There is a deep connection between the mystical insights of Buddhism and the science of Quantum Physics. Gary Zukhav – in the book The Dancing Wu Li Masters – describes how the past, present and future converge to a single point – that is the Here and Now.

I would certianly be interested in the findings of the conference as the above book – interesting though it was – described findings that were more than 30 years old and I would like to learn of further developments in Quantum Physics and Science in general that have in common with the Buddhist view of the Universe.

If possible please explain the same in non scientific language.

regards

Nikhil

Another essay worth reading on Buddhism and Science is: David McMahan, “Modernity and the Discourse of Scientific Buddhism.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 72, No. 4 (2004), 897-933.

Some of the most recent interesting thoughts about historiography, Theravada chronicles and understanding the Buddhist past, in my opinion, can be found in: Stephen Berkwitz, “Buddhist History in the Vernacular: The Power of the Past in Late Medieval Sri Lanka”, (Leiden: Brill, 2004). Unfortunately, it is a very expensive academic text. Fortunately, it is a Google scanned book and can be found in their expanding electronic book library.

Annica = no permanence
Anatta = no self
Dukha = no thukha (pleasure)

That the Buddha falsified.

David: “It’s underlying logic has little do, if anything, with the search for causal explanations of material phenomenon and processes, ala modern Western science. Buddhism’s epistemological concerns with and need to explain the ‘empirical world’ (which is conceptualized quite differently from the Indian perspective when compared with the Greek) is much more limited and narrow than modern science’s need.”

This is a useful observation for me. I am interested in the philosophy of science (which deals mostly with scientific method) and how it relates to historiography, particularly Burmese historiography which is heavily influenced by Buddhism.

There is a tension between, for instance, the more positivist interpretation of historical texts of Than Tun who was educated in the British era (valorizing inscriptions and royal orders, discounting chronicle texts) and for instance the continually evolving literary interpretations in Buddhist chronicle texts. U Kala Mahayazawingyi chronicle, for instance, begins at the beginning of the universe with succesive recreations and covers the social contract of the first Mahasammata (Mahathammada king), much of this being adapted from the Sri Lankan Sasana Vamsa, kind of “Buddhist social science” or socio-political philosophy as opposed to the western you see in universities, i.e. Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, Montesquieie, etc…

We clearly have radically different understandings of Buddhism as an intellectual system. While there is philosophy in it (of a particular Indian style; not to be confused with Western philosophy), it is not a philosophy per se. It is a soteriology, a method for achieving liberation from a samsaric world. It’s underlying logic has little do, if anything, with the search for causal explanations of material phenomenon and processes, ala modern Western science. Buddhism’s epistemological concerns with and need to explain the ‘empirical world’ (which is conceptualized quite differently from the Indian perspective when compared with the Greek) is much more limited and narrow than modern science’s need. There might be points of overlap, taken out of context, but they are strikingly different intellectual projects regarding their methods, goals, principles, etc. And I don’t think this fact does a diservice to either Buddhism or science as valuable exercises or human achievements.

But really, the book I suggested in an earlier post really does an excellent job of discussing such issues. There are also some fine essays on the matter in the Encyclopedia of Religion and the Encyclopedia of Buddhism. Well worth hunting down and then pursuing their suggested readings if one wants to delve into the topic in more detail.

1. It is guided by natural law.
2. It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law.
3. It is testable against the empirical world.
4. Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word.
5. It is falsifiable.
(McLean vs. Arkansas Board of Education, 1982)

The last element, associated with philosopher of science Karl Popper seems to be very much in the spirit of the Buddhist notion of anicca. Buddhism seems to have a method built into it, rather than dogmatic belief in certain miracles.

I don’t think they are irrelevant, hooking up “classical Buddhist claims about perception, awareness, consciousness and meditative states” is important in and of itself, replacing magic with science (in Malinowski’s sense of the terms), replacing the local with the universal, but from where I am and have been situated, the most important aspect of that is that people will rely less on magic, and this is no abstraction on my part, I’ve witnessed everything from seances to every kind of ghost, to what in Burmese is called an auk-lan (outland) saya (black magician) hired to put a hex on the lover of someone’s 60 year old father, I won’t elaborate. Or believing that cancer was caused by a spell by hostile villagers on an outsider, actually the little exorcism was performed before they knew it was cancer. U Nu’s 1961 Thaka Ala play features the burning of a woman’s longyi (sarong) in a magic candle as part of a love hex..Quaritch Wales book on Southeast Asian warfare book has an ancient warrior chanting incantations over ground human foetus (Kuman Tong, I believe) used to make an amulet for invulnerability…I don’t openly disagreement in an culturally ugly fashion, to be sure, but I just can’t help my nagging scepticism about all this stuff…