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THUAN: As we learned in the last chapter, Buddhism rejects the idea of a principle of creation, as well as the radical notion of parallel universes—though it may accomodate the idea of multiple universes. To Buddhism, the extraordinary fine-tuning of the physical constants and the initial conditions that allowed the universe to create life and the consciousness are explained by "the interdependence of phenomena." I think it's time to explain more about this idea.
MATTHIEU: To do so, we should first return to the concept of "relative truth". In Buddhism, the perception of distinct phenomena resulting from isolated causes and conditions is called "relative truth" or "delusion." Our daily experience makes us think that things have a real, objective independence, as though they existed on their own and had intrinsic identities. But this way of seeing phenomena is just a mental construct. Even though this view of reality seems to be commonsense, it doesn't stand up to analysis.
Buddhism instead adopts the notion that all things exist only in relation to others, the idea of mutual causality, An event can happen only because it is dependent on other factors. Buddhism sees the world as a vast flow of events that are linked together and paricipate in one another. The way we perceive this flow crystallizes certain aspects of the nonseparable universe, thus creating an illusion that there are autonomous entities completely separate from us.
In one of his sermons, the Buddha described reality as a display of pearls—each pearl reflects all of the others, as well as the palace whose facade they decorate, and the entirety of the universe. This comes down to saying that all of reality is present in each of its parts. This image is a good illustration of interdependence, which states that no entity independent of the whole can exist anywhere in the universe.
THUAN: This "flow of events" idea is similar to the view of reality that derives from modern cosmology. From the smallest atom up to the universe in its entirety, including the galaxies, stars, and humankind, everything is moving and evolving. Nothing is immutable.
MATTHIEU: Not only do things move, but we see them as "things" only because we are viewing them from a particular angle. We mustn't give the world properties that are merely apparances. Phenomena are simply events that happen in certain circumstances. Buddhism doesn't deny conventional truth—the sort that ordinary people perceive or the scientist detects. It doesn't contest the laws of cause and effect or the laws of ohysics or mathematics. It quite simply affirms that, if we dig deep enough, there is a difference between the way we see the world and the way it really is, and the way it really is, we've discovered, is devoid of intrinsic existence.
THUAN: So what has true nature got to do with interdependence?
MATTHIEU: The word "interdependence" is a translation of the Sanskrit pratitya samutpada which means "to be by co-emergence" and is usually translated as "dependent origination." The saying can be interpreted in two complementary ways. The first is "this arises because that is," which comes down to saying that things do exist in some way, but nothing exists on its own. The second is "this, having been produced, produces that," which means that nothing can be its own cause. Or we could say that everything is in some way interdependent with the world. We do not deny that phenomena really do occur, but we argue that they are "dependent," that they don't exist in an autonomous way. Any given thing in our world can appear only because it's connected, conditioned and in turn conditioning, co-present and co-operating in constant transformation. Their way of "being" is simply in relation to one another, never in and of themselves. We tend to cling to the notion that "things" must precede relationships. This is not the case here. The characteristics of phenomena are defined only through relationships.
Interdependence explains what Buddhism sees as the impermanence and emptiness of phenomena, and this emptiness is what we mean by the lack of "reality." The seventh Dalai Lama summarized this idea in a verse:
Understanding interdependence, we understand emptiness
Understanding emptiness, we understand interdependence.
This is the view that lies in the middle,
And which is beyond the terrifying cliffs of eternalism and nihilism.
Another way of defining the idea of interdependence is summarized by the term tantra, which stands for a notion of continuity and "the fact that everything is part of a whole, so that nothing can happen separately."
Ironically, though we might think that the idea of interdependence undermines the notion of reality, in the Buddhist way of thinking, it is interdependence that actually allows for reality to appear. Let's think about an entity that exists independently from all others. As an immutablw and autonomous entity, it coudn't act on anything, or be acted on itself. For phenomena to happen, interdependence is required.
This argument refutes the idea of distinct particles that are supposed to constitute matter. What's more, this interdependencenaturally includes consciousness. The reality of any given object depends on a subject that is aware of the object. That is wat the physicist Erwin Schrödinger meant when he wrote: "Without being aware of it, and without being rigorously systematic about it, we excludethe subject of cognizance from the domain of nature that we endeavour to understand. We step with our own person back into the part of the onlooker who does not belong to the world, which by this very procedure becomes an objective world."[Ref]
Finally, the most subtle aspect of interdependence or "dependent origination" concerns what we call a phenomenon's "designation base" and its "designation." A phenomenon's position, form, dimension,color, or any other of its apparent characteristics is merely one of its "designation bases." This designation is a mental construct that invests a phenomenon with a distinct reality. In our everyday experience, when we see an object, we aren't struck by its nominal existence, but rather by its true existence. If we analyze this object more closely, however, we discover that it is produced by a large number of causes and conditions, and that we are incapable of pinpointing an autonomous identity. Since we have experienced it, we can't say that the phenomenon doesn't exist. But neither can we say that it corresponds to an intrinsic reality. So we conclude that the object exists (thus avoiding a nihilistic view), but that this existence is purely nominal, or conventional (thus also avoiding the opposite extreme of material realism, which is called "eternalism" in Buddhism). A phenomenon with no autonomous existence, but that is nevertheless not totally inexistent, can act and function according to causality and thus lead to positive effects. This view of reality therefore allows us to anticipate the results of actions and organize our relationship with the world. A Tibetan poem puts it this way:
To say that a thing is empty does not mean
It cannot function—it means it lacks an absolute reality.
To say a thing arises "in dependence" does not mean
It has intrinsic being—it means it is illusion-like.
If thus one's understanding is correct and certain
Of what is meant by voidness and dependent origin.
No need is there to add that voidness and appearance
Occur together without contradiction in a single thing.
THUAN: I find everything you've told me about interdependence striking. Science, too, has discovered that reality is nonseparable, or interdependent, both at the subatomic level and in the macrocosmic world. The conclusion that subatoMic phenomena are interdependent was derived from a famous thought experiment conducted by Einstein and two of his Princeton colleagues, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, in 1935. It's called the EPR experiment, from the initials of their surnames.