.
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Well I have read in general all both hinduism and buddhism are accuratley describe the nature of the universe and through quantum physics.
 
Silverbackman, thanks for the reply, rather quickly I might add. That's great that your learned in these disciplines. Please write down some of your associations between the two that you have come across. Love Einstein's quote by the way.
 
Andre' said:
I had to intiate this thread because I am taken back by the recent claims by certain authors and scholars in the amalgamations with Zen and Quantum Physics. .
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i dont think i would be good for a discussion on this. i have looked at some of these religions but lost interest for some reason.
i would be better looking at it from a bible/Quantum Physics perspective.
sorry,
just letting you know i found the thread.:)
 
Quantum physics and Zen: two of my favorites.
Short, sweet, and to the point:
It's a matter of perspective, and the dimensionality of your perceptions. {JMHO} ;)
 
Andre' said:
Silverbackman, thanks for the reply, rather quickly I might add. That's great that your learned in these disciplines. Please write down some of your associations between the two that you have come across. Love Einstein's quote by the way.
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Well, the most recent theory used to describe quantum mechanics to some degree in the fundamental level is string theory. According string theory at the fundamental level atoms may not actually be atoms, but strings. Similar to a guitar's string, if you twitch it one way it create a different particle or enter a different frequency, using some of the basic other fundamentals of quantum mechanics.

According the Vedic and Hindu creation story, Brahman (absolute reality or God) created the universe using a cosmic music, similar to how a guitarist plays his guitar. AUM can be what many people describe as the spiritual cosmic sound of God.

There are many other surprising scientific miracles in the Hindu religion (NOT like the Qu'ran's claims, actual scientific miracles) described in the Vedas and Upanishads, I suggest you check them out. I recommend you read the book "The Wisdom of the Vedas" by J.C. Chatterji. The book describes many elaborate concepts that would make you think for sure that Eastern Religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism have actual divine origins and not just a myth like Judeo-Christianity and Islam.

I'm not sure what exactly Zen Buddhism teaches that relates to quantum mechanics but I assume that it contains many of the same concepts considering Buddhism is a break away religion of Hinduism and Buddha adopted many aspects from Hindu metaphysics.
 
We have to be careful here to tread neither into pseudoscience nor pseudozen. By this, I mean, let us appreciate the similarities AND the differences without perversion of either, lest we risk loss of true understanding.

I cannot speak much on the Zen side, as I unfortunately am also ignorant of many things and this is one of them. As for quantum mechanics (QM), I would like to point out one particular notion that I think is quite often misunderstood.

QM talks a lot about reality being determined by observation. Many mystics and others outside of scientific realms have interpreted this to mean that a conscious observer actually creates reality. This has been extrapolated into all sorts of claims that are equivalent to "wishing makes it true", "mind over matter", and other such variants.

But what QM is actually talking about when it says "observation" is the use of detection mechanisms, which use particles to detect the state of other particles. These detection means, which are all we have, necessarily disrupt the thing they are detecting. In other words, the detection is a physical action that intrudes on the observed materials. As you can see, this has nothing to do with consciousness determining reality. In fact, consciousness is not anywhere in QM, nor is it necessary for determination. The mere fact that a macro-scale device has disrupted a quantum level event is what collapses the wave function (i.e. determines the state of a particle). This is unrelated to any mystical sort of link between consciousness and reality, and really a more mundane physical interaction of particles.

Having said that, QM does present a number of challenging and mind boggling realizations about the nature of our universe, and traditional zen wisdom may have some overlapping notions which we might incidentally find useful to the modern conception QM presents. But more knowledgeable minds than my own would have to address these things.
 
Hello!
DT Strain said:
QM talks a lot about reality being determined by observation. Many mystics and others outside of scientific realms have interpreted this to mean that a conscious observer actually creates reality. This has been extrapolated into all sorts of claims that are equivalent to "wishing makes it true", "mind over matter", and other such variants.
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Wow, very clear uh... clarification DT. As most of my understanding of Quantum matters comes from 'spiritual' texts, I had never really thought about it being purely observation without conciousness but it make a lot of sense.

I should also point out that I think you have inadvertantly answered the original question. In Zen, it's not a matter of trying to change things but realizing what we see lacks any inherant reality while realizing that it is however, conventionally real.

I have read and practiced some good Zen (although not specific to Zen)meditations on emptiness. It's a two part meditation; analytical and placement. For example, a meditation on emptiness of the body would include looking at different body parts and asking yourself whether they make up your body. Think about your finger, is your finger your body? No. Your arm? Nope. Your hair? Uh-uh. You do this for a while until you think... How about a collection of all of these parts? Nope, just a pile of body parts. A collection of parts is just that, a collection of parts and can never be anything besides that. To say otherwise would be a leap. Surely there's a whole vast aray of 'things' that when put together appear to make a body, but not if you analyze it by it's parts. Therefore, the body is conventionally real. In the 'real' world we see bodies and recognize them as such. We would sound a little akward talking about how our collection of parts are sore. So it's much easier to see and refer to it as a body. When you really start to feel this is true you start the placement meditation which involves just feeling and becoming one with the felling of your body being truly empty of inherant existance.

You can do this with anything on any level; a car, your ego, your mind, etc.. At first, thinking about this conventionally didn't make much sense. Sure the collection of parts make a body but, in actually practicing the meditation I've gone smaller and smaller and found it to be true! Nothing is inherantly existant by it's own standard if you break something down, you'll always find it's just an empty shell, apparently created out of some collection of parts disguising themselves as something completely different which are actually empty shells disguising themselves as something else. It's not actually a body, it's a collection of parts we call a body. It's not really a finger, it's a collection of cells we call a finger. It's not really a cell, it's a collection of atoms we call a cell. It's not really an atom it's a collection of 'strings' we call an atom.

