I'm currently editing that series of posts I've called ZEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS. It dawned on me that I hadn't made it clear why I started writing it in the first place, so here's how it begins now:What can a Zen practioner gain from Quantum Mechanics? Quite a lot, I think, because it can help you get a grasp of how the mind works and therefore better understand what the correct Zen practice should be, which to me is perhaps the most important question Zen needs to answer nowadays since there're at least two different ways of doing zazen among Zen practioners; as a result, they achieve two different states of mind, but no one seems to care. Now you can see why I called this series of posts ZEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS, not vice versa, although my own interpretation of Quantum Mechanics -- QM from my perspective -- comes first of course. In a word, I've found a perspective from which, in my view, (almost) everything falls into place and from which it's easy for me to explain what I mean.

HE THINGS THAT THE FUTURE BELONGS TO ZEN AND EXPLAINS WHY

Mechanized minds: AI's hidden impact on human thought - Big Think
https://bigthink.com/thinking/the-mechanized-mind-ais-hidden-impact-on-human-thought/

Wow, a wonderful technique

I'd never been interested in Stoicism, but I recently came across this:

If you're fond of a jug, say, 'This is a jug that I'm fond of,' an then, if it gets broken, you won't be upset. If you kiss your child or your wife, say to yourself that it is a human being that you're kissing; and then, if one of them should die, you won't be upsetting.
                                   Epictetus

And it seems to work even when it comes to kissing yourself. 

ZEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS - 6

ONE THING I WANT TO WARN YOU ABOUT


I now dwell on our entanglement with environment and what it takes to be unentangled; and for that I start with the most banal kind of it: our entanglement with material things. In fact, very often it's the main obstacle to enlightenment since for many material things are not only the main source of their self-worth but even part of their identity. (In this regard, the walking meditation described in this blog* can really help: when you move the earth with your legs, everything on it comes and goes except you.)

Then the question you have to answer is this: how can you make sure that your possessions will always remain just a tool, not an emotional entity?

To answer this, we have a new perspective: the idea that freedom means being unentangled. It's not an abstraction; it's your practice and way of living; it's freedom from and freedom to at the same time. You may not even realise how unusual this perspective is for the majority (at least these days, people in either the East or the West simply can't afford the luxury of having such a lifestyle). Exploring it, you enter uncharted territory so don't be surprised if you find something that defies common sense and would never occur to a 'normal' person. For example, does wealth always make us free? (Note that once we start to analyse our relationship with wealth, it's not only about things but also people since wealth is a social phenomenon.)


One of the reasons why I bring up this topic is because I want to worn you that if you make decisions based on Zen intuition as I describe it,** you'll wind up in a wonderful but unstable state (the state is really wonderful: I'm almost 60, but I still feel free and happy like a teenager skipping school).


As far as I'm concerned, following this path, I did quite well in an unstable and even chaotic environment -- in Bulgaria in the 1990s -- at least much better than the majority that would stick to their permanent jobs; for them, it was a disaster. There was absolutely no security, but on the flipside, there were a lot of opportunities. I was pretty good at spotting and taking advantage of opportunities but bad at the next stage that many believe busyness is abot: creating a permanent state of codependency with clients -- a sort of symbiosis -- creating bonds, in a world. The former and the later are of absolutely different nature and require completely different skills. And then when I came to Europe (Bulgaria wasn't in the EU at the time), I found a completely different environment: that they'd traded opportunities for security and didn't realise that the former is always at the expense of the later.


And perhaps one of the most surprising things I've discovered is the fact that if you think of freedom as being unentangled, then wealth makes you free only to a certain point, but then the richer you get, the more you get entangled with others if only because you need to protect your possessions -- it's up to you to prove me wrong -- although investing money into realising your ideas can be a solution, of course.

In this view, it's okay to be a hunter and go hunting every day, but for some reason it always tends to end up in some stable state of codependency. Psychologists even say that codependency is a sign of maturity, but I doubt that 'maturity' is the right term here. (I once read a Zen master describing his teaching experience; he says that enlightenment is hardest to achieve for emotional women and psychologists -- perhaps because they can't imagine what it's like to be unentangled.) Stuart Kauffman, I already mentioned him,*** in his At Home In the Universe: the Search for the Laws of Self- Organisation and Completely claims that complex systems, including living organisms, naturally tend to evolve to thrive right on the edge of chaos -- the ordered state is too rigid, the chaotic, well, too chaotic -- one must add if they're independent players of course.

.

And of course the question arises: can such unentangled individuals unite together to cary out projects, especially long-term ones, to defend themselves, to cooperate in a word? I bet they can, which for many may be quite revolutionary: Freud, for instance, believed that the only force that could unite us into society was Eros; I mean his division of human instincts into Eros and Thanatos is wrong. Because there're indeed two tendencies, but they're: a tendency to merge and a tendency to detach. Once you start thinking in these terms, everything falls into place.

To be continued

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* https://0zen1.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-main-trick-walking-zazen_22.html
** https://0zen1.blogspot.com/search/label/intuition
*** https://0zen1.blogspot.com/2024/06/zen-from-perspective-of-quantum.html

ZEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS - 5

Free Will - 2

So I think of free will as the ability to make choices undetermined by past events; I reckon it's real and in my previous post I explained how it works, but of course there's no way for me to prove that I'm right. The reason I can't prove it is that being in this state of mind when time flows from the future to the past, i.e. seeing the world from the prospective of the centre of the universe,* is a subjective experience by definition since in this state you're on your own.

