Here, there and everywhere.

Illusion?

I confess: For a long time I’ve been fascinated with how things work, particularly how our mind works and how, if possible, to explain this by merging spirituality with science, which introduces this post. 

Some time ago, while visiting the eye doctor, we had a conversation about how sight functions in the brain. I had read that the entire world is actually seen upside down, projected onto the primary visual cortex at the back of the brain, and then inverted right side up again. Not only that, our brain turns what is otherwise a 2-dimensional image into a 3-dimensional one. 

In effect, never suspecting, what we are “seeing” is a hologram. And then I began to patch together some otherwise seemingly disparate pieces of information I had come upon over the years. The first of these pieces was from The Śūraṅgama Sūtra—“All things in all worlds are the wondrous, fundamental, enlightened, luminous mind that understands, and that this mind, pure, all-pervading, and perfect, contains the entire universe...it is everlasting and does not perish.”

Then there was this from The Dalai Lama: On Buddha Nature…“Every sentient being—even insects—have Buddha nature. The seed of Buddha means consciousness, the cognitive power—the seed of enlightenment. That’s from Buddha’s viewpoint. All these destructive things can be removed from the mind, so, therefore, there’s no reason to believe some sentient being cannot become Buddha. So every sentient being has that seed.”

Don’t see the connection yet? For the defining link, watch this video concerning a debate within the world of physics about the seeming conflict between General Relativity (held by Steven Hawkings), Quantum Mechanics (argued by Leonard Susskind) and resolved by Argentinian theoretical physicist Juan Martín Maldacena. 

The topic of debate? The holographic principle. And while you are watching, bear in mind some fundamental Buddhist principles which overlay the discussion: Dependent Origination, The ego—the illusion of the true Self and the reality of the Self, and The One Mind (non-dual). 

If you’re good at connecting dots, given a proper grasp of these fundamental Buddhist principles, and digesting the basic physics discussed, I suspect you might come to understand the essence of The Śūraṅgama Sūtra: We exist within The One Mind as a holographic projection of the truth that lies beyond articulation. 

“Things are not what they seem; nor are they otherwise.”—The Śūraṅgama Sūtra