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March/April 2007 Spirituality
The Tyranny of Time: A Buddhist Perspective on Quantum Mechanics

by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

If you look at our experience from the point of view of time, you can say that tables, glasses of water and so on, do indeed exist in time – but only from a relative perspective. Most people tend to think of time in terms of past, present and future. “I went to a boring meeting.” “I’m in a boring meeting.” “I have to go to a boring meeting.”

Actually, though, when you think of the past, you’re merely recalling an experience that has already happened. You’re out of the meeting. The past is like a seed that’s been burned in a fire. Once it’s burned, there’s no more seed. It’s only a memory, a thought passing through the mind. The past, in other words, is nothing more than an idea.

Likewise, what other people tend to call “the future” is an aspect of time that hasn’t yet occurred. You wouldn’t talk about a tree that hasn’t been planted as though it were a solid, living object, because you have no context for talking about it; nor would you talk about your children who haven’t yet been conceived the way you would about people you’re dealing with here and now. So the future, too, is just an idea, a thought passing through your mind.

So what are you left with as an actual experience?

The present.

From a Buddhist perspective, the essence of time, like the essence of space and the objects that move around in space, is emptiness. At a certain point, any attempt to examine time or space in terms of smaller and smaller intervals finally breaks down. When you reach that point, you enter an experience that is beyond words, beyond ideas, beyond concepts.

“Beyond ideas and concepts” doesn’t mean that your mind becomes as empty as an eggshell or as dull as a stone. Actually, quite the opposite occurs. Your mind becomes more vast and open. You can still perceive subjects and objects, but in a more illusory way: you recognize them as concepts, not as inherently real entities.

Quantum Gravity and Spacetime Foam

I was introduced to the theory of quantum gravity, an examination of the fundamental nature of space and time that explores such basic questions as, “What are space and time made of? Do they exists absolutely or do they emerge form something more fundamental? What do space and time look like on very small scales? Is there a smallest possible length or unit of time?”

In most branches of physics, space and time are treated as though they were infinite, uniform and perfectly smooth: a static background through which objects move and events happen. This is a very workable assumption for examining the nature and properties of large bodies of matter and subatomic particles. But when it comes to examining time and space themselves, the situation becomes very different.

At the level of ordinary human perception, the world looks sharp, clear and solid. A plank supported by three or four legs appears on the level of ordinary perception quite obviously to be a table.

Now imagine looking at a material object through a microscope. You might reasonably expect that by gradually increasing the microscope’s level of magnification you’d see a sharper, clearer image of the object’s underlying structure. Actually, however, the opposite occurs.

As we approach a magnification where we are able to see individual atoms, the world begins to look more and more “fuzzy” and we leave most of the rules of classic physics behind. This is the realm of quantum mechanics, in which subatomic particles jitter about in all possible ways and pop in and out of existence with increasing frequency.

Continuing to increase the magnification so that we can see smaller and smaller distances, we eventually find that space and time themselves start to jitter – space itself develops tiny curves and kinks that appear and disappear inconceivably fast. This happens at extremely small scales – as small compared to an atom as an atom is compared to the solar system. This state has been called “spacetime foam” by physicists. Think of shaving foam that looks smooth from a distance but close up is composed of millions of tiny bubbles.

Buddhist Finds Freedom in Science

From a Buddhist perspective, the description of reality provided by quantum mechanics offers a degree of freedom to which most people are not accustomed, and which may at first seem strange and even a little frightening. As much as Westerners in particular value the capacity for freedom, the notion that the act of observation of an event can influence the outcome in random, unpredictable ways, can seem like too much responsibility.

It’s much easier to assume the role of the victim and assign the responsibility or blame for our experience to some person or power outside oneself. If we’re to take the discoveries of modern science seriously, however, we have to assume responsibility for our moment-to-moment experience.

Our sense of personal limitation and vulnerability would gradually be replaced by a sense of openness and possibility. We would see those around us in an entirely new light – not as threats to our personal security or happiness but as people simply ignorant of the infinite possibilities of their own nature.

Because our own nature is unconstrained by arbitrary distinctions of being “this way” or “that way” or having certain capabilities and lacking others – then we would be able to meet the demands of any situation in which we might find ourselves.

Excerpted from The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, an internationally renowned Tibetan Buddhist master who has opened the American Yongey Buddhist Center in California. Visit www.mingyur.org.