Personal ramblings on Quanta, Sunya, and Mind

In my early adventures in the Buddhist studies in early 90s (maybe 1993), I came across a fascinating book titled  शून्यवाद (the teaching of emptiness) written by Bhante Nirgunananda (निर्गुणनंद). The book was published from Mumbai where Venerable Bhante Nirgunananda was living then.

I had not had great fortune of meeting the great monk, but his book, a translation of Nagarjuna's work with a wonderful preface by the Venerable, stayed with me. He wrote many other books to defend the Buddha and His Dhamma. This small wonderful book written in Hindi opened the teaching of emptiness and introduced Nagarjuna. 

Up until now, teachings of emptiness in terms of both as a philosophy and practice stayed with me. Understanding Sunyata is not easy, but yet as a reality, it is available all the time.  The great Buddha realised that everything is relational and relative, and being relational and relative, nothing in the world and in our experiences is independent and absolute.

This insight into the reality can be gleaned easily through reflection, but when the attention is turned inwards, into our immediate experiences, into our minds, we cannot experience any of the experience which is independent and absolute. This is the path to freedom. 

Carlo Revelli's fascinating book Helgoland published recently is one of the clear books on Quantum Mechanics. Carlo Revelli is one of the great brains of our times and his writing is accessible to common people not trained in mathematics.

As it is well known, Quantum Mechanics works proving its veracity, but  one really understands Quantum Mechanics. The exploration of Quanta is as illusive as Sunya. But as the Buddha declared, because of Sunya all the possibilities exists, similarly with the quanta all the possibilities exist.  

Now why bring Carlo Revelli in the discussion? The Helgoland (by the way Helgoland is the Island where Hiesenberg got insight into Quantum Mechanics) includes a beautiful discussion on Nagarjuna and his Sunyavada. That Nagarjuna is popular among the Quantum Physicist is a good news and thinkers and scholars engaging will yield interesting Insights.

The Buddha testified that the world (world as we experience it) is knowable, but cannot be expressed in words or other signs. Every method or system of thought will fail to express the totality, but and this is a catch, we (and our minds) being the " part" of the totality can be understood our selves, our true nature, various aspects of our conscious experience.  The Buddha taught that the world can be known through this bodymind.

The practioners following the Buddha explored their consciousnesses and understood the process of perceptions, emotions, concept formations, ego formations, and all the smaller details of mind and its mechanics. As the consciousness is not a subject, it is relational and relative, it is basically Sunya. It needs reference to come into operation.

The Buddha realised the emptiness of consciousness and realised it's nature without any attributes (nirguna). The great teachers of Sunya like Kabir called themselves Nirgunavadi. This is also the name of the monk (Nirgunanand). 

The Buddhists understood mental processes as paticcasamuppana. They saw the entire process of perception formation. When they turned their inquiry into the world outside, they realized how it can be otherwise. The outer world cannot be exceptional to the general law of paticcasamuppada and hence the outer world is Sunya if we peel away the layers after layers.  

Sunya does not mean nihilism,  it simply means that there is no thing permanent or no thing stands of its own. Because of impermanence and interaction with other things/experiences rise and fall.  

Quantum Mechanics discusses levels of reality and at the Quantum level, we enter into uncertainty. As the things evolve, different laws come into being depending on the complexity and things/experience "looks" solid and fixed. 

Let's look at human consciousness where the modern scientific development has provided us so much clarity. This has started with the study of brain and its functions.

As there are many brains, there are many minds, but the underlying processes are the same (same patterns). The Buddhists who have been studying brains through various methods (meditative skills) discovered many aspects of human mind that are proved by empirical studies now.  

Let's us look at the traditional discussion on consciousness in Buddhism. 

The Buddhists found that there are 5 sensory consciousness, one level of consciousness that makes sense of 5 sensory consciousnessess, then there is self/other dividing consciousness, and finally there is storehouse/fundamental consciousness. 

These are 8 levels/attributes of consciousness. They all can be experienced and they all can be transformed into awakened wisdoms. This is a long and complex discussion, but coming back to the Buddha mind, it has five aspects: clear, equal, discriminative, evolving/transformative, and dharmata (the way it is). 

The Buddhists realizing the nature of consciousness do not stop there, they give rise to wisdoms associated to each level of consciousness and this is where the practice begins and ends. 

Traditionally, the eight consciousnessess can be categorized into five levels and they are transformed into five wisdoms. 

Alaya Consciousness (store/basic) is transformed into mirror like wisdom. 

7 th consciousness has two aspects: self/other division (ego formation) and desire for sensual enjoyment (desire consciousness). 

The two aspects of 7th Consciousness are transformed as this: Ego formation consciousness is transformed into wisdom that sees equality and desire consciousness is transformed into discriminative wisdom. 

The 6th consciousness is transformed into wisdom of thusness

The remaining five sensory consciousnessess are grouped and the sensory consciousness is transformed into transformative wisdom.

Thus the very mind that enslaves us can be transformed into wisdom. 

Coming back to our discussion on Sunya, the consciousness is empty of self and the world is empty of substance. The world of substance/elements that we experience is mediated by our five senses and integrated by our mind into the way we experience it.  

The studies in the brain science proved that our brain creates the experience of world around us and Quantum Mechanics taught us that we all live in our own worlds (the double slit experiment was performed with human beings and at quanta level it was found that an individual mind perceives an unique world). 

That we can know what it is directly by our human minds through individual efforts is the great insight of the Buddha.