[Complexes] Things as they really are

[Carlos Gershenson]

Today Lama Jampa visited our sangha, giving several teachings. He mentioned (or at least Eduardo translated it that way from Tibetan) that when one is in the state of the Buddha, things are perceived as they really are.

Since I had learned from Eduardo that in Buddhism things are composed by object, subject, and action, I did not understand the meaning of Lama Jampa's words, so I asked.

My translated summary of what I understood of the translation of Lama Jampa's summary is the following: You cannot really see things (they are in between being, not being, being and being, and not {being and not being}). The phrase "things as they really are" means that one realizes causality and relationships between all things, i.e. that no thing is isolated. I find this very interesting, because this is precisely what the scientific study of complex systems does, as opposed to traditional reductionistic science (since Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Laplace). We study the relevance of interactions among different phenomena, and that is my personal view of what makes complexity complexity (not many elements, not non-linearity, not self-organization, not emergence, etc. All these properties are very interesting, but the defining characteristic of complex systems, for me, is the relevance of interactions in the future state of elements).

So, trying to synthesize: A clearer description of the world is one which takes into account interactions, as opposed to one description that does not put attention to them. Scientist, pay attention, reductionism no no. (can you tell that I enjoy spending lots of time with my 2 year old daughter?)

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Posted By Carlos Gershenson to Complexes at 1/22/2010 07:08:00 AM