For a couple of years, I’ve been musing about how the language of buddhism and modern physics is similar. There are many times I have been reading and the concepts in one sound very much like ideas in the other. I have been seeing this as a sort of convergence on the same reality by two disciplines from two different directions. Today I think both may be starting at the same place, but use different disciplines to explain the insight.
The traditional story about Buddha is how he had his inspiration sitting under the bodhi tree. I think Einstein had his own bodhi tree, and that is where he “discovered” relativity and all that flowed from his mind in the following years. The stories about Einstein tell how he first imagined himself riding on a photon at the speed of light, and he then had the insight that allowed his discoveries. Einstein was actually not much of a mathematician but he had to use math to “prove” his ideas. He then left it to people of science in subsequent years to gather observable data that supported his ideas. This is something that is still continuing.
I have lamented how history has not been kind to us westerners. The Greeks, 2500 years ago, had ideas that were forced underground and were essentially forgotten until Einstein happened on the same thoughts. In the east, similar thoughts appeared around the same time as they did in Greece. Buddhism carried forward and constantly massaged ideas about reality, such as interdependence, that have emerged in the west only during the past century. Now I find myself making comparisons between these two traditions of thought.
I think it is small wonder that western science and buddhism seem to be examining the same realities. Small wonder that the language of quantum physics sounds a lot like the contemporary monks I read. I think that the basic inspiration of each discipline is essentially the same. People used their skills of observation and consciousness, and the understanding of the reality flowed naturally the more intimate they became with what is real. Einstein and Buddha were cut from similar cloth. They were sitting in the shade of the same bodhi tree.
Einstein no more discovered relativity than Columbus discovered the Americas. He had the basic insight. Then, like Columbus, he opened minds and others were able to explore the path he had marked out. Other people knew about the Americas many, many years before Columbus. Of course, Columbus was wrong in the identity of what he had discovered. It was up to others to gather the data to explain what was really there. Einstein too was wrong in some of his conclusions, as scientists subsequently figured out, based on their own experience. But his basic insight has prevailed.
I guess that I am using my own experience to test what the experts are telling me. I will continue to read what the physicists and the monks have to say. I take some comfort in the convergence I see in their descriptions of reality. My ultimate convergence, however, is when I experience the same thing that they have.