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Sunday, December 9, 2012

Physics and Buddhism, internalization

http://ngxinzhaomonk.blogspot.sg/2012/12/physics-and-buddhism-internalizing.html

Continuing from the link above,

The more textbooks of physics I'm reading, the more I feel that Physics is indeed not in the paper, or books, or even the form of the equation or maths. You can have a totally different way of formulating mathematics and writing down the equations, but the concepts will have to be there, the computational abilities of equations has to be there. So in other words, we are playing with our minds, our intellectual mind if you will.

The reason we write it down is for unambiguous communication and to compute. To show my point of Physics is a mind made object and exercise, show all these complicated looking equation to a normal five year old, they can barely make out the symbol for addition, and a few numbers if there are some in there, but other than that, it's all jargon to them. So we need to teach them how mathematics is done on Earth and then they learn those and the physics concepts, and the derivations, and finally when they look back at the same equations 18 years later, meaning is assigned to the pattern of inks on a paper.

The pattern of ink itself did not change, it is the mind of the Physicist that changed. Therefore Physics lives inside the collective consciousness of all Physicist. If all human beings one day go extinct, but our records of Physics and mathematics and language still exist, and one day some intelligent alien discovered the remains of our civilization and learn our knowledge, then Physics lives on in their mind.

Yet, they will also have to do the same experiments as we did to verify the results of our claims, follow the maths or translate it to their own mathematical symbol, however they write it as, and then they can fully fill in what is Physics in our world now.

The same is true for Buddhism. (I shall be using these brackets for the analogy for Physics)

The Dharma lives in the Sangha, for as long as there are beings who are enlightened in the world (knows how to do Physics, all of the core Physics...or derive all the equations of Physics from the still unknown theory of everything),  the Dharma is still very much alive and doing it's job of liberating people. The Sangha learn about the Dharma, and then practice, realize and share the Dharma.(Physicist learn, do physics, that is realize more of the world than we previously did and then teach people about it by publishing papers, sometime even more, by writing popular books, teaching in universities, etc...)

The same thing happens when all the Dharma disappear in the world, it can be rediscovered by a Buddha and re-spread the message out to the world. One will have to do all the Morality-Mind-Wisdom training in order to fully realize the truth. (The experiments of physics and the theories behind it.)

So the Dharma is very much a mental phenomena. Not to test on the intellectual skills, but to cool it down, to calm the mind, so that it can be sharpen and then penetrate to the truth of life and suffering. (In contrast, physics needs the intellectual mind to create and think of concepts that might model the world.)

So maybe the fusion of both ways to use the mind can help in Physics? Because it is known for a long time now that the active intellectual mind making philosophy and fabrications (like this blog) is a hindrance to the real practice in Buddhism.

Also, for the formula: To learn (same to learn), To practice by upholding morality (getting the basic physics concepts right), and meditation (Doing the maths correctly), To realize wisdom or insight, of getting to know things by ourselves (Doing the experiments and getting new theories never before seen in the world), To share (Publish papers!).