(Untitled)

[kochanie]

'As astronomers gaze deeper into space, they are looking farther back in time

Comments

[snej]

It is very weird and unintuitive. Pretty much everything about modern physics is - because we're used to a particular scale, and so we naively expect the laws of nature to work like that at all scales, only they don't

[kochanie]

Don't be sorry...it is interesting stuff! and interesting too because Buddhist texts often talk about the illusory nature of the three times (past/present/future) thats its just a kind of stiffening of our conceptual intellect that creates the illusion, and if we rested in our real nature (awareness) it doesn't exist....okay its more complex than that because we need to talk about physical matter too being illusory...stuff which technically doesn't exist either, but the reason when we experience pure non-dual awareness, physicality does exist is because we've made these concepts pretty darn solid over infinite lives...etc... but I love being confounded by science...it kind of opens the mind...I heard on the news that the Dalai Lama is very quietly getting his PhD in quantum physics :)

[snej]

Yes! There are a lot of interesting parallels between Buddhism and modern physics. I read a really good book about this called "The Tao Of Physics" when I was a teenager; I'm sure it's sort of out of date by now, but I'd still recommend it. (I know that Taoism isn't the same as Buddhism; IIRC the author was covering several east-Asian religions & philosophies.)

What's interesting is how the old Newtonian physics had a Christian mindset to it - God as the Prime Mover, the entire universe following His law, with every effect of every cause being exactly predictable to a deity. Then in the 20th century things began to look more Buddhist. Maybe in this century we'll discover Hindu or Mayan physics ;-)