| ZEN PHYSICS (what is this?) The Science of Death, the Logic of Reincarnation David Darling 
|
There is something in Zen which we never meet anywhere else in the history of human thought and culture. It begins with rationalism since it deals with religio-philosophical concepts as being and non-being, truth and falsehood, the Buddha and nirvana; but after the beginning is once made, the matter is strangely switched off in a most unexpected direction. To judge Zen by the ordinary standard of reasoning is altogether out of place, for that standard is simply inapplicable. We must acknowledge that our Western world view is limited and that there is a much wider world beyond our mentality.
– Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki
Zen is ... difficult to talk about. So alien, indeed, is Zen to the analytical Western mind that it is perhaps easier to say what it is not. Zen is not a faith because it doesn't urge the acceptance of any form of dogma, creed, or object of worship. Nor is it antireligious or atheistic; it simply makes no comment on the matter. Zen is not a philosophy or even, to the Western mind, a form of mysticism. As we normally understand it, mysticism starts with a separation of subject and object and has as its goal the unification or reconciliation of this antithesis. But Zen does not teach absorption, identification, or union of any kind because all of these labels are derived ultimately from a dualistic conception of life. If a label is needed that best approximates to the spirit of Zen then "dynamic intuition" is perhaps as close as we can come.
There is a saying in Zen: "The instant you speak about a thing you miss the mark." So, presumably, this saying has also missed the mark – and this one, too. Our endless analysis can lead us into all sorts of difficulties. But how can we break free of it? Living in a world of words and concepts and inherited beliefs, says Zen, we have lost the power to grasp reality directly. Our minds are permeated with notions of cause and effect, subject and object, being and nonbeing, life and death. Inevitably this leads to conflict and a feeling of personal detachment and alienation from the world. Zen's whole emphasis is on the experience of reality as it is, rather than the solution of problems that, in the end, arise merely from our mistaken beliefs.
Because it eschews the use of the intellect, Zen can appear nihilistic (which it is not) and elusive (which it is). Certainly, it would be hard to conceive of a system that stood in greater contrast with the logical, symbol-based formulations of contemporary science. More than any other product of the Oriental mind, Zen is convinced that no language or symbolic mapping of the world can come close to expressing the ultimate truth. As one of its famous exponents, Master Tokusan said: "All our understanding of the abstractions of philosophy is like a single hair in the vastness of space."
Zen claims no thought system of its own. Yet it is undeniably Buddhist in origin and essence. And so before trying to appreciate its final flowering, it is worthwhile digging down to examine Zen's roots – roots which are set firmly in Indian soil, in the fertile ground of Mahayana Buddhism.
The Indian mind was, and is, different in character from the Chinese or Japanese. It is more expansive, more austerely intellectual, less concerned with practical, everyday affairs, and more inclined to complex exposition and exploration of ideas. Nowhere is this more evident than in the writings of the monk-philosopher Nagarjuna, a central figure in the development of Mahayana Buddhism and the founder, during the second century AD, of the Madhyamika ("Middle Path") school. Nagarjuna wrote two key treatises, Madhyamika Sastra and The Discourse of Twelve Sections, in which he probes the nature of reality with remarkably sophisticated dialectic and rigorous arguments. In a dazzling display of polemic against the prevailing metaphysical ideas of his time, he argued strongly that the basic quality of existence is relational. There is no soul, no thing, no concept independent of its context; all things are devoid of absolute reality and exist only relative to conditions. In Nagarjuna's view, the universe is a true unity of interpenetrating processes: a continuous, interpenetrating flux.
Through such deep, technically brilliant philosophical inquiries, Buddhism acquired a rich intellectual base. Profound questions were asked about the nature of the body and of the mind. Possible solutions were considered from many angles, not dogmatically but critically – and they were discarded if found to be unsatisfactory. The data for these theoretical studies came from what might be called "subjective empiricism" or, alternatively, "participatory observation" – that is, a methodical, progressive, introspective inquiry into the domain of direct, nonsensory experience.
