Issue #61 ~ A reflection by Vlatko Vedral on Buddhist emptiness, causality and relativity, and what quantum physics might gain by taking relational thinking further.
"In the joint state, both options are present simultaneously, the one where the cat is dead and you see that the cat is dead and the other one where the cat is alive and you see it so". Who is the 'you' ? My intuition is that entanglement has a role to play in the fundamental nature of things and their inherent non-self-existence. But we (physicists) tend to focus more on the matter side, and not the mind side. Should we not also investigate this entanglement at the mind level as mind is also 'composed' of objects or so they appears so? In that sense, emptiness has a more profound meaning I believe.
The Wikipedia article is terrible, of course, it's Wikipedia. Theyt4eresa@gmail.com blather about nihilism. This is precisely why, intellectually speaking, you cannot separate shunyata from karuna: shunyata is the antidote for substantialism and karuna is the antidote for nihilism. But Ultimate Bodhicitta cannot be an object of consciousness because it is not dependantly originating; it is "empty of other", empty of what it is not. But it cannot be separated from its essence - primordial clarity, nature - spontaneous self-perfected, or energy - infinite compassion. When actualize in a Buddha, these manifest as the three kayas, Dharmakaya, Samboghakaya, and Nirmanakaya. This is the Shentong position held by the Jonangpas and it is true. Everything else is just mental gymnastics meant to help midstream gain an experiential understanding of this truth.
Very nice development, Vlatko. Very clear on a difficult subject, although I fear unfortunately no one will understand my comment. Let's go ahead anyway. In your last paragraph, you approach the theory of the complex dimension that I develop. This dimension is indeed the superimposition of a very large number of entanglements, each creating at its own level of reality and producing its own particular temporal rhythm. In this complex dimension, your problem of causality is resolved as follows: a level of complexity has two faces, one constitutive (the possible states) where the elements have no meaning other than through their external relations, the other global (the entanglement) which has an absolute meaning (but inseparable from its constitution). In this way, indeterminism is reconciled with determinism in a common (complex) reality. How can we mathematically translate the two faces of a level of complexity? My hypothesis is that the global face is the stable configuration of the possible states of the constitution. Probabilities that are still very real, but temporarily stuck in a totality, which is perhaps the only thing that can be called substance.
Talking about shunyata as you are doing here is not at all valid, and I realize you are using it analogously/metaphorically. The historical Buddha was a pragmatist, in the sense, his emphasis was on eliminating suffering in mind streams, not at all on expounding on the Nature of reality. Herbert Gunther has a nice discussion of Bodhicitta, the union of shunyata - emptiness, and karuna - compassion, in Chapter 5 of The Dawn of Tantra.
But perhaps you would find the French Continentalist, Gilbert Simondon and his ontology of information even more stimulating.
This is a stimulating and beautifully written reflection, and it resonates strongly with recent attempts in quantum foundations to take relationality seriously without collapsing into subjectivism. Where your essay is especially provocative is in pushing relativity beyond states and observables toward entanglement itself and even, tentatively, the laws of physics. One possible way to carry this intuition further—while retaining quantitative traction—is to treat “emptiness” not as a generalized relativism but as a structural constraint: namely, that no description of appearance, classicality, or law is invariant under arbitrary decompositions of the world. In such a view, definiteness (of states, records, or laws) arises only where redundancy and interface stability obtain, and “ultimate” descriptions fail not metaphysically but operationally. Seen this way, physics may not need to quantise emptiness itself, yet it can converge on its logic by identifying precisely where and why decomposition-independent essences never appear.
Partly—but it’s stricter than Simondon. This isn’t a theory of individuation so much as a constraint: no states, records, or laws are decomposition-invariant. “Emptiness” names that operational non-closure, not a process metaphysics.
I’m not using it as a technical group-theory term. I just mean: does a description stay the same if you change how you carve the world up into parts?
By “decomposition” I mean things like how you split a system into subsystems, where you draw the observer–environment boundary, or what level of coarse-graining you use. A description would be decomposition-invariant if it stayed well-defined and unchanged no matter how you made those choices.
The point is that most things we treat as definite—states, classical records, even effective laws—don’t actually have that property. Their definiteness depends on particular, stable ways of slicing the world, usually supported by redundancy and robust interfaces.
So when I use “emptiness,” I’m not making a metaphysical claim. I’m pointing to an operational fact: there are no decomposition-independent essences. Physics has plenty of structure, but it doesn’t close under arbitrary ways of dividing the world—and that limitation is doing real conceptual work here.
Why is the sun emitting photons?
The sun is made of atoms. Atoms are not made of photons?
A photon turned into an negatively charged particle turns into an electron?
A photon turned into a positively charged particle turns into a proton?
In Beta decay they turn back into photons?
