Notes on 'Wholeness and the implicate order: Ch.1 Fragmentation and Wholeness '.

In this chapter Bohm asserts very strongly the need for a whole view in which knowledge and experience are as one. Without this perspective, thought is fragmented and hence the world. It's not a common view among Western scientists, at least not one generally espoused. I had read that Bohm was influenced by Krishnamurti and this is evident if you look at the end of the Appendix, in which he pays glowing tribute to the approach of Krishnamurti and distinguishes approaches and attitudes to measurable and immeasurable that he has encountered between West and East (especially India). The appendix might have been put at the beginning because the perspective offered seems to flow from the observations there.

Overall, I think the views offer valuable coherence and I want to learn more, but there seems to be a denial of the transcendent potential of human beings; that the absolute reality can be attained:

Actually, there are no direct and positive things that man can do to get in touch with the immeasurable, for this must be immensely beyond anything that man can grasp with his mind or accomplish with his hands or instruments.

I find this ultimately pessimistic, unnecessarily so. I guess if someone comes from a Western background it can be difficult to not equate a human being with the biological organism, but the biological organism cannot of itself transcend. In insisting on wholeness of the thinking and content, to include the biological [conditioned] self, and nothing beyond would imply being stuck. Actually, isn't this argument in itself relativistic?

My conviction is that the first journey is to explore what it is to be human and that alone - if carried out properly - will refute the above statement. Indeed the Buddha taught a different way of viewing, a subtle way, which contrasts the conditioned sphere as subject to dukkha (suffering/unsatisfactoriness), anicca (impermanence/flux), anatta (not-self), with lokuttara dhamma - reality that transcends the conditioned, as recorded in Udana VIII.3: Nibbana Sutta

There is, bhikkhus, a not-born, a not-brought-to-being, a not-made, a not-conditioned. If, bhikkhus, there were no not-born, not-brought-to-being, not-made, not-conditioned, no escape would be discerned from what is born, brought-to-being, made, conditioned. But since there is a not-born, a not-brought-to-being, a not-made, a not-conditioned, therefore an escape is discerned from what is born, brought-to-being, made, conditioned.

In the appendix, there's similarly another bone of contention:

It is of course impossible to go back to a state of wholeness that may have been present before the split between East and West developed...

Personally, as someone who is half Caucasian and half Oriental, I would like to suggest this is possible, particularly if you are mixed race (East/West) and have appropriate karmic background and a supportive environment in which to develop ... as it happens, my research and professional work is in science and technology, whilst my personal interests are in religion and philosophy. :-)

And a bit further on he adds another 'of course':

Of course, we have to be cognisant of the teachings of the past, both Western and Eastern, but to imitate these teachings or to try to conform to them would have little value.

Is that so? The Buddha often used the exhortation of "Ehipassiko!" as an invitation to "Come and see!" which meant following Magga, the path leading ultimately to nibbana. I think if you were to ask a Bhikkhu (monk), they would say that the Buddha's teaching is as relevant today as it was 2500 years ago and the vinaya and suttas contain instructions that if followed can be found effective guidance for the Path.

There's a lot of attention to the divided nature of the world and critical issues, with implications for how one lives within society and not separate from it. That's evident even in monastic societies, e.g. the Buddhist Sangha and lay supporters are operating in a kind of ecosystem, supporting each other in complementary ways. However, at the same time, a bhikkhu formally renounces the world, society and all its endless comings and goings.

Something I found odd is that there's no discussion of ethics or values tied in with actions. Maybe I've missed something. But then, that aspect is not pronounced even in some Eastern traditions, with more emphasis on carrying out rituals and duty. However, it is fundamental to the Buddhist perspective - indeed, karma in the Buddhist sense is ethical, as the previous quote from the Dhammapada shows.

Nevertheless, I find it apt that he attributes great importance to how we cultivate views, how we think. I considered this issue as a prelude to some writing in the past and even took a quick look, as it happens, at the word 'rational,' but I had a narrower impression in my mind of its definition, viz as being fundamentally an activity of the brain, adding as a footnote the example of soldiers thinking/considering their battle plans. I was undoubtedly strongly influenced by lessons I received at school, which at the time of writing was not so long ago. However, Bohm conveys a deeper sense of 'measure' with a very nice discussion of how it underlies many words that have developed rather separate meanings. So I see my view was unnecessarily limited and perhaps a more accurate translation for the soldier's deliberations might be weighing up!

