Category Archives: Science

Energy, Sensation, Perception

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Sensation and perception are how we seem to experience the world. Practitioners of Buddhism and science have given a lot of attention to how we do that and what it means.

From the scientific viewpoint, sensation occurs when a specialized organ interacts with the form of energy it evolved to interact with. These specialized organs are the sensory receptors in the eye, ear, nose, skin, or tongue, for example, though animals have a large array of receptors, like infrared receptors in pit vipers or sonar in bats.

And in an inspired insight I particularly admire, in Buddhism the brain is also a sense organ, one that “perceives” both sensory inputs from other sense organs but also you might consider thoughts a sensory input. Continue reading →

Behind the Curtain; A First Peek into Quantum Weirdness

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Quantum mechanics grabs the attention of so many people for some good reasons.

Quantum mechanics deals in the atomic and subatomic realms. In the reductive scientific program it is about as small and basic as you can go based on actual experiments.

The results of these studies have led to highly reproducible observations and measurements.

These findings have led to technologic breakthroughs.

 And because quantum mechanics is counterintuitive, bizarre and no matter how hard you try to picture it, model it in your head, think it through, intellectualize, fit in into your daily four-dimensional experience of reality, you will fail, like thousand upon thousands of great minds have failed for a hundred years.

Let me start with an example. I will give others in future posts. Continue reading →

Defining Energy

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The palpable universe and how we perceive it and know about it is all about transformation of energy (see also the post “Change and Suffering, Phantoms and Dreams”).

Energy patterns upon energy patterns.

We know energy is fundamental. Besides our intuition and use of the word very freely in common parlance, everyone knows that Einstein informed us that things are convertible to energy and energy to things:

E=Mc2

E= energy, M= mass, c= the speed of light. Since c (the speed of light) squared is a constant, just a number that doesn’t change but makes the units work out:

Energy IS mass (stuff/things). Mass IS energy. Continue reading →

Mind Breathes Fire

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Nyogen Roshi sent me an article from the New York Times he thought I would like: “A Black Hole Mystery Wrapped in a Firewall Paradox” (Dennis Overbye, 8/12/13). There were comments in the article by a theoretical physicist and educator whose work I enjoy, Leonard Susskind. There were also references to the nearly iconic physicist and intellectual provocateur Stephen Hawking, and in particular to a debate on the nature of black holes these two contemporary towering figures of physics had that lasted years and was finally settled in Leonard Susskind’s favor. Continue reading →

Circle and Wave

Posted on by under Math, Science

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In my GUT of Zen there are two phrases that suggest time and space:

You are the Universe unfolding

Mind evolving.

And there are two phrases that are outside of time and space:

No beginning and no end

No separation.

Time and space are deep and difficult. Don’t be seduced by clocks and rulers and your day-to-day experience into thinking you have any idea what they are about.  The 13th century Japanese Zen master Dogen famously spilled a lot of ink writing about time and change. Change is discussed in some of the earliest Buddhist writings we have. Scientists debate the nature of time and space to this day. In a recent review in the scientific journal Nature titled “Theoretical physics: the origins of space and time” (8/23/13) there is the lament that physics is incomplete without an explanation of time and space. There are seven competing theoretical models discussed, with titles like “quantum loop gravity” and “Holography”. Continue reading →