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Victor Mansfield reveals to us the nature and meaning of emptiness from Middle Way
Buddhism and relates it to quantum physics and Jungian synchronicity:
In Middle Way Buddhism, emptiness is a denial of a particular type
of existence, inherent existence, something that could never be...[such as a tree
or]...the I or me we instinctively believe inherently or independently exists....
In truth, all objects exist only as sets of relationships or
dependencies--between various objects and between the object and the knower who
mentally designates them....Objects are none other than dependency relationships and
names.
Although its a radical reversal of our normal mode of functioning,
Middle Way Buddhism claims that the highest truth of phenomena, their most fundamental
nature, is their inherently dependent and interrelated nature. The essence of
phenomena is their connectedness and relatedness, not their isolated identify.
Einstein's commitment to objects that exist independent of our
knowing and interaction with each other...is a precise description of inherent
existence.
[Bell's Inequality Theorem proves that] "Nonlocality effects in
quantum mechanics cannot be understood by causal interactions between independently
existent entities.
This tight correspondence between the core issues in Bell's
Theorem...and Middle Way emptiness is quite extraordinary.
Just as general relativity decreased the importance of any reference
frame or point of view, so too does Middle Way Emptiness help remove our deep-seated
psychological bondage to egocentrism....
In synchronicity the most unsettling and arresting aspect of the
experience is the implication that there is a genuine acausal relationship of meaning
between the inner and outer worlds and therefore that there is some unity between
psyche and matter.
In other words, what physicists and psychologists consider as a
deeply mysterious and troubling fact about nature is the centerpiece of the Middle Way
vision.
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