Today many people recognize the similarities found in statements from Buddhism and those from science. However, congruence between the two first became evident a little over one hundred years ago. Whereas Buddhist teachings are derived from a spiritual worldview and meditative experience, scientific findings are the product of empirical observation and logical, consistent inquiry into the natural world. There can be a fruitful exchange between both approaches to reality. Developments in modern science have, in fact, correlated with Buddhism since the mid-nineteenth century.
At that time in Western culture, there existed a longstanding tradition of misunderstanding between science and religion. In science, there had been a long process of dismissing religious and metaphysical concepts. Firmly anchored in people’s thinking, scientists encountered these conceptions again and again, hindering a sober and rational worldview and positivistic understanding. In the conflict with the Bible and the teachings of Christianity, scientific findings proved to have more stamina because they were based on measurable observation and could be demonstrated in experiments or through mathematics. Furthermore, science played a fundamental role in technological progress.
Science also changed people’s mindsets and their views of the world. In this, they ran into competition from an approach that demanded a divine order—an essentially unchallengeable position—and that had long since cemented religious power structures. The most powerful institutions of Christianity in the West attempted again and again to influence science and to limit its freedom. Although this conflict did not play out only in Christian Europe, it was due to the strong character of the natural sciences in Europe that it was most vigorously defended on that continent.
A typical example of this is the conviction of Galileo Galilei in 1633. After being denounced by colleagues who defended the geocentric system, he was sentenced by a court of the Inquisition to lifelong house arrest. Galileo had argued for the Copernican view that the earth revolved around the sun. Interestingly, his rehabilitation by the Church did not take place until 1992, although the Catholic Church had already agreed in 1951 that the Big Bang Theory was in agreement with the Bible.
With this history of irreconcilable enmity between religion and science, it should be noted that science sometimes espoused its findings in an absolute and dogmatic manner. “In the phase of its unbroken authority, science was not even once able to pose the question as to the truth in religion. It was very naively materialistic and simply denied all realities which did not come up in its concepts.”
However, since that time, science has begun to delve more deeply into phenomena that cannot be directly experienced with the senses, e.g., into the realms of the micro and macro cosmos. Questions belonging to philosophy and religion have become increasingly interesting against the background of these developments in science, namely those things that go beyond sense experience.
Physicists and natural scientists have always been inclined to philosophize. However, insights into the vastness of the cosmos and into the smallest building blocks of matter have made more evident the wonder of the world and of being itself. Groundbreaking findings in the nineteenth century paved the way for significant recent developments in the twentieth century. Previously accepted conceptions about the world, space, time, the smallest particles and even the “self” or consciousness—as somehow absolute and knowable with certainty—have been transformed by the awareness that these are “relative,” i.e., that they depend on certain conditions that the traditional model could not access.
At the same time, people in Europe were gaining access to Buddhism. This was made possible through political and cultural relations between Europe and Asia, both within the context of imperialism and through intellectual figures such as Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. Academic research into Buddhism supported the acceptance of Buddhism through translations. A serious interest in Buddhism became especially apparent in educated circles. Buddhism became a system that could be compared to scientific findings. Today there are also numerous thinkers who deal in-depth with connections between Buddhism and the natural sciences.
However, both readers and authors are often unaware of the longstanding tradition in Europe of finding correlations and similarities between these two systems.
One example is the Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach (1838–1916), who gave his name to the Mach number, which represents speeds faster than sound. He studied in Vienna and also taught as a professor in Graz. In 1886, he published his Analysis of Sensations, in which he concluded that the self is not a real entity but rather only has a reality “ideal in economy of thought.”
According to Mach, the “unity of consciousness” does not exist because the self is not an unchangeable, clearly defined entity. Mach goes even further: the self, the body and outer objects contain the same or similar elements (colors, forms, etc.); thus, a strict separation of subject and object, of man and the world, cannot be justified: “In this way, we cannot find . . . the gap between bodies and sensations, between outside and inside, between the material and the mental worlds.”
