Interdependence, Entanglement and Possibility

A recent conversation with a student led me to revisit the concepts of superposition and quantum entanglement, thinking that these are excellent scientific examples of the interdependence that Buddhism points to.

Superposition is a state in which a system or object exists in two simultaneous states at once. Think of a spinning coin, for example. At the moment of spinning, the coin exists in both the "heads" and "tails" state. It's not until the coin stops and we "measure" it that the superimposition collapses into a single state: either"heads" or "tails." (Another famous example is of Schrödinger's cat, who is both alive and dead until the experimenter opens the box in which it's contained.)

Similarly, an electron in superimposition has both up and down spins. But when it's measured, it collapses into just one of those states. When two electrons come close to and interact with one another, they become entangled—no longer independent, each of their quantum states will affect the other's. In the case of electrons, this means that when one electron spins up, the other must necessarily spin down. The interesting thing is that electrons seem to share this information with one another instantaneously, no matter how far apart they are.

In May of 2017, China sent two entangled particles into space, and even though they were 1200 kilometers apart, when measured, they consistently showed to be spinning in opposite directions, which means the electrons "knew" the other's spin and adjusted accordingly.

Years earlier, when Einstein learned about quantum entanglement, he was so disturbed that he called it "spooky action at a distance," and determined that quantum mechanics must be somehow incomplete. Yet time and time again, experiments showed that this spooky connection was real, and that it governed how these particles interacted with one another across space and even time.

Buddhism has known about this entanglement—called interdependence, or more technically, dependent origination—for millennia, encapsulating this truth with the sentence, "When this is, that is," or "when that arises, that comes to be." Buddhism has always known that we're irrevocably entangled with one another and with everything else we see in the world. Nothing exists independently; everything affects everything else.

Which brings me to the reason I'm so insistent about our own power to affect reality. If two electrons can affect one another across space, why wouldn't my thoughts or my actions help shape what's happening on the other side of the world? Also, I may not be a quantum particle, yet experience shows me that in each moment I too exist in superimposition among several probable states. Faced with a bit of reality, I can choose to do this or that or this other thing, and the effects of my choice will ripple outward in unequivocal—albeit sometimes mysterious—ways.

It's interesting that the physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman said, "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." The Buddha said the same about karma, cause and effect. But we don't have to understand it to use it as well as we can.

The way I think about it? In each moment there are more possibilities than I can even imagine. How incredible! In each moment I can choose this or this or this, so that comes to be. That's why a bodhisattva never gives up. Even in the midst of the most impenetrable darkness, there's always the possibility of a little bit of light. The universe already knows this. I just have to catch up to that fact.

*Photo by Pawel Czerwinski