There is the story of the infant Krishna, wrongly accused of eating some dirt. His mother, Yashoda, comes up to him wagging her finger and scolds him: ‘You shouldn’t eat dirt, you naughty boy.’
‘But I haven’t’, says the unchallenged lord of all and everything, disguised as a frightened human child.
‘Tut! Tut! Open your mouth’, orders Yashoda. Krishna does as he is told. He opens his mouth and Yashoda gasps.
She sees in Krishna’s mouth the whole, complete, entire timeless universe. All the stars and planets of space and the distances between them; all the lands and seas of the earth and the life in them; she sees all the days of yesterday and all the days of tomorrow; she sees all ideas and all emotions, all pity and all hope, and the three strands of matter; not a pebble, candle, creature, village or galaxy is missing, including herself and every bit of dirt in its truthful place. ‘My Lord, you can close your mouth’, she says reverently.
In any part of the universe there is a whole universe. Hamlet saw the infinite space in a nutshell; William Blake saw a world in a grain of sand, heaven in a wildflower, eternity in an hour.
Our daily perception relies on the assumption that reality is like a building and as such, is made of building blocks. However, at a very microscopic level, quantum physics describes to us a scenario where elemental particles are basically energy fields. Activity is not the by-product of matter interacting, but the other way round. Entities turn out to be temporarily stabilized nodes in a web of interactions.
The things that we perceive and imagine are assemblies of a provisional nature. This essential fact is what Buddhism defines as emptiness. In fact, some of the most original ideas of the ancient Mahayana Buddhism (Nāgārjuna, c. 150 –c. 250 CE) are its critiques of the notion of identity: there are no two identical things in nature; nothing is identical toanother thing. And the central notion of “emptiness” suggests that there is nothing that exists only in itself, independent of everything else. The echo with modern physics is clear.
‘In a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times. For every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location. Thus every spatiotemporal standpoint mirrors the world.’
Kuna hadithi ya mtoto Krishna, aliyeshtakiwa kimakosa kwa kula uchafu. "Yashoda, mama yake, anamkaribia akipeperusha kidole chake na kumkemea: ""Hupaswi kula udongo, wewe mvulana mbaya."" ""Lakini mimi sijali,"" anasema bwana asiyepingwa wa kila kitu na kila kitu, amevalia kama mtoto wa binadamu aliyeogopa." ‘Tut! Tut! (Mtu mwenye hekima) Fungua kinywa chako, amri Yashoda. Krishna hufanya kama anavyoambiwa. Anafungua kinywa chake na Yashoda anapumua. Yeye huona katika kinywa cha Krishna ulimwengu mzima, kamili, mzima usio na wakati. """Nyota zote na sayari zote za anga na umbali kati yao, nchi zote na bahari zote za dunia na maisha yaliyo ndani yao, anaona siku zote za jana na siku zote za kesho, anaona mawazo yote na hisia zote, huruma zote na matumaini yote, na nyuzi tatu za vitu; hakuna jiwe, mshumaa, kiumbe, kijiji au galaksi inayokosekana, ikiwa ni pamoja na yeye mwenyewe na kila kidogo cha uchafu katika mahali pake sahihi.""" "Bwana wangu, unaweza kufunga kinywa chako", anasema kwa heshima. Katika sehemu yoyote ya ulimwengu kuna ulimwengu mzima. Hamlet aliona nafasi isiyo na mwisho katika makapi; William Blake aliona ulimwengu katika chembe ya mchanga, mbingu katika ua la mwituni, umilele katika saa moja. Uelewa wetu wa kila siku unategemea dhana kwamba ukweli ni kama jengo na kama vile, ni kufanywa ya vitalu vya ujenzi. Hata hivyo, katika kiwango kidogo sana, fizikia ya quantum inatuelezea hali ambapo chembe za msingi ni hasa mashamba ya nishati. Shughuli si bidhaa ya upande wa mambo kuingiliana, lakini njia nyingine pande zote. Vitu hutokea kuwa nodes za muda thabiti katika mtandao wa mwingiliano. Vitu ambavyo tunaona na kufikiria ni makusanyiko ya asili ya muda. Ukweli huu muhimu ndio ambao Ubudha hufafanua kuwa utupu. Kwa kweli, baadhi ya mawazo ya awali zaidi ya Ubudha wa kale wa Mahayana (Nāgārjuna, c. "Kama ilivyoelezwa katika kitabu cha ""The Identity of Nature"" (Kutoka 250 KK), hakuna vitu viwili vilivyofanana katika asili; hakuna kitu kinachofanana na kitu kingine." Na dhana kuu ya "upungufu" inapendekeza kwamba hakuna kitu ambacho kinapatikana tu ndani yake, bila kutegemea kitu kingine chochote. Mlinganisho na fizikia ya kisasa ni wazi. ‘Kwa njia fulani, kila kitu kiko kila mahali wakati wote. Kwa kila eneo inahusisha kipengele cha yenyewe katika kila eneo jingine. Hivyo kila mtazamo wa nafasi na wakati huonyesha ulimwengu. <unk>