Parallels may be discerned, then, between the goals, the rigorous application of technique, and the lively skepticism of Buddhist "researchers" on the one hand and, on the other, modern scientists. Both arrive at tentative conclusions and build theories based on experience, and both reject or modify those theories as further experience demands. But we Westerners are not so inclined to give credence to the results of subjective inquiry – in fact, we instinctively react to them with downright suspicion. In the West, the emphasis is almost exclusively on objective methods, on the primacy of what is taken to be an independently existing outer world, and on the dualistic logic of Aristotle as later formalized by Descartes and Galileo. We tend to suppose that this is the best and proper way of acquiring systematic knowledge. Yet the sole reason for this is that it is the way to which we are accustomed. Our lifelong conditioning makes us balk at the very different, subjective approach that has been favored in the East and that is unique to Asian culture. Participatory observation is simply not a recognized part of the experimental model of contemporary science. However, to dismiss the Eastern approach as being either ill-founded or illogical would be a mistake equivalent, say, to rejecting non-Euclidean geometry (which provides our current relativistic description of gravity and spacetime) on the grounds that it falls outside the familiar, "common sense" axioms of Euclid. The logic and methodology of Buddhism, and other related philosophies, may appear alien, and perhaps even impenetrable, upon first contact. But a careful reading of the classic mystical literature, as well as recent studies of altered states of awareness (see Chapter 11), leads to the conclusion that the terrain of subjective phenomena is genuinely scientific. It contains within it lawful processes pertaining to a mode of consciousness that is as valid and mature as the one to which we are accustomed. If our Western logic and system of thought is Aristotelian, then that of Buddhism is non-Aristotelian, but no less worthy of our serious attention.
Of course, the pioneers and patriarchs of Buddhism had no access to high technology. They lacked the powerful, sensitive instruments and well-equipped laboratories of modern science. Nor did they know much, by today's standards, about mathematics. However, such facilities would not have been helpful in the quest upon which they were embarked. Their monasteries were their laboratories, their own minds were the only equipment they needed for their studies. Their method of research was not to focus on some particular aspect of the outer world but to turn inward, to systematically explore states of consciousness to a depth virtually unknown in the West. And it was as a result of this intense and highly disciplined introspective investigation, carried out over a period of many centuries, that the central tenets of the Buddhist worldview, which amount to a genuine science of consciousness, came about.
Among the notable features of Buddhist cosmology is the doctrine of Dharmadhatu – the Universal Realm or Field of Reality. In this scheme there are no dividing boundaries between things, no separation between subject and object; every entity is seen to interpenetrate every other – a view strikingly in keeping with the ideas of interconnectedness that have emerged from modern quantum mechanics. Here, for example, are two descriptions, one by a Buddhist philosopher, the other by a quantum physicist:
The world thus appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which connections of different kinds alternate or overlap or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole.But which is which? The first quote is actually from Werner Heisenberg's book Physics and Philosophy, the second, almost two thousand years earlier, from Nagarjuna. Coming from two very different directions, using very different techniques, Buddhism and quantum mechanics have converged on virtually the same underlying description of reality.
Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves.
Buddhist belief is also remarkably in sympathy with our modern, macroscopic conceptions of space and time. Eastern philosophy, unlike that of the Greeks, has always maintained that space and time are constructs of the mind. A passage in the Madhyamika Sastra, for example, reads:
[T]he past, the future, physical space ... and individuals are nothing but names, forms of thought, words of common usage, merely superficial realities.The French physicist Louis de Broglie, outlining the new view of the universe as revealed by relativity theory, holds out a similar concept:
In space-time, everything which for each of us constitutes the past, the present, and the future is given en bloc ... Each observer, as his time passes, discovers, so to speak, new slices of space-time which appear to him as successive aspects of the material world, though in reality the ensemble of events constituting space-time exists prior to his knowledge of it.Both these commentaries point out the essential unreality of the present moment and the passage of time. There is no "now," no real barrier between the past and the future, and no flow of time outside the observer's ego-centered awareness. These are concepts relevant only within the context of our personal, I-focused existence. Upon this, both Buddhism and the general theory of relativity agree, and both espouse a much grander, four-dimensional scheme of the universe in which space and time, in a sense, already exist – past, present, and future laid out in complete topographical detail for anyone who can command the vantage point from which to see. Einstein himself well understood our personal limitations in coming to grips with the true nature of reality. Indeed, he might have been acting as a spokesman either for mysticism or for physics when he said:
A human being is part of the whole, called by us "Universe"; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The delusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely but the striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.Einstein grasped what other visionary minds have done before: that a principal aspiration of mankind should be to see beyond ourselves, beyond the parochial self-oriented here and now, to a wider, cosmic panorama. But how to do this? The very reason human thought has progressed as far as it has is by virtue of having access to a sophisticated language. And all of human language, Oriental and Occidental alike, hinges upon the use of words, names, labels, and symbols – the purposeful fragmentation of the whole and the substitution of tokens for the pieces into which we have broken reality. Removal of the wall between ourselves and the cosmos at large, dissolution of the subject-object barrier, can only come with the cessation of thought based on language. Yet, try as we might, we cannot stop thinking. The very act of attempting to shut out thought involves thought, so that this approach is defeated from the start. If we apply our intellect to block our intellect we only make matters worse – we simply end up distancing ourselves further from an innocent awareness of how things actually are.
