Physics proves Buddhist conceptions of interconnectedness

In general most religions claim to do works of charity, to help people, to respect and love others, and even to love and protect animals. Christians in particular pay most attention to loving people; not only love those they like but also forgive their enemy. The origin of “love” should come from the Oneness of the most fundamental human nature, and can be traced out easily from Buddhism. Buddhism claims mercy or compassion, which differs from love only in depth and width involved. Love usually gets involved much deeper and wider than mercy or compassion. Love could become hatred but mercy or compassion never does so. Buddhists do works of charity not just for poor people, also for all sentient being of the six ways. That is, they have much broader mercy or compassion. The highest achievement of mercy or compassion would be like that of Kuan-yin Bodhisattva, who obtains the Oneness Compassion or the so-called Same-body Great Pity as described in section 2 above. Thus Oneness should be the ultimate cause for love and mercy or compassion. 7-2. Another kind of consistency between Quantum Physics and Buddhism Our theme is to discuss consistency between Modern Physics and Buddhism using Oneness as the chief subject of discussion. What we have stated is mainly that between Buddhism and Relativity Physics, which is an important branch of Modern Physics. Another important branch of Modern Physics is Quantum Physics. Let me briefly sketch the consistency between Quantum Physics and Buddhism using Emptiness as subject of discussion. Buddhist <Heart Sutra> says: “Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is form”. It means that all kinds of various forms such as mountains, rivers, etc. are of Emptiness in nature and Emptiness is the origin of forms.” In other words all the forms are created from emptiness. In Quantum Physics owing to the discovery of Particle-Wave Duality 23 there comes out the well-known “Uncertainty Principle”. 24 By that it means even in a vacuum state of zero energy (energy E=0) a physical system does have a non-zero uncertainty energy (ΔE≠0). This is the so-called “The Seething Vacuum”, 25 meaning that there must exist energy fluctuation even in vacuum. Also owing to the mass-energy relation (E=mc2 ) of Einstein, fluctuating energy may give rise to mass or matter. That a vacuum can yield matter from nothing is quite in consistency with Buddhist notion. Further the well-known Big Bang theory or “the no boundary condition” describing how our universe was formed claims “creation out of nothing”. 26 This is just as Buddhist statement: all the forms are created from emptiness. 7-3. Conclusion The well-established Modern Physics contains mainly Einstein’s Relativity Physics and Quantum Physics. Einstein’s Relativity deals with Macroscopic phenomena of large scale and large mass such as astronomy and cosmology problems. On the other hand, Quantum Physics treats Microscopic phenomena of small scale and small mass such as molecular and atomic problems. Thus we know from above statements that for either large scale Relativity or small scale Quantum Physics there exists consistency between Modern Physics and Buddhism. This year (2005 A.D.) is the 100 Anniversary year of Einstein’s Relativity. Many academic organizations in the world hold celebration for the Anniversary. Relativity helped Newtonian Physics to upgrade from pure Matter to Mind-Matter Dualism 100 years ago and provides at present the academic foundation for this paper to claim the consistency between Modern Physics and Buddhism. This Anniversary, methinks, is of great significance for the adaption and integration of science, philosophy and Buddhism in the 21th century.