I considered these issues in a long series of reflections that eventually led to a book. The process of authoring that book was perhaps unusual - I would occasionally jot down on scraps of paper reflections and realisations. I had no intention at the start to write a book - I had only the will to write and reflect. Then later on there was the wish to order the notes; still later on the observation that there was sufficient to compose a book. It might appear that here was a book made up of tiny disparate fragments and thus fundamentally fragmented. But perhaps these fragments came out from the same whole and reflect that whole - unable to represent that whole in even a number of reflective writings, this was a process of unfolding over time. I wonder if merely the intention to understand was what Bohm refers to as the formative cause in this process, where the book is implicit from the intentions, or we might say that in the book there was the flow of conditions that had cause in intentions.

Notes on reading 'Wholeness and the implicate order': Introduction (3).

Still more notes in response to the intro (with more baggage that I bring). Although these are presented as notes jotted as I read, in practice, I usually tap away and later on do some tidying up. Most entries are prepared offline, on a handheld computer (HP Jornada 720, as usual :-) It allows for me to sit on a comfy chair, edit to my heart's content, whilst using only modest amounts of electricity (or battery power).

[p. xi] Thought and reality: for the Buddha, the reality he was primarily concerned with was dukkha, typically translated as 'suffering' or 'unsatisfactoriness' concerning which he taught a lot about subtle processes (e.g. the dependent chain of contact, feeling, perception and so on, yet the essence is expressed in a simple connection, in the first two verses of the Dhammapada:

1. Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.

2. Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow.

[p. xv - xviii] Bohm continues to summarise what lies in the chapters ahead, and comes to the later chapters. He is looking for a holistic theory that takes a wold view that includes consciousness and evidently is not content with the discontinuities at the sub-atomic level, in which results given are in terms of statistical aggregates. I find it interesting that research is oriented to concrete predictions, that are applicable: indeed even 25+ years later, even though physicists are well-versed in wave/particle duality, I tend to hear about funding for particle accelerators or measurements concerning sub-atomic particles, such as the MINOS project .

However, it may be that it's the level of aggregates where we need to work. Again, the Buddha gave many teachings on khandas, which translate as 'heaps' or 'aggregates', and the processes surrounding them. But, as expressed e.g. in the Parivatta Sutta, the key requirement is direct personal observation.

This is what I was trying to get at in my first foray in this area, when on the basis of little more than intuition and reading an article in Scientific American, I posted a perhaps overly bold (and, now it seems arrogant) message to Usenet, entitled 'Quantum Theory and Meditation,' especially as it was my first proper posting! I received a flame within 3 days and more vitriole followed, yet there also flowed some rich dialogue and friendship. The main point I was trying to make is that the most interesting results depend upon's one own observation and not that of any instruments set up to do the observations for you.

I touched on just special relativity at school, when I read and wrote an essay on some of Bertrand Russell's 'The ABC of Relativity,' but that's about 20 years ago and so I have very little detailed knowledge.

So that's my baggage, so I look forward to reading what Bohm presents concerning quantum theory and relativity, and his new approaches.

Already though the book conveys the sense that there's a lot of feeling one's way for research directions. There's a kind of sustained balance or tension between wholeness and division, to which I can relate to intuitively from the period I spent doing a bit of research in number theory, in that the object of my research was to elicit the integer values of the determinant of a certain kind of matrix, which is a problem worked mainly in the field of algebraic number theory, but actually the main result was in terms of densities, saying "most values of 'the right type' are integer values of the determinant," and thus a result of analytic number theory.

So what? Well, many mathematicians like simplicity, symmetry, wholeness and completeness, wherein they can find great beauty. For some, it evidently meant so much, among whom Kronecker is well known among mathematicians for his remark:

God created the integers, all else is the work of man.

But, on reading a summary of his life, it sounds that this strongly held belief led to immense friction.

