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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (142270)	8/2/2004 2:46:15 AM
From: spiral3	Respond to of 281500

If by "no inherent substance" you mean that matter is composed of "particles" with an enormous amount of empty space between them, and that the "particles" are actually made up, not of tiny bits of matter, but of energy forces, I think that is correct but only in string theory. Definition of “no inherent substance” is very different in buddhism to the way we might normatively think of it. Difficult to translate Buddist concepts using English terminology, conceptual/ cultural /linguistic thing. By this they mean visible or not. Should I ever discover, or experience this, I’ll sound the alarm. It’s pretty solid science that things are made of particles, no quotes required and what is in them, how they are constructed, and how those bits and pieces in there are constructed and so on. As you say there’s a lot of open space between the material data. Unfortunately culturally we are inclined to think dualistically and the scientific fact is that further we investigate, smaller things become, and the further out there, well then such thinking falls apart so we have to discover/invent a new language to say what the heck is going on with reality. I am not sure about the term energy forces, and am not a scientist, but have thought that some aspects of String Theory would jive with what I know of the buddist view. Of course the problem is that what I know about string theory is essentially nothing, so that’s a bit of a problem right there. It was Nagarjuna who said that language itself would point to the Way. In the Heart Sutra, or for it’s full and beautiful title, The Heart of Transcendent Wisdom, the Lady Buddha, he says Matter is Voidness. Voidness is Matter. Voidness is not other than matter, neither is matter other than Voidness It goes on quite a bit but that’s his take. But we can measure the forces, they do exist. If you can measure something, then it's not "nothing." There is no denial of "forces" in Buddhism, the question is where do they come from and of what are they constituted. Because you and I are forced to communicate to each other using language, which is one step removed from that that which we’re trying to describe, any named notions are already in a sense analogies, and the buddists use the one known as "force" quite a bit when they talk of our minds, by which they mean our clear nature, the potential, and who “I” is. Another fascinating area of scientific study for these people was the Martial Arts. They developed some pretty formidable equations when it came to body mechanics, never mind what can go on with all that other stuff floating around. Could it be that they knew how to kill because they knew a thing or two about living. There probably isn’t a country on the planet to which these skills have not been exported. The scientific way is about the Way used to find the truth. It is not The Truth itself.