All human beings the world over face this same dilemma. Evolution has made us into inherently self-centered individuals bent on survival. But our conscious experience of selfhood, of our individuality – which is ultimately the creation of language and rational thought – can lead to suffering and anxiety and, in particular, a preoccupation with death. Easterners harbor the same concerns about self, survival, and mortality as we do. Yet, in the West, our difficulty is made more acute by the belief in the supremacy of the intellect. Our immediate reaction to any problem is always to try to think or reason our way to a solution: an approach that, being predicated on the notion that the self is separate from the world, can never in itself lead to the experience of selflessness. Our dogged objective probing of the world has finally led, it is true, to the discovery that at the subatomic level all divisions and boundaries imposed by us on the universe are in fact illusory – including the split between mind and matter. But although we have discerned this at an intellectual level, we still feel ourselves to be apart from, rather than a part of, the universe as a whole.
Philosophers everywhere have long known that the human mind is capable of two contrasting modes of consciousness, the rational and the intuitive. But whereas the West has favored the former, in the East the latter has always been given priority. Buddhism, as a case in point, reveals this bias in its distinction (made in the sacred texts known as the Upanishads) between "higher" knowledge, or prajna, also referred to as "transcendental" or "absolute" awareness, and "lower" knowledge, or vijnana, identified with analytical or scientific thought. Thus, although Buddhism has a rich intellectual base and body of philosophical teachings, it uses these not as an end in itself but as a way of pointing to the greater truth that can only be attained by a suspension of logic and symbolism.
As that branch of Buddhism known as Mahayana (Sanskrit for "Great Vehicle") spread out of its original homeland into neighboring China, two main developments took place. On the one hand, the translation of the Buddhist sutras, or expository texts, stimulated Chinese thinkers to interpret the Indian teachings in the light of their own philosophies. On the other hand, the more pragmatic Chinese mentality fused the abstruse spiritual disciplines – the meditation techniques – of Indian Buddhism with Taoism to give birth to the system known as Ch'an. (Ch'an is the Chinese transliteration of the Sanskrit word "dhyana," which signifies the mystical experience in which subjectivity and objectivity merge. Zen is the transliteration into Japanese of Ch'an.) This, in turn, was acquired by the Japanese around 1200 AD and reached its final fruition in Zen.
In a sense, what modern physics is to the history of Western thought, Zen is to the development of the Eastern worldview: the ultimate refinement of more than two thousand years of incisive debate, discussion, and critical development. Yet the difference between the two could hardly be more marked. Whereas physics is interested above all in theories, concepts, and formulas, Zen values only the concrete and the simple. Zen wants facts – not in the Western sense of things that are measurable and numerical (which are, in fact, abstractions!) but as living, immediate, and tangible. Its approach to understanding is not to theorize because it recognizes that previously accumulated ideas and knowledge – in other words, memories of all kinds – block the direct perception of reality. Therefore, Zen adopts an unusual approach. Its buildup involves language – which is unavoidable. Any method, even if it turns out to be an antimethod, has first to convey some background in order to be effective. But the way Zen uses language is always to point beyond language, beyond concepts to the concrete.
