by Dr. Vincent Vuillemin, zen monk, project leader at CERN
an experiment designed for the new accelerator of particles
Until the beginning of our century, the scientific approach widespread in
the Western World has always been based on the observation of the external phenomena
which surround us, followed by an explanatory logical approach under the form
of theories or models. Mankind was observing the world like an object of study
separated from his own being. The reality of our world was perceived like an
entity ruled by eternal laws unknown so far, by laws escaping our knowledge
at the moment but whose discovery was considered as unavoidable and depending
only on the progresses to get in our future observation means. Many people share
anyway this opinion, thinking that any reality can be discovered provided that
the telescopes or the microscopes become powerful enough.
This approach has the enormous disadvantage to entertain a separation between
mankind itself and the surrounding universe. This is by the way the main cause
of the troubles of our world in the domains of ecology and human relationships.
This form of knowledge has overruled during the last centuries any other form
of knowledge and has moreover totally shaded off in the western civilizations
the intuitive and meditative knowledge, more widespread in the Middle Age. By
the way, knowledge, science and technology should not be confused. The meditative
approach, and in particular the one of the zen, is considered by many people
as non scientific. It is an integrated approach, that is to say, at the same
time, of the self and of the world to which we belong, immediate, spontaneous
and direct. It is anyway easy to understand its basis given the fact that our
cells are similar to all cells in the universe; we are of course constituted
by the same atoms as everything in our observable universe. In that sense, the
observation of the self, of the life which inhabits us, is the observation of
one part of the whole thing, leading to the opening of a larger knowledge, spreading
to our entire world.
The content of these few lines is simply to suggest that the two approaches
may be non contradictory but on the contrary quite complementary, immediate
and integrated knowledge and knowledge based on the external observation and
logic. Often anyway, the results of both approaches are very similar and drive
us to a unique and global perception of our universe. In that sense bringing
them together, still in recognizing their own limits, one due to the verification,
the other one due to a fragmentary approach, is in itself interesting, every
man having in himself the desire to integrate the scientific and, let us say,
the religious worlds.
Quantum physics and intuitive knowledge.
The point here is obviously not to cover the field but to try to suggest,
and not to completely explain, the parallelism between the teaching of the ancient
Masters and what appears to be widely agreed by all in quantum physics. For
that it is unavoidable to recall few basic concepts concerning quantum physics.
These concepts are not immediately obvious for the ones, who like all of us,
live in a macroscopic world.
The macroscopic world which surrounds us is ruled by laws of causes and consequences.
In this world, matter is matter and waves, for example light, are waves. For
example the waves are the movements of water and water is water, quite simply.
In the microscopic world of quantum physics, things are not so clear. The duality
to which we are accustomed in our everyday life is broken up. Similarly, we
are used to observe interacting systems, where some information is transmitted
across systems, for example by light or sound. However quantum physics has demonstrated
that the duality between the waves and the particles, let's say the matter,
should be overruled. The observation of some immediate phenomena has also shaken
up our certainties.
Let us take a first example. Light does not exist at rest but is the propagation
of a wave, of course at the speed of light. It is then not material, it would
not be possible to have a table made of light because light does not exist at
rest. On the other hand, the electron which is a small particle, in the sense
of the current vocabulary, is not a wave. It so happens that light acts at the
same time like a wave and like a particle, like a particle of light. The electrons,
particles, behave also like waves and not like particles. Then what is reality?
Is light a wave or a particle and is electron a particle or a wave? This concept
of duality between waves and particles should then be overcome. In common language,
another name should be invented, for example "parton". To talk about
matter is certainly understandable in our everyday life, but in the microscopic
world matter and energy are a same phenomenon.
In quantum physics, the way we observe a phenomenon defines the state in which
it is projected in our macroscopic world. What is then the fundamental reality
of things, if our observation itself defines, in the sense of our vocabulary,
that we observe it either under the form of matter or the form of a wave, without
any material consistence? It is then suggested that the single level of reality
to which we are used must be overcome and that a new level of reality must emerge,
in which these contradictions can be resolved, integrated, embraced. It is difficult
for the mind to grab that, the human mind would like to conclude to the existence
of a reality which remains hidden. That is not the case. This hidden real does
not exist and the nature of things is embedded in this apparent contradiction,
in the case where one limits oneself to a single level of reality. It is however
possible to conceive a logic which allows, not to resolve the contradictions,
but to accept them. It is another dimension of logic. The same in fact is true
in our everyday life where we have to embrace the contradictions to which we
are confronted.