Now remember Waugh's model:**  there're two different frames of reference/viewpoints: the centre of the universe viewpoint, and the viewpoint of humans from an awkward position in the universe. Relativity is our viewpoint, while Quantum Mechanics is Nature's viewpoint from the centre of the universe. The universe, and time in particular, is perceived differently from each viewpoint, and it's precisely this which allows the reconciliation between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

We can also add that it's precisely this which makes free will possible. So the reason I can't prove that it's sometimes possible to make decisions undetermined by the past -- actually, it's even a more general problem, for example, many feel that Determinism is wrong, but they just can't prove it -- is because General Relativity doesn't emerge from Quantum Mechanics, but they both emerge from something more general instead (it sounds strange that we're considering the emergence of Possibilities which themselves by definition exist in the future). The Crystallizing Block Universe theory*** makes this even clearer: there're two regiments which overlap in the present. 

In other words, there're things in the universe which cannot be provided empirically by definition, and will always be a matter of our own individual subjective experiences and, as a result, believes. I think it's no coincidence that many physics these days are interested in Buddhism and Zen in particular.

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*The Walking Zen - Zen without a Teacher: ZEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS - 1
https://0zen1.blogspot.com/2024/06/zen-from-perspective-of-quantum.html

**RRCAT Physicist claims that physics and cosmology are both in crisis because of writing model of universe
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rrcat-physicist-claims-physics-cosmology-033021388.html

***What is time? An astronomer explains the search to find its origin
https://www.astronomy.com/science/what-is-time-an-astronomer-explains-the-search-to-find-its-origins/

***The Crystallising Universe
https://plus.maths.org/content/crystallising-universe

ZEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS - 4

 Free Will - 1

As is known, determinism leaves no room for free will since in a completely deterministic world only one outcome is possible. Now some rekcon, including myself, that free will can emerge from the nature of the quantum world. However, trying to explain free will by probabilistic outcomes of wave function collapse may not be a solution if only because these outcomes are always random and we can't control or influence them.
In the long terms, we can't claim that we're responsible for our actions in either case: neither if our decisions are entirely predetermined, nor if they're a matter of random quantum chance.

Instead, let's remember that wave functions exist in the Possible* -- you already know which interpretations of quantum mechanics I like and adhere to**  -- which means that their present state is not determined by the past. Possibles exist in the future and from there affect the present -- that's what I mean by the oppositely directed arrow of time in this blog.*** As I read in one forum, 'We humans live embedded in the constraints of space and time, but wave functions don't'

When you're in a state like a wave function (i.e. unentangled or, in other words, independent), you're free from your past (from your karma) and guided by your intuition (the anticipation of the future)
which tells you what you should do in the long run to maintain this state of mind -- and there's nothing extraordinarily or mystical about it; it's just a natural result of being independent -- that's what I call Zen intuition.****

And the choice you have to make is always a binary one: whether to remain independent and enjoy the benefits of being like a wave function, such as to continue to be able to make a choice, or to merge with something and become part of it.

To make it clear, if, for example, you start to ponder what is best thing to swap your independence for, then it's no longer a matter of free will since you've already made your choice. Free will is relevant to those who're unentangled, and from their perspective, the choice is always between not merging and merging; the only exception to this rule is perhaps if you're entangled but decided to break the ties.


On top of that, there's an opinion among physicists that entanglement may be the cause of existence of the arrow of time. What then does it mean to be unentangled? In any case, in this state, you're absolutely free, independent to such an extent that you're on your own.

__________________________

*A Hypothesis: Res Potentia and Res Extensa Linked By Merriment
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2011/01/03/132607500/an-hypothesis-res-potentia-and-res-extensa-linked-by-measurement

*Is The Possible Ontologically Real?
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2012/01/09/144899020/is-the-possible-ontologically-real

** The Walking Zen - Zen without a Teacher: ZEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS - 1
https://0zen1.blogspot.com/2024/06/zen-from-perspective-of-quantum.html

*** https://0zen1.blogspot.com/search/label/time

**** The Walking Zen - Zen without a Teacher: intuition
https://0zen1.blogspot.com/search/label/intuition

To be continued 

ZEN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS - 3

As mentioned,  there're two perspectives from which you can see the world. From one perspective,  the reference point is somewhere outside you, and you're on the periphery. From the other perspective, the reference point is you, and you're the centre of the universe.

So, what happens when, during zazen, for example, you lose the centre and a thought comes into your mind? You become entangled, in quantum sence, with someone or something. It always drains your energy, and sometimes you may even feel like you've lost something: a manipulator can make you doubt your plans and ambitions and cause the feeling that some part of you has been taken away. But in fact, you've lost nothing but only gained, and all you have to do is cut off these new ties to become independent/unentangled again -- this is a well-known Zen wisdom and now you can see why it works.

What I'm saying is that some part of your potential has turned into these new ties, and these are the same ties which are responsible for 'spooky action at a distance'; the process is quite reversible, and there's no any loss of information in this case. 

To be continued.