I hope this makes sense in context with the question at hand. It does in my mind and I'd be glad to attempt to clarify if there are any questions. Thanks for the posts!

~Ricky:rolleyes:
 
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!:eek:


How did you know?! I am about four books into my own investigation between (for a larger picture) the relationship between Sci and Rel. For "lots o' fun stuff" read and 'become' the following books.:D

The Holographic Universe- Michael Talbot
Science and the Akashic Field- Ervin Laszlo
The Yoga of Time Travel- Fred Alan Wolf
The Elegant Universe
The Fabric of the Cosmos -Both by Brian Greene

There are many more books out there that deal with similar topics, these are the ones I've read lately...

If you want to know 'everything' about 'everything' read these;)

IAE... Eastern faiths and Quantum/spacetime theory have a lot in common. See the writings of Ramana Maharshi, 6th Chan Patriarch Hui-Neng, Patanjali, the Bhagavad Gita...

Sorry all, I know I'm getting off topic, but I teach religions and we've just completed Buddhism in three of my classes. For good Zen also try Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind ....Again sorry... I could spiral off further, just wanted to throw in my (somewhat disheveled) two cents.

Sub
 
Namaste all,

interesting thread.

it would seem to me that nothing more succiently captures the essence of the Buddhist view regarding the corrolates of QM than the teaching of Interdependence and Quantum Entanglement.

until fairly recently, i held a Copenhagen view of QM... i've recently changed my stance on this and have adopted the Many Worlds view.

metta,

~v
 
Many Worlds? Are we talking David Deutsche here?
 
Namaste all,


In the Copenhagen view the QM mathematics is a description not of a physical event but of the knowledge of an observer who is watching the event. The observer makes a measurement and the wave function, the QM description of his state of knowledge of the system, "collapses" to a simpler form which reflects the new information gained from the measurement. In the Copenhagen view the Schrödinger equation, a wave equation relating the mass, energy and momentum of the electron in its travels, has solutions which describe knowledge in the mind of the observer rather than real waves travelling in the real universe. The wave solutions change as the observer makes measurements and gains knowledge.

the Many Worlds view is a radical approach which uses neither collapsing wave functions nor observer knowledge. Instead it proposes a deceptively simple alternative: the wave function never collapses. Instead, at every occasion where a quantum event has more than one outcome (e.g., when an electron may strike one atom or another), the universe splits. We have one universe where the electron hits atom A, another where it hits atom B, and so on for all of the possible outcomes. Similarly, if a light photon might be transmitted or reflected, if a radioactive atom might decay or not, the universe splits into alternative worlds, with one new universe for each and every potential outcome.

http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw48.html


here is a great site for those interested in such things:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-manyworlds/#1

metta,

~v
 
Vajradhara said:
Namaste all,
In the Copenhagen view...

the Many Worlds view is...
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Ah yes, of course. Thanks for the refresher. The Copenhagen view would be the functionalist, mainstream view then. While it operates just fine for a scientist taking measurements and conducting empirical work, it has many shortcomings when it comes to explanation and conceptual understanding.

Works fine for practicing scientists (for now), but philosophically insufficient it seems to me. Eventually, that lack of conceptual understanding is going to come back to bite even the Copenhagenists in the rear I think.
 
DT Strain said:
But what QM is actually talking about when it says "observation" is the use of detection mechanisms, which use particles to detect the state of other particles. These detection means, which are all we have, necessarily disrupt the thing they are detecting. In other words, the detection is a physical action that intrudes on the observed materials. As you can see, this has nothing to do with consciousness determining reality. In fact, consciousness is not anywhere in QM, nor is it necessary for determination.
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In fact you have got that wrong. What you decribe is the "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle" which is often confused with the "Observer Effect". Also, a particle has no definite speed or place and only exist in the state of superposition until it is observed. So observation does not "disrupt" the things they are detecting but provoke the collapse of the wave function, which is quite different. As to whether, it has to do with consciousness or not, well it depends on which physicist you are reading...
 
chrisb73 said:
As to whether, it has to do with consciousness or not, well it depends on which physicist you are reading...
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That is such a wonderful statement.

Like the seasoned umpire that is asked by the rookie, "Well what if I'm not sure if it is a ball or a strike", "It isn't either until I tell them what it is."

So I believe you are indicating that this is still undetermined. But like whether you can determine location or velocity but not both, I like how the fact that what you are reading determines reality.
 
wil said:
But like whether you can determine location or velocity but not both, I like how the fact that what you are reading determines reality.
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I would not say what you are reading determines reality (even though this works for some :). I was just implying that there are different interpretations for some of the quantum mechanics paradoxes. I am not forcing any particular view on anyone but I would not discard consciousness just yet. The only problem with that approach is that consciousness is still a problem in itself (the hard problem). Personally, I do not know what reality is and I do not know what consciousness is. Hell, I can't even tell for sure what space is!!!
 
Perhaps these two books might be of interest:

The Heart Sutra: Ancient Buddhist Wisdom in the Light of Quantum Reality

- and -

The Diamond Sutra: Transforming the Way we Perceive the World

both by Mu Soeng, a former Zen monk.

The creation of our “lived reality” is, I would say, fundamental to Buddhism; it is what the Buddha grappled with under the Bodhi tree. Perhaps I would also recommend, therefore, Dogen.

s. :)
 
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