In all times, zen Masters have asserted that matter is the phenomena (the
wave, the electron) and that phenomena are matter (the electron, the wave).
The fundamental nature of everything, matter, phenomena, is the vacuity, named
ku. All things, all phenomena, including the phenomena of the mind, are in essence
in ku, come from ku and go back to ku. The matter itself is a phenomenon and
does not have any intrinsic existence, its essence is ku. Ku, although impossible
to translate, suggests in a single word the vacuity, potentially inhabited by
energy or matter; this comes to the same thing from the well-known Einstein's
equation E=mc2. Today in physics, people talk about vacuity or field, which
is in essence the same thing. In particle physics, the more we are trying to
understand the foundations of matter, the more we find the vacuity. The vacuity
is inhabited by interactive fields which materialize themselves when traversed
by a primary grain, or by a grain of light, or by an energy perturbation. It
somehow polarizes itself. A field is the scientific concept of ku, mentioned
in buddhism from the oldest times. The concept of particles or waves is replaced
by fields. On the same way that ku cannot be observed by itself, fields cannot
be observed but they manifest themselves under different ways depending of the
method of observation, or depending of the way they are projected in our macroscopic
world.
The essence of this new physics was already contained in the intuition of
the zen Masters. Today the intuitive and scientific approaches join each other,
the immediate one, complete and expressed in terms full of imagery, the other
one providing a verification of the first one by observations realized in our
real world of everyday. The zen approach is the direct and intuitive approach
of ku, the scientific approach, after multiple observations, deductions and
contradictions to overcome, has found back this concept by another way.
Inter-dependence: interactions and non-local
variables.
Let us take a second example. Let us start this time from the zen approach
concerning inter-dependence. This inter-dependence is conceived as immediate
and global. For example that can be translated in the following sentence: a
person who practices zazen modifies the entire universe. Understand this sentence
by contemplating an interaction which propagates itself first within our close
environment, and then farther and farther is certainly justified. However it
contains also a notion of immediate and universal action calling for no interaction
propagating itself gradually, like if our whole universe were one, entirely
linked and in complete inter-dependence. A priori, that seems to be in contradiction
with the fact that in our world no interaction can propagate itself at a faster
speed than the speed of light. According to this condition, billions of years
would be needed until the influence of a person in zazen propagates itself to
the frontiers of our universe. However in the last months, a new phenomenon
was fully verified and established in physics, proving that a bound system in
its initial conditions stays bound, and that changing one of its elements immediately
modify the other ones. No signal would have the time to propagate itself from
one part to the other one.
Two particles of light coming from the decay of an atom are emitted. These
two particles of light are sent in opposite directions in kilometers of optical
fibers. Although separated by kilometers their state stays bound, that is to
say that a modification of the state of one of the particles is immediately
observable on the other one, without any time for a signal to propagate itself,
at the speed of light, from one to the other. The phenomenon is immediate, no
spatial separation exists, space is discontinuous. That is a new level of reality.
For the moment no mathematical formalism allows to pass from one level of reality
to another one. To pass from the laws of the world of quantum physics to the
ones of the macroscopic world. This experiment displays what the zen Masters
had sensed in talking about inter-dependence among all beings, in the large
sense of our universe, immediate inter-dependence, without any spatial separation.
There are then in our universe phenomena which staid for a long time unknown
from the scientific world, and which come closer of what was expressed from
the beginning of buddhism.
Both approaches are complementary in the sense that intuition is certainly
correct but can profit from the scientific observation to be verified and be
projected as a real phenomenon in our visible world. One could compare this
process to the projection of the world of Buddha, source of integrated intuition,
in our everyday world, the world of the observation of the physical phenomena.
