Cosmos!
Well, the Lama’s visit is over but my mind is still reeling. I was part of a group that received a special teaching from the Lama on Buddhist cosmology. Not only did he explain the Tibetan understanding of the nature and structure of the universe (not something I dwell on every day!), he also compared it the scientific view often held in the wider world. It turns out there are both similarities as well as some very important differences.
The Tibetan Buddhist cosmological view (beware — here comes the ‘mind-reeling’ part) is that there are a countless, perhaps infinite, number of universes. According to the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, there are as many universes as there are grains of sand in the Ganges. These universes vary in size (small, medium and large), shape (spherical, cubic, prismatic) and configuration (some universes contain others). Each universe in turn contains innumerable Earths, Suns and other celestial bodies moving in intricate ways and grouped in various combinations. The Lama said the scale and complexity of this model is impossible to fathom for a small man such as he. I concur — it is mind-reeling indeed!
Universes move through a four-stage life cycle. First, each one is formed when the earth element arises out of wind and emptiness; everything else develops from this. After a period of expansion, the universe is destroyed by fire in an explosion of tremendous heat and power. What follows is emptiness — and this void is at least as difficult for me to comprehend as the earlier complexity! Different universes exist at different stages in this sequence. Formation, expansion, destruction and emptiness each last for 20 million eons — at least it’s reassuring to know that our destruction is unlikely to occur tomorrow!
This Buddhist model jives with the scientific one in several ways. Although there is vigorous debate, many modern physicists also support the concept of a ‘multiverse’: that we inhabit one universe amongst an infinite number of parallel ones. Our universe was formed by a Big Bang event followed by a rapid expansion which is still continuing. There are even echoes of the Buddhist model in the scientific understanding of stars: each star moves through a life cycle that often ends in a large supernova explosion upon its death.
Buddhist and scientific cosmology also evolved along similar paths throughout history. Early science-based models posited by both the Abhidharma and Aristotle were geocentric. Both cultures also had mythic models that were largely abandoned as scientific knowledge progressed. In the Buddhist case, the Lama explained that the familiar Buddhist myth of Mount Meru (the mountainous spine of the universe situated below heaven realms and surrounded by oceans and the four continents) is actually an early teaching adapted from Hinduism. Over time, Buddhist cosmological thought evolved beyond this to integrate concepts such as śūnyatā and anātman. Similarly in the Christian West, a literal understanding of a heaven in the sky and a hell below the Earth’s surface has been largely replaced with a metaphorical one.
While these similarities are quite factual, the differences between Buddhist and scientific cosmology seemed to me more philosophical in nature — in fact they speak directly to contrasting views of the nature of reality. A scientific system is fundamentally grounded in the view that objects in our universe have objective reality. Heisenberg’s objections aside, objects can be perceived and measured using scientific instruments. For example, a telescope might reveal that a galaxy is, like the one pictured below, definitively spiral-shaped.
But for Buddhists, perception is a trickier matter. The Lama explained that a universe appears spiral rather than spherical due to karma. Similarly, I might view my neighbour as handsome while you see him as ugly. This is because galaxies and neighbours do not exist intrinsically; we simply react to them differently due to differences in our karmic composition. An object’s undetermined nature give us much flexibility. While a scientist might label an object ‘hard’ or ‘soft’, ‘big’ or ‘small’, a Buddhist aims to lessen his attachment to the solid nature of objects so he can perhaps begin to understand how an object can be both hard and soft — how an object could possess opposite characteristics simultaneously! Is your mind reeling yet?
No? Then let’s keep going. For Western scientists, fields like cosmology, astronomy and astrophysics aim to reveal outer, objective truth. For Buddhists, cosmology is as much (if not more!) about inner realization. For example, the Kālacakra teachings lay out models of both the universe and the human body. The operative underlying philosophy is that while external world understanding is important, our understanding of the body and mind is equally so. And if one’s inner realization is insufficient, no amount of outer, factual knowledge can overcome this. The Lama even pointed out that if one has to choose, it’s advantageous to pursue the inner over the outer. Inner beauty is less transient; it doesn’t have a ‘best-before’ date!
But obviously both outer research and inner purification are important. A good way to develop both, the Lama suggested, is to ‘shrink the universe to our inner world’ and investigate this — to understand the universe by looking inward. This seems very different from the scientific mindset.
It’s easy to become fixated on these differences and the Lama cautioned against this. The purpose of his teaching, he said, was not to praise Buddhism but merely to identify some areas where it overlapped with modern science. He encouraged us to regard all ideas as worthy of study regardless of their country or religion of origin. In his view, the most important thing is to accept information without bias, a stance that I’m sure scientists would support!
