My sincere thanks to Dutch artist Herman Smorenburg for his permission to use this image of his beautiful oil painting “The Silence Beyond.” The painting represents transcendental wisdom, the wisdom characterized by the direct experience of Emptiness (Sunyata). In the painting the artist places the female bodhisattva in the center of the universe, the void of the cosmos in which worlds are born. This refers to the Void beyond and present in the endless play of forms, words, and thoughts. The mystic path, symbolized by the great mountain peak towering behind the goddess, leads us to the experience of this divine Void. Her hands form the mudra of teaching and invites us to follow the meditative path of Silence and Emptiness. Visit the artists web site at: http://www.hermansmorenburg.com/home.html
Transcentental Wisdom and Quantum Field Theory
The Heart Sutra, an ancient Buddhist scripture, provides insight into the nature of ultimate reality through intuitive wisdom. In its spaciousness, this insight allows the heart to rise beyond ideological arguments and human disputes. In our modern world, quantum physics has found some interesting parallels to the Heart Sutra opening the possibility that the intellectual and the intuitive can meet in a new paradigm.
In his book, The Tao of Physics, Frithjof Capra defines all physical things and phenomena as “transient manifestations of an underlying fundamental entity.” This is not only a basic element of quantum field theory, but it is also a basic element of the Buddhist world view. The intuition behind the physicist’s understanding of the subatomic world, in terms of the quantum field, is quite similar to that of the Buddhist meditator who also understands the world in terms of an ultimate underlying reality.
Buddhists express this idea when they call ultimate reality Sunyatta or “emptiness” or “the void.” It is a “living” Void which gives birth to all forms in the world of phenomena. The quantum field, like Sunyatta, gives birth to an infinite variety of forms which is sustained for a while and eventually reabsorbs. Of course, translations of Sanskrit or Pali words into the languages of the west can be problematic. Words like “void” or “emptiness,” carries a nihilistic undertone for most westerners. But with a deeper understanding of Buddhist meditative experience we begin to see that sunyata is not nihilistic at all.
A contemporary teacher of Buddhist meditation, Jack Kornfield, sees a parallel between the behavior of subatomic particles and meditative states. He points out that when the mind becomes very still, one can clearly see that everything in existence are but brief moments of consciousness arising together with the six sense objects. The Buddha taught that there is only sight and the knowing of sight, sound and the knowing of sound, smell, taste and the knowing of them, and thoughts and the knowing of thoughts. In the practice of Vipassana meditation, when the mind becomes concentrated, we can see that the body, consciousness, and indeed, the whole world dissolves and breaks down into particles and subtle vibrations. On an even deeper level of meditation, when the mind is very still, we begin to see consciousness as waves, like an ocean. The particles dissolve and every sight and sound is contained in this ocean of consciousness, and from this perspective there is no sense of particles at all. Whether wave or particle, the core of the universe is not static but in a state of constant and dynamic change and infuses each and every form in the universe at the cellular level. Not a single form exists without being infused by this universal energy.
In both the paradigms of quantum physics and Buddhist wisdom, there is ceaseless change at the core of the universe. It is difficult for the human mind to accept the existence of sunyatta or the quantum randomness of the universe. Evident reality tells us that the body and all material objects that we experience with the senses are solid and separate from other individuals. And yet, whether one views the universe in deep meditation or at the end of the microscope, this illusion dissolves and a very different reality is found; that the object of consciousness is embedded in the observing consciousness and that the two are fused together by the energy or sunyatta out of which both emerge. In his book The Silent Pulse, humanities scholar George Burr Leonard writes:
At the heart of each of us, whatever our imperfections, there exists a silent pulse of perfect rhythm, a complex of wave forms and resonances, which is absolutely individual and unique, and yet which connects us to everything in the universe. The act of getting in touch with this pulse can transform our personal experience and in some way alter the world around us.
It is in this sense, the realization of a dynamic, universal energy that connects each of us to everything in existence that ancient Buddhism used the term sunyatta.
Almost every human being longs for a sense of peace and happiness in life. But as long as we allow the illusion that we are all separate from each other, from our environment, and from the Divine, we can never end suffering, find peace or find our way home. Peace requires transformation deep within the hearts of individuals. Although quantum physics and ancient Buddhist wisdom work from two entirely different orders of reality, they are beginning to converge. Perhaps the best hope for humanity and a more just and peaceful world, is a new paradigm in which the intellectual and the intuitive meet, one that is rooted in the wisdom of our own spiritual and meditative experiences.
