Amitābha Buddha Revisited: Into the Twenty-first Century Modern Science
Amitābha Buddha Revisited: Into the Twenty-first Century Modern Science

Summary/Abstract: Buddhism and quantum physics share many points of contact. New scientific evidence regarding nonlocality has made possible an insightful understanding of nonduality and wholeness. In light of this discovery, modern intellectuals may become comfortable with the Mahāyāna concept of Buddha’s meritorious qualities.Particularly, Amitābha Buddha symbolizes the Buddha of Infinite Light and Infinite Life, representing the transcendence of time and space. Specifically Amitābha signifies both wisdom and compassion, while the field of quantum mechanics reflects sufficiently the wisdom aspect of Amitābha. However, compassion has not been incorporated in science due to its non-objective nature. Can modern intellectuals understand the wisdom comfortably to encompass compassion? This article develops and employs a novel conceptual approach to address a broader understanding and acceptance of modern science for scholars of religion. We argue that the concept of nonlocality, with its extension into a sequence of nonlocality−nonduality−wholeness, enables Amitābha’s wisdom and compassion to fit reasonably within the framework of modern science. Thus, Amitābha Buddha can be said to re-appear with a scientific face in the 21st century.

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