SCIENTIFIC AND BUDDHIST VIEWS OF ENERGY

Abstract

In 2004 Alan Wallace presented a Keynote Address at the ISSSEEM Fourteenth Annual Conference titled, "Scientific and Contemplative Views of Energy." This article addresses topics included in that address: A discussion is made of (1) energy as a primary attribute of the objective, physical world, (2) energy as a secondary attribute of the subjective, sensory world, and (3) a nondual contemplative view of energy in the world of experience. Included are explicit references to ways the body-mind can be healed and balanced energetically, suggesting a complementary relation berween scientific and contemplative views of energy. A brief overview of the history of modern scientific concepts of energy, beginning with the debate berween Newton and Leibniz is addressed and the evolution of these concepts through Helmholtz, Maxwell, Michelson and Morley, Einstein, and Feynman, are traced. Readers will see how the concept of energy has slipped from the status of a real substance in objective space to a mathematical abstraction. But it remains an elusive concept that is central to the physicists' view of the origins and nature of the cosmos as a whole. Science, since the time of the absolute Cartesian split berween subject and object, has sought to understand the nature of the real world, existing independently of human experience, beyond the "veil of appearances. The implication is that subjective experiences of all kinds, including experiences of subtle energies, are secondary to, and derivative of, objective, physical processes. This metaphysical assumption has led to a radical imbalance berween scientific knowledge of the physical world and of subjective experience, including the nature of consciousness itself. Many contemplative traditions of the world, including Buddhism, have sought to understand a unified world of experience, which includes a spectrum of subjective and objective phenomena, with no absolute division within this spectrum. Within this world of experience emerged the Greek concept of pneuma, Indian prana, Tibetan loong, Chinese qi, Japanese ki, and Native American mana in their respective medical traditions, all of which are present in the body and the environment at large. Such intersubjective energy, like the energy of the physicists, is thought ro underlie, empower, and regulate all physical and mental phenomena. Practical applications have been found for these theories of energy in the field of healing and balancing both the body and mind. The bodymind effects of the meditative refinement of attention in the Buddhist tradition are noted, with explanation on how it is related to the experienced subtle energies within the body and their relation to the mind.