"Everything is empty", "everything consists of emptiness", "everything is an illusion" - you can often hear similar phrases from followers of Buddhism. What is really meant by these phrases, and how does modern science, namely quantum physics, look at it?
Philosophy is a very dangerous thing in the hands of people prone to fanaticism. After reading something in a book and believing it sacredly, people, at times, do not even look for any confirmation of what they have read, and all their lives they can live in captivity of concepts imposed by someone. Common sense is that only what has been verified by personal experience or is confirmed by elementary logic is true. Everything else is dogma, which often limits people.
There is a parable about how a fanatic philosopher came to the master Bokuju, who piously believed in what he had read. Wanting to show his superiority, the philosopher began to indulge in abstract reasoning that, they say, everything is empty, emptiness is the essence of all things and phenomena, and so on. Master Bokuju listened to the philosopher for a long time, and then jumped up and hit him on the head with a stick with a full swing. The dumbfounded philosopher screamed, became indignant and demanded an explanation. To which the master asked a reasonable question: "If everything is empty, then why does the stick hurt and where did your anger come from?" The philosopher was at a loss, and then said: "This is not written in the sutras." This parable is a vivid example of how people tend to blindly believe what is written in books. We will try to understand from the point of view of science why Buddhism claims that everything is empty and everything is an illusion.
- Einstein and Buddha were talking about the same thing.
- From the point of view of quantum physics, everything consists of emptiness.
- The observer and the observed are connected.
- Life is a dream.
Consider these and other questions and try to find the relationship between Buddhism and quantum physics.
Einstein and Buddha
It is believed that Einstein was quite respectful of Buddhism. He is even credited with saying that Buddhism is "a religion that satisfies modern scientific needs." It is still controversial whether Einstein pronounced these words. The only indirect confirmation of this is the testimony of Einstein's secretary, Helene Ducas, but she does not reliably confirm that it was Einstein who said these words.
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On the other hand, there are many parallels between the sayings of Buddha and Einstein. Here, for example, the words of Einstein: "In accordance with the idea of general relativity, the concept of space devoid of any physical content does not exist." The Buddha said approximately the same thing: "If there was only space, and there were no stars and planets, space would lose all meaning." Or here are two more similar ideas.
Einstein: “Over and over again the passion for understanding leads us to the illusion that a person is able to comprehend the objective world rationally, in pure thinking, without any empirical basis, in other words, metaphysically”, Buddha: “Attachment to names and forms, and also, the lack of understanding of the fact that they are based only on the activity of the mind itself leads to confusion and becomes an obstacle on the path to liberation. And finally, the most interesting thing - Buddha claimed that everything consists of emptiness, but here is a direct quote from Einstein: "Everything consists of emptiness, and form is a condensed emptiness." The parallels between physics and Buddhism, based on these quotes, are simply obvious.
Quantum physics and emptiness
From the point of view of quantum physics, everything is more than 99% empty. That is, quantum physics studies processes that have an intangible nature. Because from the point of view of quantum physics, matter does not exist at all. And here science is faced with an amazing riddle of the Universe - there is a person who is slightly less than completely composed of emptiness, and in front of him there is a wall, which also consists mainly of emptiness. But people only know how to walk through a wall in fairy tales and fantastic films.
According to quantum physics, the atom (of which everything in our world consists) is more than 99% composed of emptiness. And the question arises: “Why do objects seem solid to us? And why, after all, we cannot walk through walls? " The secret is simple: atoms do not just "hang" in space, they interact with each other according to the principle of attraction / repulsion. And it is thanks to these processes that material objects have the illusion of solid matter and do not crumble. That is, if we try to go through the wall, we will not be able to do this because the atoms of the wall and the atoms of our body will repel each other.
And on the contrary, if we want to "break" a material object, we cannot do this, since the atoms inside the object attract each other. However, if this trick does not work with a piece of metal, then a person can break a piece of paper, overcoming the attraction between the atoms. But with iron, everything is not so simple. At high temperatures, the attraction between atoms is weakened and the seemingly solid material acquires a liquid structure. Thus, all the interaction of material objects is due only to the processes of attraction and repulsion between the particles in the void.
This is what explains various superpowers, such as, for example, walking on water. In theory, water atoms can repel a person's feet in the same way that the earth does. But the force of interaction of atoms is not enough to withstand the force of the impact of the atoms of the human body. And most likely such miracles are possible due to a change in the properties of atoms (either water or one's own body) due to the power of thought. We will talk further about how we change reality with our thoughts.
Quantum physics claims that the distance between particles inside any material object is roughly proportional to the distance between the stars. Simply put, if the particle size is increased to the size of a star, then the distance between them will be exactly equal to the distance between the stars. Therefore, the statement that everything is empty is confirmed scientifically.
Quantum physics and the illusion of reality
According to Gennady Dulnev, academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences: “The movement of elementary particles depends on the observer,” and this again echoes the ideas of Buddhism that reality depends on the state of our mind.
That is why Buddhism claims that everything that happens is a dream - for the reason that there is a complete relationship between the observer and the observed. For example, you are dreaming and during sleep (if you are not in a lucid dream), you think that you are experiencing some real events, but when you wake up, you understand that you and the reality that happened in the dream were one. And the same idea is applicable to the reality in which we are used to living. And from this point of view, there is no difference between dream and reality. Everything is a dream, because nothing else simply happens.
The German scientist Werner Heisenberg said: "What we observe is not nature itself, but nature, which appears in the form in which it appears to us, thanks to our way of posing questions."
Confirmation that the observer is not so much an observer as a participant, influencing the process by the very fact of his observation, can be found in an experiment devoted to the study of the nature of light. Scientists decided to study the behavior of light in various situations and passed the particles through two slits, while fixing the place of their fall. Physicists were amazed - the particles behaved like waves. But that was not the most interesting thing. The experiment led to even more unexpected results: if the particles were not observed, the behavior of the particles overlapped each other, and if they were observed, they lay on the fixing surface in accordance with finite probabilities.
In simple terms, in the absence of an observer, the particles passed through both slits at the same time, and when they were observed, they passed through the slit with the expected trajectory and hit the place predicted by scientists.
This amazing experiment confirms that everything that happens, if not generated by our mind, is at least under its colossal influence. So, until we observe a phenomenon, it seems to have an intangible nature, being present only in the form of a “fan of options”, but as soon as an observer appears, reality “crystallizes” - it begins to acquire a clear scenario.
Buddha argued that everything that happens is a dream, and only the "awakened", that is, becoming a Buddha, sees reality as it is, that is, as we can understand from the experiment described above, he sees complete absence, whatever it was a static reality. Max Planck, the father of quantum physics, also spoke about this, arguing that an object exists only thanks to the power of "the conscious mind, which is the matrix of all matter."
A separate example can be cited with water. Many scientific studies confirm that different formulas and sounds change the structure of water. Depending on the sound effect, water molecules are combined into conglomerates of particles. Freezing water after one or another exposure shows that, for example, mantras or prayers create beautiful patterns of geometric shapes, but swearing - builds water molecules into ugly patterns.
Based on all this, claims that everything that happens is an illusion and a dream does not seem so delusional. With our thoughts, we are truly capable of changing reality. Perhaps, in fact, we do not have the slightest idea of how our world works? And one of the main arguments that makes us think is the fact that on this issue such yogis as Buddha Shakyamuni and great scientists such as Einstein and Max Planck are completely in solidarity, despite the fact that they came to cognition of reality with slightly different methods. It is like two roads leading along different slopes to the top of one mountain. And at this peak, a complete real picture of the world order opens. And in order to look at reality in a new way, sometimes you have to question everything you knew before.
