“According to quantum mechanics, there is no such thing as objectivity. We cannot eliminate ourselves from the picture.”
“Quantum mechanics views particles as ‘tendencies to exist’ or ‘tendencies to happen’. How strong these tendencies are is expressed in terms of probabilities…
…It may be that the search for the ultimate ‘stuff’ of the universe is a crusade for an illusion. At the subatomic level, mass and energy change unceasingly into each other.”
“By watching time-lapse photography we know that plants often respond to stumlae with human-like reactions. They retreat from pain, advance toward pleasure, and even languish in the absence of affection. The only difference is they do it at a much slower rate than we do. So much slower, in fact, that it appears to the ordinary perception that they do not react at all…
If this is so, then how can we say with certainty that rocks, and even mountain ranges, do not react also as living organisms, but with a reaction time so slow that to catch it with time-lapse photography would require millenia between exposures! Of course, there is no way to prove this, but there is no way of disproving it either. The distinction between ‘living’ and ‘non-living’ is not so easy to make.”
“The importance of ‘nonsense’ cannot be overstated. The more clearly we experience something as ‘nonsense’, the more clearly we are experiencing the boundaries of our own self-imposed cognitive structures. Nonsense is that which doesn’t fit into the prearranged patterns which we have super-imposed on reality. There is no such thing as ‘nonsense’ apart from a judgemental intellect which calls it that.”
“According to Buddhist theory, reality is ‘virtual’ in nature. What appear to be ‘real’ objects in it, like trees and people, actually are transient illusions which result from a limited mode of awareness. The illusion is that parts of an overall virtual process are ‘real’ (permanent) ‘things’. Enlightenment is the experience that things, including ‘I’, are transient, virtual states, devoid of separate existences, momentary links between illusions of the past and illusions of the future unfolding in the illusion of time.”
“The appearance of physical reality, according to Mahayana Buddhism, is based upon the interdependence of all things (Indra’s Net).”
“The history of scientific thought, if it teaches us anything at all, teaches us the folly of clutching ideas too closely. To this extent, it is an echo of eastern wisdom, which teaches us the folly of clutching anything at all.”
“The way we pose our questions often illusorily limits our responses… There is always an alternative between every ‘this’ and every ‘that’.”
Some Words Left Behind 