Knowing that, the scientific approach, to the extent that it stays modest, can
help the human being to understand the profound nature of things. Like Buddha
was saying: if I tell you that I have a diamond in my closed fist, you would
have to believe me. If I open my hand, you can see it. In that sense the scientific
approach towards the understanding of our universe helps to open the hand, so
everybody can see the diamond.
Another dimension in reality.
Along Planck's discovery, which is the basis of quantum physics, the energy
has a discrete structure, discontinuous. Its building block is the quantum.
That corresponds to a real revolution. We are used to a continuous world, made
of relationship of causes to effects, of interactions from one place to another
and of a linear time. How then can we understand a world made of discontinuous
entities, the quanta. How can we understand the real discontinuity, that is
to say how can we imagine that in between two points there is nothing, no objects,
no atoms, no particles, just nothing? How, although physics has not really approached
this subject and that time is still considered as a continuous variable, how
can we understand the relationship between the time which flows away and the
instant? How much time is there in between two instants? Is time a succession
of instants? How to embrace at the same time the time which flows and the discontinuity
of the instants? In physics a bizarre situation is established, the space-time
of classical physics and the laws of quantum physics have been kept separately.
This is really a bizarre situation which brings many problems in the understanding
of our world.
We have seen that the classical concepts of material particles and waves are
not quantum entities, very different from the objects of classical physics.
One is lead to conclude that they are at the same time waves and particles,
or are neither waves nor particles. We have to abandon the dogma of a single
level of reality. The quantum objects are controlled by the laws of quantum
physics, in rupture with the laws of the macroscopic world. There are two levels
of reality. The simple logic where something and its contrary exist only separately
should be overcome. For example if one stays in the single level of reality
of the macroscopic world, the world of duality, waves and particles appear to
be divided, it is a contradiction. The introduction of a new level of reality
allows to overcome this contradiction. For example, in that reality waves and
particles are in fact unified and called "partons".
The appearance of a level of reality where contradictions are overcome, are
naturally embraced, is essential. From all times this level of reality pertains
to the essence of knowledge in buddhism. During zazen, the apparent duality
between body and mind is overcome by an integrated consciousness of the body-mind.
This intuitive and integrated approach becomes an essential component of our
way to look at things in our everyday life. We live, and consequently we can
say that our time is flowing, but also we live only at each instant. If we remain
in a single level of reality, we cannot bring the two together. During zazen,
this contradiction disappears, the consciousness of time and instant are unified.
It is an integrated approach, at the same time of the self and of the world
to which we belong, immediate, spontaneous and direct. An approach in which
the self and the world which surrounds us are reunified. That represents anyway
the only way, the only hope for humankind, the essence of ecology, the respect
and the compassion for all the beings.
Time in physics and instant.
It is enough to ask sincerely this question to realize that time is a concept
which lives with us. Time has no being and is then not measurable by itself.
It is perceived in function of things, in function of the human beings for example.
In physics, time has been cleared of everything which makes its importance for
us, its concept has been completely simplified, formalized, "mathematized".
For example, in physics, time is without direction, past and future do not exist.
The equations of general relativity are by the way symmetrical with respect
to the time variable. This time is a time extremely simplified compared with
the one we are living in and science had to develop huge efforts from the end
of the 19th century to reestablish its reversibility.
We have kept in our minds this concept of linear time which flows away. It
is real, that is enough just to observe the flow of our own life. But our consciousness
of a time flowing in a regular and universal manner has profoundly changed in
modern time.
In a chapter of the Shobogenzo, Uji, Master Dogen talks about the being-time.
Countless documents have talked about time, also in physics about the arrow
of time - the direction of time -, why it so happens that in our world time
goes only in one direction. Until these last decades, time was considered in
the western societies like an absolute entity. Time or moreover its measurement
is extremely well defined. However in one hand, in the 13th century Master Dogen
talked about the being-time, that is to say expressing the fact that outside
of beings, outside of ourselves in particular, or more generally outside of
any presence of matter, time does not exist in an absolute manner. Time is completely
linked to beings. On the other hand within our century, Einstein has demonstrated
that time is a relative concept, depending on the referential from which we
observe it and which depends also on the masses in presence. Time has fallen
from its pedestal of absolute variable.
