The Eternal Interplay: Surprising Overlaps Between Quantum Physics and Buddhism

David Leong

Kinuko Bessho

Michal Abrams, T. X. Thuan

Matthieu Ricard

Peter Rodgers

The University of Innsbruck in Austria is one of the world's leading centres for research into the mysteries and subtleties of quantum theory. The work of Anton Zeilinger and colleagues at Innsbruck – such as the experimental demonstration of quantum teleportation – regularly appears in the leading journals, and in magazines such as Physics World. Recently a surprising figure was seen in the labs. Was that really the Dalai Lama – the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize – checking out a quantum optics experiment?

Christian Thomas Kohl

Rudyard Kipling, the famous English author of The Jungle Book, born in India, wrote one day these words: ‘Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet’. In my paper I show that Kipling was not completely right. I try to show the common ground between Buddhist philosophy and quantum physics. There is a surprising parallelism between the philosophical concept of reality articulated by Nāgārjuna and the physical concept of reality implied by quantum physics. For neither is there a fundamental core to reality; rather, reality consists of systems of interacting objects. Such concepts of reality cannot be reconciled with the substantial, subjective, holistic or instrumentalistic concepts of reality that underlie modern modes of thought.