These are familiar concepts for a Buddhist today, but for those times, they were bold statements. The “black hole” that one could fall into seemed to be waiting around every corner in the face of such realizations. Mach’s influence was strong around the turn of the century, and this period saw developments that continue to affect our lives today. Ernst Mach influenced Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg and is considered one of the forerunners of the general theory of relativity.
As a thinker, he influenced philosophers of the Viennese Circle and literary figures such as Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Robert Musil, especially in the question of the self. Their literary and philosophical texts engage in questioning or even dissolving of the idea of a self.
It is remarkable how Mach’s analysis of the idea of a self was recognized by contemporaries as something that could find its counterpart in Buddhism. The philosopher of language and atheist Fritz Mautner, who wrote a book entitled, The Last Death of Gautama Buddha (1913), drew Mach’s attention to this fact. Mach answered: “I have always had the greatest sympathy for Buddhism, even though my Analysis of Sensations was not prompted by Buddhism, but rather through the most naive considerations.”
In his investigations, Mach showed the conditioned nature and the mutual dependency of appearances and of the self. Although he made this step, he did not go further and explicitly formulate an “emptiness” of phenomena. But he could have: What is emptiness other than the experience that when we look more closely at things, we see that self, consciousness, body and world are ultimately not really existing in themselves—but are nevertheless experienced. There is a potential in this “empty“ space!
Scientific developments continued, and in 1905 Albert Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity. Along with his General Theory of Relativity in 1915, he put the idea of an absolute nature of time and space to rest. He described them as being dependent upon or conditioned by each other. For instance, time passes more slowly in close proximity to a massive body or at high speeds. The quantum mechanics of Werner Heisenberg (1926) put an end to the idea of matter that is comprised of the smallest particles. Sometimes the scientist imagines particles as waves and sometimes waves as particles.
However, even this particle-wave duality is only an approximation of reality, since no one has ever really seen this smallest building blocks of reality. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle says that location and speed of a particle cannot both be determined exactly at the same time, thus introducing the category of probability to science. Since particles are nothing but bunches of properties, this step meant giving up the absolute reality of particles themselves. Although that all sounds rather abstract, these findings helped make possible the age of computers.
If one considers modern science and Buddhism together, one sees significant areas of agreement. However, these agreements need to be examined closely. Similarly to Buddhism, scientific thinking uses an exactly defined terminology. One can also consider the very diverse ways in which Buddhism–in Sutra, Tantra and in commentaries–describes emptiness, appearance and awareness. Without going into detail here, I simply note that scientific findings, philosophy and Buddhism were already becoming connected in the twentieth century.
“ALONG WITH HIS GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY IN 1915, HE (EINSTEIN) PUT THE IDEA OF AN ABSOLUTE NATURE OF TIME AND SPACE TO REST. HE DESCRIBED THEM AS BEING DEPENDENT UPON OR CONDITIONED BY EACH OTHER.”
Another Austrian physicist, Erwin Schrödinger, who developed quantum mechanics with Heisenberg, represents a connection to the twentieth century. Philosophically inclined, as were many physicists, he wrote Search for a Path (published in 1925) and dedicated the last year of his life to a similar text called What is Real?
These texts read like a mix of scientific-biological findings and philosophical thought, in which he aims to explain the unity of consciousness and the world with the help of Mach’s analyses and the Vedantic (Hindu) system. He wrote: “The outer world and consciousness are one and the same, insofar as both combine the same primitive elements.”