Two major schools of Zen exist in Japan: the Rinzai and the Soto. Both have the same goal, of seeing the world unmediated, but their approaches are different. In the Soto school, the emphasis is on quiet contemplation in a seated position (zazen) without a particular focus for thought. The method in the Rinzai school, however, is to put the intellect to work on problems that have no logical resolution. Such problems are known as koans, from the Chinese kung-an meaning "public announcement." Some are mere questions, for example: "When your mind is not dwelling on the dualism of good and evil, what is your original face before you were born?" Others are set in a question-and-answer (mondo) form, like: "What is the Buddha?" Answer: "Three pounds of flax" or "The cypress tree in the courtyard" (to name but two of the classic responses). According to tradition there are seventeen hundred such conundrums in the Zen repertoire. And their common aim is to induce a kind of intellectual catastrophe, a sudden jump which lifts the individual out of the domain of words and reason into a direct, nonmediated experience known as satori.
Zen differs from other meditative forms, including other schools of Buddhism, in that it does not start from where we are and gradually lead us to a clear view of the true way of the world. The sole purpose of studying Zen is to have Zen experiences – sudden moments, like flashes of lightning, when the intellect is short-circuited and there is no longer a barrier between the experiencer and reality. Sometimes its methods can seem bizarre and even startling. To catch the flavor, if a Zen master found you reading this book he might grab it from you and hit you over the head with it, saying: "Here's something else for you to think about!" Such shock tactics, however, are intended not to offend but rather to wake us up from our normal symbol-bound frame of mind.
Zen may seem chaotic and irrational (often unfuriatingly so!). Yet traditionally it is pursued and imparted in a highly formal, doctrinal way. Students at a Japanese Rinzai monastery must abide by strict rules and follow a precisely prescribed path of development, involving regular periods of meditation and private interviews with the Zen master (roshi), in which koans are given and discussed. When the student attains, in the master's judgment, the correct insight into a koan, he or she will be given a new koan designed to open up a further appreciation of the true nature of reality. In this sense, enlightenment comes as a result of a succession of satoris, some more profound than others.
Zen uses language to point beyond language, which is what poets and playwrights and musicians do. But, less obviously, it is also what modern science does if the intuitive leap is taken beyond its abstract formalism. The deep, latent message of quantum mechanics, for instance, codified in the language of mathematics, is that there is a reality beyond our senses which eludes verbal comprehension or logical analysis. And this is best exemplified in the central idea of "complementarity" – an idea introduced by Niels Bohr to account for the fact that two different conditions of observations could lead to conclusions that were conceptually incompatible. In one experiment, for example, light might behave as if it were made of particles, in another as if it were made of waves. Bohr proposed, however, there is no intrinsic incompatibility between these results because they are functions of different conditions of observation; no experiment could be devised that would demonstrate both aspects of a single condition. The wave and particle natures of light and matter are not mutually exclusive; they are mutually inclusive – necessary, complementary aspects of reality. Bohr gained his inspiration for this concept from Eastern philosophy, in particular from the Taoist concept of the dynamic interplay of opposites, yin and yang. And so, one of the central principles of modern physics is coincident with, and actually derived from, one of the most basic doctrines of the Eastern worldview.
Intuition has ever been the handmaiden of science. And although science represents its theories and conclusions in a "respectable" symbolic form, its greatest advances have always come initially not from the application of reason but from intuitive leaps – sudden flashes of inspiration very much akin to Zen experiences.
Zen and physics, then, seemingly so different, are not so different after all. They are themselves complementary – the waves of Zen to the particles of physics. And the truth of this symbiosis is further revealed by the fact that the branch of physics that is closest to the bedrock of reality, quantum mechanics, now appears to be as profoundly paradoxical and enigmatic as Zen. Physics even poses riddles that, like koans, make a mockery of our lgic: "Does a particle that is not watched exist?" Trees, like everything else, are made of subatomic particles. So, does an unwatched tree exist? If it falls in a forest, when no one is around to "observe it into being," can it meaningful be said to make a sound? Physics and Zen, pragmatism and poetry, conceptualization and creativity, meet at such points – and become one.
But what does this mean for the ordinary man and woman? We cannot all sit cross-legged in Japanese monasteries, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, preparing our mind for the flash of Zen lightning that will hopefully show us the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Nor can we all immerse ourselves for a similar lengthy period in the complexities of higher mathematics and quantum field theory so that we might someday fully appreciate the new scientific vision of a unified cosmos. We have children to raise, jobs to go to, mortgages to pay. How can we, in our everyday lives, discover our true place in the universe? How can we see beyond the narrow confines of our individual existence to the timeless, deathless, frontierless place that, the sages of both the East and the West now tell us, is the one true reality?
Related books by David Darling (click on a cover to begin reading):
