Perspectives from Quantum Physics, Zen and Daoism
What is reality? As a painter, I meet a small version of that question whenever a few marks begin to suggest a figure or a landscape. The paper has not changed, yet what I see in it can shift. That experience makes me curious about the larger questions raised by science and philosophy.
My background is in the humanities, rather than the natural sciences. I approach quantum physics, Zen Buddhism and Daoism from that position. They use different methods and address different problems: experimental prediction, religious practice and philosophical inquiry cannot simply be exchanged for one another. What interests me is where a comparison helps me look more carefully.
Superposition is one example that needs care. A quantum state can be expressed as a combination of basis states, with probability amplitudes that can interfere. A spinning coin does not demonstrate this: uncertainty about its result is not the same as quantum coherence [1]. Nor does “observation” require a conscious person looking at an object. These distinctions matter if the comparison is to be useful.
What Is Reality?
Rather than asking where the three traditions converge, I want to consider a few questions they bring into focus. Similar words can conceal quite different meanings.
1. Interconnectedness of All Things
Entanglement concerns correlations in a joint quantum state. Experiments testing Bell inequalities show that these correlations cannot be explained by certain local hidden-variable models [2]. This is a precise physical result. Buddhist dependent arising and Daoist accounts of relationships belong to other kinds of inquiry. They can encourage me to question an isolated view of things, but entanglement does not establish that everything is spiritually connected.
2. Appearance and Reality
A painting makes the gap between appearance and interpretation easy to notice. Zen practice can also question the concepts through which we encounter experience. The opening of the Dao De Jing unsettles our confidence in names [3]. Quantum theory challenges familiar physical pictures, but calling the material world an “illusion” would be a much broader claim than these observations support.
3. Embrace of Paradox
A koan may interrupt habitual answers; a Daoist passage may reverse an expectation about strength or usefulness. A surprising experimental result in physics must still be described and tested consistently. I find the different ways of meeting a difficulty interesting, without assuming that a koan and a physical experiment do the same work.
4. Non-Dualism
Zen discussions of non-duality question deeply held divisions such as self and other. Daoist thought often treats opposites through their relationships. Neither gives a shortcut to understanding wave–particle behaviour. For my work, the useful question is more immediate: when I separate figure from ground, what do I overlook in their relationship?
5. Certainty and Uncertainty
The uncertainty principle sets a limit on the simultaneous sharpness of certain pairs of physical quantities, such as position and momentum [4]. It is not a claim that only the present exists. The attention cultivated in meditation is a different matter. Both subjects invite care with the word “certainty,” but for different reasons.
6. The Limitations of Language and Concepts
The Dao De Jing begins by questioning what can be captured in naming [3]. Zen teachings likewise caution against mistaking a verbal account for practice. Physics uses mathematical descriptions that everyday images only partly convey. As a painter, I recognise the temptation to let an explanation stand in for the experience it describes.
The dark forms in this blue painting can suggest creatures, movement or something less easily named. I do not need to settle on one reading. That openness belongs to the painting and to looking; it is not evidence of a quantum process.
The Limits of Perception and the Boundaries of Reality
Our senses give us access to the world, but seeing also involves interpretation. The optical examples below make that ordinary fact visible. In the grid, dark spots may seem to appear between the white dots. Beside it, the arrowheads alter how we judge the horizontal lines. Measuring the image offers a check on the impression.
Such examples do not prove that nothing is real. They show why an immediate impression can be worth examining. I find that a useful reminder when I look at my own pictures: the first reading need not be the last.
What Is Nothingness?
“Nothingness” becomes especially misleading when it is used as a single word for three different ideas: a physical vacuum, Buddhist emptiness and Daoist non-being. Their differences deserve as much attention as their apparent similarities.
1. A Vacuum Is a Physical State
In quantum field theory, the vacuum is a lowest-energy state of the fields under consideration [5]. It is part of a physical theory, not the absence of every possible thing. Describing it as a source from which anything can emerge risks turning a technical concept into a creation story. It is not equivalent to Buddhist emptiness.
2. Nothingness and Non-Being
In Buddhist usage, śūnyatā, or emptiness, concerns the lack of independent, inherent existence. It does not mean that ordinary things simply vanish. The Heart Sutra brings form and emptiness into a close relationship [6]. In the Dao De Jing, you (有, presence or being) and wu (無, absence or non-being) are explored through examples such as a vessel whose hollow space makes it useful [3].
3. What an Empty Space Allows
The vessel is the comparison I can bring most directly to painting. A stroke changes the space around it; an unmarked area changes how a stroke is felt. Calling that space “active” is a way of describing a pictorial relationship. It does not turn the paper into a quantum vacuum or make the painting an illustration of Buddhist doctrine.
4. Letting Go of a Fixed Reading
The religious question of liberation is different from a physical account of matter. In my own work, I can speak more modestly about letting go of a fixed idea of what the image must become. My reflections on wu wei belong here: how much should I direct a painting, and when does further intervention begin to work against it?
5. The Paradox of a Full Emptiness
An image can feel full while leaving much unsaid. The pale and dark fragments in the final blue work depend on the field between them. “Nothingness” is a productive question for me when it brings attention back to such relationships. It becomes less useful when it is asked to explain everything.
These comparisons leave me with a reason to keep looking, rather than a single account of reality. How much of what I see belongs to the marks, and how much do I bring to them?
For another personal exploration of these questions, see Donald S. Yarab’s Reflection on the Infinite Self: Exploring the Realities of the Multiverse at Northcoast Antiquarian. I offer it as a fellow blogger’s reflection, rather than a scientific source for the comparisons above.
Footnotes
[1] IBM Quantum Learning: Superposition; National Academies: Quantum Computing—Progress and Prospects, chapter 2. Probability amplitudes, coherence and interference distinguish a superposition from ordinary uncertainty about a coin.
[2] Nobel Prize in Physics 2022: experiments with entangled photons and violations of Bell inequalities.
[3] Dao De Jing, especially chapters 1 (naming), 11 (the usefulness of empty space) and 40 (being and non-being). Interpretations and English translations vary.
[4] IBM Quantum Learning: Exploring uncertainty, on incompatible observables and the position–momentum uncertainty relation.
[5] National Academies: Connecting Quarks with the Cosmos, box 2.2, on the physical vacuum as a lowest-energy state.
[6] Soto Zen Journal, no. 2, discussion of the Heart Sutra and Dogen’s treatment of form and emptiness.
Related articles: Emptiness, Space, and Depth · Visit of the Old Zen Master and Other Nonzens · Wu Wei
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