This reminds me of the conflict in views dismissed by the Buddha in the Tittha Sutta in the Udana. All in all it's best that I have no expectation about any absolute answers concerning the cosmos; rather, my goal should remain to learn something that may improve my understanding of the composition of the Buddha's teachings.

Notes on reading 'Wholeness and the implicate order': Introduction.

A copy of Bohm's book (Routledge Classics 2002) arrived last week, conveniently just before I set off for a few days' holiday, staying at my father's house. It looks fascinating, so I'll jot down some responses, though at this stage I don't know how far I'll take this. In any case, I should say I can be a very slow reader!

The introduction develops some rationale for Bohm's new perspective, which appears to have emerged from deep personal observation, a state of absorption, as well as his considerable experience as a physicist.

When I thought of 'wholeness' and 'reality,' what came first to mind were the elements, especially depicted in the dhammakaya meditation tradition as a sphere - the four elements of earth, fire, air and water at cardinal points surrounding the space element at the centre and within that the element of consciousness.

Things can be observed at different levels, on different scales. My impression is that at any given scale, science is familiar with progress/movement through stages and has developed laws of motion that model this accurately. However, what laws or models are there for movements between scales? What about the flow between levels of abstraction? I raise this because in the bit of literature I encounter, there seem to be different models for macro and micro, so what is happening on the journey from macro to micro?

The tensions between/balance of structure and flow can be found in many disciplines. I came across it whilst doing research in the field of [concurrent] formal methods in computer science, in which mathematical techniques are used to specify and analyse software systems. You can make a crude division in terms of orientation: one is 'structure' based, viz the so-called 'axiomatic' techniques of VDM, Z etc.that are oriented around sets; the other is 'flow'-based, which is the emphasis in process algebras - how systems are defined in terms of the actions that can be carried out from state to state rather than descriptions of the states per se and hence action-based or operational semantics. This was brought home to me by a very valuable survey of formal methods by Jonathan Ostroff [Formal Methods for the Specification and Design of Real-Time Safety Critical Systems", The Journal of Systems and Software, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp 33-60, Elsevier Scienc Publishing Co. Inc., New-York, April 1992.]

[p. xii] The content of consciousness to be 'reality as a whole'? It's quite an assumption that there can be consciousness of whole reality - is that possible? I'm glad Bohm emphasises the importance of view - it affects everything!

In the introductory class on Buddhist texts that I attended in Spring, Richard Gombrich explained how the Buddha always taught about consciousness of... [and the teachings state that viññana (translated as consciousness) is one of the 5 heaps that are not part of deathless nibbana].

[p. xiii] I can see that this work is very much contraflow vs prevailing views that have become entrenched since the so-called 'Age of Reason.' A process-oriented view was something the Buddha expounded 2500 years ago, expressed succinctly in Pali as sabbe sankhara anicca... - "all conditioned formations are impermanent." The growing interest in the Buddha's teachings presents a veritable challenge to those who separate subject from object and take a materialistic view, which seems the predominant characteristic of European thought during the past few hundred years.

[p. xiv] A language with verbal emphasis. Again, the Buddha focused teachings a great deal on processes of mind: indeed the path to Enlightenment, the Eightfold Noble Path is expressed in terms of verbs, starting with 'Right View' and detailed modes of practice themselves as expressed in e.g. the Satipatthana Sutta describe exercises through the four modes of mindfuless (body, feelings, mind, mental qualities) - that are always working with change; magga is a flow/process of going through stages and something that may be worth noting is that what also occurs is a subtle progression in the nature of observation.

We can go further with emphasising verbs and one of the most striking example can be found in the Buddha's instruction to Bahiya (see previous entry), "in the seeing, just the seen; in the hearing, just the heard, ..." But this is for a very very advanced practitioner, on the brink of full final attainment. So conventionally the subject-object paradigm is often more practical ... I wonder what Bohm's 'rheomodes' is all about and how far this language can be taken...?

Tuning in to Dhamma with the 3D Crystal Radio

The Dhamma has been made clear in many ways by Master Gotama, as though he were righting the overthrown, revealing the hidden, showing the way to one who is lost, or holding up a lamp in the dark for those with eyesight to see forms...