"In the joint state, both options are present simultaneously, the one where the cat is dead and you see that the cat is dead and the other one where the cat is alive and you see it so". Who is the 'you' ? My intuition is that entanglement has a role to play in the fundamental nature of things and their inherent non-self-existence. But we (physicists) tend to focus more on the matter side, and not the mind side. Should we not also investigate this entanglement at the mind level as mind is also 'composed' of objects or so they appears so? In that sense, emptiness has a more profound meaning I believe.
The Wikipedia article is terrible, of course, it's Wikipedia. Theyt4eresa@gmail.com blather about nihilism. This is precisely why, intellectually speaking, you cannot separate shunyata from karuna: shunyata is the antidote for substantialism and karuna is the antidote for nihilism. But Ultimate Bodhicitta cannot be an object of consciousness because it is not dependantly originating; it is "empty of other", empty of what it is not. But it cannot be separated from its essence - primordial clarity, nature - spontaneous self-perfected, or energy - infinite compassion. When actualize in a Buddha, these manifest as the three kayas, Dharmakaya, Samboghakaya, and Nirmanakaya. This is the Shentong position held by the Jonangpas and it is true. Everything else is just mental gymnastics meant to help midstream gain an experiential understanding of this truth.
Very nice development, Vlatko. Very clear on a difficult subject, although I fear unfortunately no one will understand my comment. Let's go ahead anyway. In your last paragraph, you approach the theory of the complex dimension that I develop. This dimension is indeed the superimposition of a very large number of entanglements, each creating at its own level of reality and producing its own particular temporal rhythm. In this complex dimension, your problem of causality is resolved as follows: a level of complexity has two faces, one constitutive (the possible states) where the elements have no meaning other than through their external relations, the other global (the entanglement) which has an absolute meaning (but inseparable from its constitution). In this way, indeterminism is reconciled with determinism in a common (complex) reality. How can we mathematically translate the two faces of a level of complexity? My hypothesis is that the global face is the stable configuration of the possible states of the constitution. Probabilities that are still very real, but temporarily stuck in a totality, which is perhaps the only thing that can be called substance.
Talking about shunyata as you are doing here is not at all valid, and I realize you are using it analogously/metaphorically. The historical Buddha was a pragmatist, in the sense, his emphasis was on eliminating suffering in mind streams, not at all on expounding on the Nature of reality. Herbert Gunther has a nice discussion of Bodhicitta, the union of shunyata - emptiness, and karuna - compassion, in Chapter 5 of The Dawn of Tantra.
But perhaps you would find the French Continentalist, Gilbert Simondon and his ontology of information even more stimulating.
Simondon_Gilbert_1964_1992_The_Genesis_of_the_Individual.pdf https://share.google/viMwZrTp1lUuktJ6e
See also
Gilbert Simondon and the Process of Individuation | Epoché Magazine https://share.google/FKYwWZN8wotDESNeS
This is a stimulating and beautifully written reflection, and it resonates strongly with recent attempts in quantum foundations to take relationality seriously without collapsing into subjectivism. Where your essay is especially provocative is in pushing relativity beyond states and observables toward entanglement itself and even, tentatively, the laws of physics. One possible way to carry this intuition further—while retaining quantitative traction—is to treat “emptiness” not as a generalized relativism but as a structural constraint: namely, that no description of appearance, classicality, or law is invariant under arbitrary decompositions of the world. In such a view, definiteness (of states, records, or laws) arises only where redundancy and interface stability obtain, and “ultimate” descriptions fail not metaphysically but operationally. Seen this way, physics may not need to quantise emptiness itself, yet it can converge on its logic by identifying precisely where and why decomposition-independent essences never appear.
Gilbert Simondon's Process of Individuation, in other words.
Partly—but it’s stricter than Simondon. This isn’t a theory of individuation so much as a constraint: no states, records, or laws are decomposition-invariant. “Emptiness” names that operational non-closure, not a process metaphysics.
How are you using this term, decomposition invariance? Is it a group theory term I am unfamiliar with?
I’m not using it as a technical group-theory term. I just mean: does a description stay the same if you change how you carve the world up into parts?
By “decomposition” I mean things like how you split a system into subsystems, where you draw the observer–environment boundary, or what level of coarse-graining you use. A description would be decomposition-invariant if it stayed well-defined and unchanged no matter how you made those choices.
The point is that most things we treat as definite—states, classical records, even effective laws—don’t actually have that property. Their definiteness depends on particular, stable ways of slicing the world, usually supported by redundancy and robust interfaces.
So when I use “emptiness,” I’m not making a metaphysical claim. I’m pointing to an operational fact: there are no decomposition-independent essences. Physics has plenty of structure, but it doesn’t close under arbitrary ways of dividing the world—and that limitation is doing real conceptual work here.