Physics and Buddhism: Devas, what could they be?

The Watercooler
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Another Physics and Buddhism post here, this time, investigating devas! There are nine parts, just click on part 1 to get the links to the rest. Enjoy reading and commenting!

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I really appreciate commentary on taboo Buddhist topics.

I hadn’t known of the Vimanavatthu. On Sutta Central, it looks like about a fourth of those texts have been translated into English. I fully understand how massive of an undertaking translation is, but, respectfully, I’ve thought about learning Pali to have access to every EBT.

Regarding the existence of devas, the most compelling arguments I’ve heard—both of which are mentioned in your essay—were based on theories of higher dimensions and of the multiverse. Mathematically, both are within the realm of plausibility, and could facilitate the existence of such beings.

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Devas, what could they be?

Why, they’re devas, of course!

When you explain a why you have to be in some framework that you allow something to be true, otherwise you’re perpetually asking ‘why?’…
In the early level, one of the things you’ll just have to take as an element in the world, is the existence of magnetic repulsion. I can’t explain that attraction in terms of anything else that’s familiar to you. If we say ‘magnets attract like as if they were connected by rubber bands’ I would be cheating you! Because they’re not connected by rubber bands. You’d soon ask me about the nature of the bands and then I’d really be in trouble. And secondly, if you were curious enough, you’d ask me why rubber bands tend to pull back together again and I’d end up having to explain that in terms of electrical and magnetic forces. … So, I’m not going to be able to give you an answer as to why magnets attract each other, except to tell you that they do.
~ Richard Feynman

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As a general observation, there is still a great deal about the universe that is not known or understood.

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Just wanting to list down the people I get to know who knows both physics and Buddhism well.

@yeshe.tenley @bran @mikenz66

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Not all the scientific community accepts the existence of dark matter. Indeed very recent research by a Canadian professor refutes it very convincingly

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Few questions for the experts

We hear about this ‘hard problem of consciousness’ , are there any hard problems about science that is want of understanding?

Is there a certain serendipitous aspect to the strides made by science so far?

This one is a bit more cheeky

Wouldn’t you say that you have become good at what you are doing like anyone else who gets deeply involved in their art? more so than having a deep understanding of what you are doing?

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Fwiw, I think @Soren is physicist as well? As for my understanding, unfortunately I like to think that I have an inkling for what I don’t know about these subjects rather than any real knowledge :joy: :pray:

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There’s a common saying: “The weather has a mind of its own”. And what the Principle of Computational Equivalence tells us is that, yes, fluid dynamics in the atmosphere—and all the swirling patterns associated with it—are examples of computation that are just as sophisticated as those associated with human minds.

But, OK, so there’s a sense in which the weather “has a mind of its own”. But it’s definitely not a “human-like mind”. Yes, the weather does sophisticated computations. But there’s no obvious way to attribute to those computations the purposes and intentions and other typical features of how we describe what goes on in a human mind. So if indeed we’re going to talk about the weather as being an intelligence, for us humans we have to consider it an “alien intelligence”.

…

We can imagine our rulial particles—or “robust concepts”—being able to reach a certain distance in rulial space. The human idea of “excitement” might for example be able to reach the place in rulial space where we’d find the minds of dogs. But what about the weather, for example? Well, as an alien intelligence, it’s presumably much further away in rulial space—and, anthropomorphize it as we might—it’s not clear what its notion of “excitement” would be.

It’s an often-asked question why—with our spacecraft and radio telescopes and everything else—we haven’t ever run across what we consider to be “naturally occurring” alien intelligences. In the past we might have imagined that the answer is that there just isn’t anything like “intelligence” (outside of us humans) to be found in any part of the universe that we can probe. But the Principle of Computational Equivalence says that’s fundamentally not true, and that in fact “abstract intelligence” is thoroughly ubiquitous among systems with all but the most obviously simple behavior.

So to “find” alien intelligence it’s not that we need a more powerful radio telescope (or a better spacecraft) that can reach further in physical space. Rather, the issue is to be able to reach far enough in rulial space. Or, put another way, even if we view the weather as “having a mind of its own”, the rulial distance between “its mind” and our human minds may be too great for us to be able to “understand” and “communicate with it”.

Stephen Wolfram on his ideas of the ruliad and rulial space and the weather (devas) as an “alien”/suprahuman intelligence/mind.

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Namo Buddhaya!

I think that learning about diffraction of light is a good way to show the realists that their model is incomplete because one can show what they think is impossible and essentially a miracle to them.

This is important because consider this.

One is 7 years old, then asks around ‘what after death?’

To him Adult1 (annihilationist/direct or indirect realist) explains

There is ‘nothing’ after death, like before you were born. You are looking through your eye as if looking through a window or looking at a screen. Death is your annihilation and the world will change to be without you. Miracles are impossible.

Whereas Adult2 (Eternalist/mind-only) explains

There is another life after death. You are not the body. Your body ages but not the knower, the seer, it is eternal & doesn’t age, and the after death will be as the after birth. Miracles are possible.

Suppose the child doesn’t know who to place confidence in.

But he sets up the basic qm experiments, which he can do at home

And reads up on what other people have set up

then he will be able to show the general model of adult1 as less complete than that of adult2 and so he should place confidence in that adult2 for the time being.

Therefore eternalism is rather nasty and it will take dependent origination to disprove adult2’s general model.

When I think about the relevant physics pertaining exclusively to Buddhism, rather than say both buddhism & eternalist mind models, there is no exclusive correlation that i can see. There might be but i can’t see any now.

It is because buddhism goes way further in adding dependent origination contradicting ‘eternal seer’ and further proclaiming a truth & possibility of a principial not coming into play of DO as cessation-extinguishment.

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Yes, I am. I’ll take a look at the article, @NgXinZhao, it looks quite interesting.

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See SN 32 for the ‘Linked Discourses on Cloud Gods’ :nerd_face:

Excerpt from SN 32.53:

“Mendicant, there are what are called gods of the cool clouds. Sometimes they think: ‘Why don’t we revel in our own kind of enjoyment?’ Then, in accordance with their wish, it becomes cool.

The important thing here is that we can have mudita for any type of weather! When it gets cold, wow, the cool cloud devas must be really enjoying themselves! :cloud: :pray: Sadhu! :smiley: :cloud:

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