[MN. 7, Vatthupama Sutta]

I'm going to try to develop further the ideas expressed in the previous entry and have a feeling that there could emerge a few strands of research.

There's no known contemporary written account of the Buddha's teachings - it was very much an oral traditon. So when we say the Buddha "taught," what gets recorded in written form as his "teachings" certainly loses a great deal. So this term probably needs lots of qualification along the lines of, say, the Buddha "transmitted" and it is worth paying special attention to the commonly used term applied to his disciples of "Savakas," the "listeners" or "receivers".

So, I'm taking 'Savakas' as my cue or prompt. My previous entry introduced briefly an analogy with holography. Just to use a bit more of the terminology, I was comparing the teachings with the interference patterns (hologram) produced on a special film when a light (called a reference beam) is shone at and interferes with light from the object to be 'recorded' (called the object beam). Shining the right light (the reference beam) at the hologram generates the light from the original object (i.e. the object beam) thereby providing a faithful 3D semblance. At least, that's my beginner's understanding of the process, just paraphrasing a Wikipedia article.

The main points I wish to highlight are that there are two components necessary to reproduce a faithful reproduction of the original whole - the appropriate recording (on film) and the right light shone onto the film.

Now to take the comparison further, it is as thought the Buddha possessed the reference beam and for someone to understand they too need the reference beam to reconstruct the original 3D object, the Dhamma object, as it were.

How do they generate the reference beam? In considering how the 'right light' (or reference beam) is produced by the mind, it's easier for me to try working with another analogy in which we may liken the mind somewhat to a crystal radio set. The crystal lies at the heart of the set because it acts as the detector, converting radio waves into sound that is meaningful to us.

The ability to interpret a signal depends upon the kind of crystal and also its size and quality. So it seems to me that it can be likened to the inner treasure of paramis, perfections accrued through meritorious actions over many lives, specially as a crystal itself takes a very long time to form. In practice, for radios, it's relatively easy to find the right kind of crystal that can do a good enough job, so the analogy is partial. However, we may also say that a radio's ability to tune in to different stations is similar to the way people can tune in to different kinds of teachings.

So what's the significance of the holography analogy? At the moment, what I'm presenting are probably just a few pieces of a jigsaw. Even so, I think some research could analyse the Buddha's teachings using the latest findings in physics and psychology to explore new kinds of mental maps. It would mean putting to one side many of the assumptions currently used in linguistic and textual analysis so there is space to allow for aspects hitherto considered irrelevant or dull, such as repetition. I think it would be instructive to provide different ways of looking at the Tipitaka through a variety of visual representations and mappings - linear and nonlinear.

One particular interest is abstraction or, looking the other way, expansion or reification: which teachings expand on others? Are these teachings characteristics of interference patterns? Is there something analogous to concentric rings to be drawn, where the inner core is the teaching at its most abstract, as in the Bahiya Sutta, and where the outer circles containing the inner core are supporting details, as in the Malunkyaputta sutta?

I think holography could be useful in casting light on how the mind perceives and processes. Also pertinent are studies in physics - particularly quantum theory - and the implication that these studies have on the study of mind.

I know little about holography or physics, let alone how they may relate to mind, so have just ordered Wholeness and the implicate order by David Bohm, and The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, which was a bundle offered by Amazon.

[Quote at beginning of article added on 4 December 2008]

Holographic teachings from the Buddha?

When you read the texts that relate the teachings of the Buddha, you find some very short passages. They can seem fragmentary and it can be tempting to doubt their authenticity. However, I've long felt that the Buddha taught very precisely to his audience knowing that they could tune in so effectively that a few choice words sufficed to prompt progress to Enlightenment, whereas if read conventionally out of context they would appear odd and make little impact. So I wrote a short essay [with a long title of]: Observations on how kamma affects listeners and its implication for interpreting the Buddha's teachings.

In that essay I thought intuitively of holography as a good analogy for how one can recover the whole from fragments: just as a certain beam of light shone against the fringe pattern on a photographic film can reconstruct a faithful 3D representation of the original object, so the Buddha knew that the listener could penetrate the specially recorded words of the Dhamma teachings and reconstruct the essence of Enlightenment by tuning in (or 'shining the right beam').

Sorry if this is expressed clumsily.