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Prelude

Published Mar 25, 2004• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract The morning after our arrival in Dharamsala, India, home to many Tibetans in exile, I made my way by foot along narrow, rutted roads until I came to the Tibetan Children’s Village. Nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas, the orphanage and schools of the Children’s Village make up a small world of some 2,500 refugee children, teachers, and caregivers striving to preserve their ancient culture while simultaneously becoming part of modern civilization. Nearby is the residence and monastery of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. During the coming week, from October 27 to 31, 1997, five other scientists and I would be conversing with him about our intersecting interests, Buddhist philosophy and modern physics.

DOI
10.1093/oso/9780195159943.003.0001

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In 1997, I attended a Mind and Life dialogue between H. H. the Dalai Lama and prominent American and European physicists in Dharamsala, India. Among them was Professor Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna, an expert in quantum mechanics who, the following year, oversaw the fi rst successful quantum teleportation experiment. After describing the sequence of experiments that established quantum mechanics as a fi eld, research in which light was found to be paradoxically both a particle and a wave, Professor Zeilinger asked the Dalai Lama if he had any questions. The Dalai Lama, attentive and absorbed in the narrative explanation, nodded and began an intriguing exchange, which went something like this: “This history and these fi ndings confi rm the Buddhist view that if you analyse any phenomenon in search of its essence, as you scientists have done with light, you will arrive at the realization of its ultimate lack of inherent existence: its emptiness. Yet, I am left wondering how this knowledge, these insights about the nature of light, affected you.”
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