Schrödinger chooses the Hindu philosophy over the Buddhist viewpoint of the Madhyamaka, which he had already addressed in a 1925 essay. The author, however, does not render this viewpoint fully, seeing it as “negative attitude,” in that it emphasizes the impossibility of every statement–“a thing is neither A nor Not-A, but it is also not a ‘Neither-A nor Not-A’ nor is it a ‘A as well as Not-A’.” It seems that he did not have access to the diversity of Buddhist philosophy as it is given, for example, in Tibetan philosophical texts. In these texts, according to a given school, the Madhyamaka analysis is used. However, it does not mean exclusively “simple negation.” The aspect of appearances–inseparable from emptiness–is in various ways given a greater degree of significance.
On the one hand, the school of Rangtong Madhyamaka emphasizes the emptiness aspect of the mind. Thus, the world of appearances and the possibilities for insight are given less attention than in the Shentong Madhyamaka school. This school emphasizes the clarity aspect of the mind and thus represents the philosophical basis for the Diamond Way (Vajrayana).
“THE UNIVERSE IS CONCEIVABLE AS LIMITLESS SPACE. OUR WORLD IS JUST ONE OF MANY POSSIBILITIES. THE EXPERIENCE OF THIS WORLD IS CORRELATED TO THE ONE WHO IS PERCEIVING IT. THERE IS A REALITY THAT CANNOT BE MEASURED BY THE COMMON CONCEPTIONS OF TIME AND SPACE.”
Both viewpoints can be derived from the teachings of the Buddha, depending on which aspect is emphasized. The common denominator for all Buddhists can be found in the famous formula from the Heart Sutra: “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form, form and emptiness are inseparable.” Lama Ole Nydahl writes: “According to the great Yogis and Yoginis, who practiced Vajrayana in ancient India and Tibet, the experience of mind in its very nature is additional ‘unceasing great bliss.’”
If one moves away—with all due caution—from the level of complicated scientific and Buddhist terminology, one could speak of the following correlations between viewpoints of science and Buddhism:
Parts of both systems distance themselves from traditional conceptions of an ultimately truly existing self and a world that is “solid,” comprised of the smallest possible building blocks that one could find. They include the fact that the world still appears and is perceived (by our senses or in experiments). They both come up with ways of explaining how reality and its constituents can appear to be somehow real, although no building blocks can be ultimately found.
Scientific findings and Buddhism can develop a fruitful exchange by comparing precise statements of science with Buddhist understanding. Of course, scientific findings have the advantage that they are comprehensible across cultures. A major contribution of Buddhism, on the other hand, is in drawing more attention to consciousness and what belongs to it with the emerging of the world of appearances and the perception thereof. With its meditation methods, Buddhism could help make scientific understanding something that can be experienced and thus have a greater impact on people’s lives. Meditation practitioners, on the other hand, will be inspired in their meditation by images of the ever-increasing vastness of the universe or the microcosmos. It would bring us a step closer to the nature of reality; this is becoming ever more visible and describable with increasing precision and, from the Buddhist perspective, can be thoroughly experienced through mind training.
With all worldly or spiritual wisdom, the practical level continues to be important. How should people behave in their lives or in applying scientific findings such that happiness rather than suffering is the result? Destruction is often easier than constructive activity, as can be seen in the use of Einstein’s famous formula “E=mc2.” Mass multiplied itself by the speed of light squared, creating an energy that, in the blink of an eye, destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all living creatures in the area. Doing the opposite, a result which has already been achieved in the linear accelerator in an experiment in Stanford, is significantly more difficult: there pure light was transformed into matter. In order to verify around 100 electrons and their antiparticles, trillions of watts of energy had to be focused on one point. An electromagnetic field was created in a vacuum–an empty space (full of virtual particles)—which caused the appearance of an electron-positron pair out of nothing.
Whether one explains the world or beings as coming into existence through an act of their creator as in Christianity, or through “arising interdependently” and as an illusory projection of the Alaya consciousness as in Buddhism, their manifesting as phenomena will remain a riddle for a long time. It is a miracle, for sure. In all humility, it remains a task for humanity to work toward sustaining the conditions for life and using them in a meaningful and comprehensive manner. May fearless wisdom, joy and active love increase in the world.