One of the big Einstein's discovery has been to establish in the theory of
the general relativity that time is not absolute but that its observation is
modified by the presence of masses in our universe. In the absolute nothingness
(called kakunen musho in the zen documents), time does not exist, first thing.
To this regard, to talk about the beginning of our universe is to refer only
to the inexact concept of an absolute time and not of a relative time, because
the distribution of masses inside our universe is constantly changing. In that
sense one could say that our universe has materialized suddenly from the infinity
of time, that our universe and its own time are born at the same time, as one
says currently. In buddhism, the concept of time separating the birth of a universe
from its extinction is very vague and corresponds to the idea of kalpa. A kalpa
is by the way also the time of a blink of an eye of Buddha, expressing this
way that it does not have any real content or cannot be measured in an absolute
way. That does not by the way prevent us to talk about any elapsed time, measured
for example by the displacement of a clock hand.
The concept of time disappears on the cosmological level because no external
referential to our visible universe exists to measure it. It is a concept which
is internal to our own universe. The concept of a time measured between the
appearance and the possible extinction of our universe does not have any signification
in itself, one could talk about billions of years or fractions of seconds. On
the other hand, inside our own universe, the measure of time is not absolute.
Dogen was not expressing something else, in other words. Our observation of
time depends of where we are, depends and is linked to our being. Dogen first
has realized that time was not an absolute concept; that has been observed and
demonstrated by physics later on. But also, the knowledge of the relativity
of time by physical observations allows the human being to become aware of the
relativity and the impermanence of everything, the world is not perceived anymore
like a fixed entity external to ourselves. Denying the impermanence of all things
is certainly a source of suffering for the human being. On the other hand, the
fundamental concepts in quantum physics lead us to see everything as constantly
changing, in mutual interaction, linking anything to anything, like any human
being to the other and to the world in which he lives.
The universe.
Ancient buddhism talks about a multitude of universes appearing and disappearing
during countless kalpas. Like if each of these universes was similar to a bubble
which grows, explodes, disappears, followed by other bubbles. Ourselves, we
can only know our own bubble, which does not excludes that there could be other
bubbles which will remain unknown to us, other universes for ever separated
by the frontier of nothingness.
Ancient buddhism always talked about a multitude of countless universes, whereas
the western science talked only about our own universe. How can we understand
that? Although it is our everyday perception, we are not living in a universe
made of straight lines. Einstein has demonstrated in the theory of general relativity
that the geometry of our universe is curved by the action of the masses in presence,
matter. We are then living inside a curved universe. The concepts of space and
matter are linked together, space does not exist or does not have any signification
without the presence of matter. Nothingness is then a concept which we cannot
conceive because it has no time and no space. Our universe, although it appears
to us naively infinite, finds its natural frontier at the blurred point where
the influence of the masses which form it finishes. In that sense, it can be
perceived as finite or infinite, because this frontier is blurred. Anyway our
universe, taken in its totality, could be considered like an enormous black
hole.
Nothing opposes the presence of multiple and countless universes, each of
them being a complete stranger for the other, having no spatial nor time connection
with any other. Universes are separated by nothingness, although in fact the
concept of separation does not have any sense at all, because it cannot be measured
by anything. The universes are disjoint. To talk about distance in between these
universes does not mean anything, because there is no common geometry. The human
being can only know or apprehend the universe in which he lives, the one which
generated his own atoms and his own cells, like the ones of his brain for example.
That does not prevent him to be able to suspect that his universe is not unique,
even so if for himself his universe is in fact unique. The other universes remain
for ever unknown to him, in that sense his own universe is unique.
When one talks about universe, it is important to understand if one talks
about our own universe or about the collection of all disconnected universes.
Looking at these remarks, it is probable that the human being starts to perceive
an infinity much more immense than the one he considered so far. The universe
of zen is infinite, people say. This infinity was sensed from the most ancient
times. In our century this perception can be backed up by the scientific logic.
This perception is born first from the generalized intuition of the world of
Buddha.
The third millenium and in particular the 21st century will see more and more
the unification of science and, lets say, of the religious world, of the integrated
understanding of our universe, both marching hand to hand. That was the prediction
of Master Deshimaru.
