In this post, we discuss Buddha’s teaching in Mohe ZhiGuan that “rupa originates from mentality” and the role non-luminosity plays in it.
The Twelvefold Chain of Dependent Origination doctrine is Buddha’s teaching that all phenomena in the universe are dependently originated.
Twelvefold Chain of Dependent Origination (Romanized Sanskrit=Pratityasamutpada; Chinese=十二緣起), according to The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, is “in Sanskrit, “dependent origination,” “conditioned origination,” lit., “origination by dependence” (of one thing on another); one of the core teachings in the Buddhist doctrinal system.” Additionally, “In one of the earliest summaries of the Buddha’s teaching, Buddha is said to have taught: “When this is present, that comes to be. /From the arising of this, that arises. /When this is absent, that does not come to be. /From the cessation of this, that ceases.”
In the doctrine, Buddha enumerates twelve interconnected links, with each link serving as the cause (Romanized Sanskrit=nidana, Chinese=因緣/尼陀那) for the origination of the following link until the end.
Of the twelve links, non-luminosity is the first link. Indeed, as the only “not causal” phenomenon in its own domain, non-luminosity is the only phenomenon that can be the first link without causing a chicken/egg dilemma.
As discussed in the last post, non-luminosity is a realm of rupa, where mentality fluctuates non-stop from its existence. Therefore, given that non-luminosity is the first link in the Twelvefold Chain of Dependent Origination, when Buddha teaches that “rupa originates from mentality,” he means that the “body, form, or materilality” of the universe originates from the fluctuating mentality of non-luminosity.
As the title of Dr. Tong’s video lecture, Quantum Fields: The Real Building Blocks of the Universe, shows, quantum physicists now consider fluctuating quantum fields as the foundational blocks of the universe. Indeed, Dr. David Tong made it very clear that quantum fields are the building blocks of the universe because “there are no particles in the world.” Indeed, with the advent of quantum mechanics, Newton’s solid, hard, impenetrable, and movable particles are no longer the builders of the universe.
But what is a quantum field?
Dr. Tong provided the answer as he said that, in physics, a field is “something that takes a particular value at every point in space. And what’s more, that value can change in time.”
To understand where the values come from, we need to know what energy is.
Energy, by definition, “is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of heat and light.”
Furthermore, quantitative property “is any property of a physical system that is measurable.”
So, the values that change in the quantum fields are those scientists either measure or transfer to a physical system from the values in equations describing the fields using energy.
In other words, while what fluctuates in their fields differs, Buddhism and quantum mechanics acknowledge that fluctuating fields are the mechanism of how our universe originated. However, while the mechanism is the same, the quantum mechanical universe originating from fluctuating quantum energy differs drastically from Buddha’s universe originating from the fluctuating mentality of non-luminosity.
In his video lecture, Dr. Tong acknowledged that reality built from quantum energy is “nebulous and abstract.” Also absent is the obviously present but never seen reality: consciousness.
On the other hand, the universe built from mentality is one where not only are human babies born with consciousness, but consciousness is also present in amoeba on the hunt, sensitive plants like mimosa pudica, memory in water, and emotional lions reuniting with humans.
Indeed, the quantum mechanical universe begins to diverge from the Buddha’s conscious universe in non-luminosity, the equivalence of what quantum physicists call the quantum realm. In a doctrine known as the Three Delicates Marks, Buddha teaches that not only does consciousness originate in non-luminosity, but karma, causality, delusional subject-object distinction, suffering, etc., all debut in it. Indeed, when you are born from non-luminosity, you are born unenlightened. As discussed in the previous post, non-luminosity and unenlightenment are synonymous. While non-luminosity refers to the realm of fluctuating mentality, unenlightenment usually refers to the mental state of sentient beings.
When a person is born unenlightened, a delusional misunderstanding of reality also becomes inherent. And the impactful consequence for someone having a delusional misunderstanding of reality is that they are subject to causality. The consequence of causality is that one is subject to samsara, cycles of endless birth and rebirth until enlightenment.
You may not believe in causality when Buddha teaches it, but you should also know that, with the advent of Special Relative, scientists now acknowledge that “the special theory of relativity tells us that one person’s past may be another’s future. When time is relative, paradoxes threaten.” Causality will be discussed in a future post.
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