Buddhism and Reality and Love

Sharon Salzburg! I was lucky enough to have attended her Fri/Saturday workshop/retreat at the IDP, all about metta, or lovingkindness meditation. What a heart-opening experience. 

I won't repeat her instructions here: I can only recommend her books or, better, hearing and experiencing the teachings from Sharon herself, who makes herself very available in the New York City area, as her calendar attests.

The retreat reminded me of what I love about practice: the deep emotional connection, how it makes us so much more available to the world, how it opens our hearts and works against our confusion, in very simple - but not always easy - ways. Buddhism: it’s about feeling.

Then today I checked out the schedule for the World Science Festival, a giant brainiac fest held yearly in New York City. Dancers, mathematicians, mathmagicians, physicists, visual artists, moviemakers and more – everybody gets together and takes “science fair” concept about one million steps beyond.

One program struck my eye:

A Thin Sheet of Reality: The Universe as a Hologram

Gerard ’t Hooft, Leonard Susskind, Raphael Bousso, Herman Verlinde

Friday, June 3, 2011 8:00 PM - 9:30 PM
8 p.m., NYU Skirball Center

What we touch, smell, and feel are all part of our reality. But some of the world’s leading physicists think that life as we know it reflects only one side of the story. They believe our reality may be a projection of laws and processes that exist on a thin surface surrounding the edge of the universe; in other words, all we know may be akin to a hologram. This intriguing discussion on cutting-edge theories may just change the way we view reality.

And this one:

Rebooting the Cosmos: Is the Universe the Ultimate Computer?

John Hockenberry, Edward Fredkin, Fotini Markopoulou-Kalamara, Jürgen Schmidhuber, Seth Lloyd Saturday, June 4, 2011 8:00 PM - 9:30 PM

Eisner & Lubin Auditorium

As computers become progressively faster and more powerful, they’ve gained the impressive capacity to simulate increasingly realistic environments. Which raises a question familiar to aficionados of The Matrix—might life and the world as we know it be a simulation on a super advanced computer? . . . Is the universe the ultimate computer running some grand cosmic code? Join a discussion among the brightest minds in digital physics to explore math, computer science, theories of consciousness, the origin of life, and free will—and delve into a world of information that may underlie everything.

They remind me of the questions about the ultimate nature of reality and the mind that certain Buddhist teachings deal with. They are the “heady” part, the thinking part.

And it struck me that both sides, the feeling and the thinking, are indivisible in so many ways. Buddhist practice and study encompasses both. Retreats and science fests: practice illuminates it all.

Geek out or love up on the world: we need ‘em both.