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After an airport scuffle, a physicist considers the possible connections between quantum mechanics and compassion.
A few years ago, I spent several weeks traveling in Europe giving lectures and workshops about the relationship between science and spirituality. Despite the terrific extroversion of such activities, I enjoy the periods of isolation and introversion that travel provides. After I had finished reading the books I had brought from home, I purchased Ethics for the New Millennium by the Dalai Lama in a London airport. I was already familiar with his teachings, but still the book’s direct, clear, and simple message inspired me. With a minimum of technical language, the Dalai Lama shows how both our deepest happiness and genuine ethics follow from our effort to alleviate suffering.
These well-known ideas electrified me for days as I continued my travels. In the Barcelona airport, after about an hour of reading, I stretched my legs with a walk among the fancy shops, continuing to reflect on the Dalai Lama’s words. On my return to the departing line, I vowed to work more intensely on practicing compassion. I told myself, “I can surely do much better.”
Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a fearsome fistfight break out about twenty meters away. A police officer and another man were furiously pummeling each other. The officer was on the floor, getting the worst of it.
I sprinted toward the fight, grabbed the standing man by the shoulders, and pulled hard, but I could not separate them. In desperation, I wrapped my right arm over his right shoulder, grasped his left arm, and gave a mighty heave.
As the two separated, the man pinned against me kicked a two-legged thrust into the officer’s chest, knocking off his badge and throwing him flat on his back. We landed in a heap, with me on my back and him on top of me.
Hugging him tightly to my chest, I struggled to a sitting position. He was breathing like a racehorse. His heart was pounding. I felt his beard stubble against my left jaw. A few feet away, the police officer jumped up and ran to the far end of the terminal to telephone for help. I was very unhappy about being left clutching a criminal, but soon other people came to restrain him. It was then I noticed he was about thirty years old, the same age as my oldest son.
“Just let it go,” I said to him, with tenderness that surprised me. “It is not worth it.” They seemed like strangely ineffective words, especially since he was unlikely to understand English.
In a few minutes, more police arrived and handcuffed the man. I got up from the floor, my tailbone sore from the hard landing. Somebody handed me the Dalai Lama book that had fallen early in the struggle. As I walked back to the line I thought, “That cop didn’t even say ‘Gracias.’”
A deep sadness overwhelmed me while I was standing in line. I had to fight the desire to sob uncontrollably. Embarrassed to cry in public, I asked myself, “What is this powerful sadness?” Ahead of me, someone said that the police officer had caught the man picking a pocket.
I have long been mystified by what I felt that day. At first, I thought it was due to the lack of recognition or appreciation for my effort. “I risked physical harm to minimize the pounding that policeman was taking. I want at least a ‘Thank you.’” Even more, it embarrasses me to confess my desire to be lionized as a hero. Realizing that my motivation was not entirely pure grieves me, especially when the book that was knocked from my hands warns against such desires.
“When we give with the underlying motive of inflating the image others have of us—to gain renown and have them think of us as virtuous or holy—we defile the act,” the Dalai Lama writes. “In that case, what we are practicing is not generosity but self-aggrandizement.”
My motivation was not entirely pure, but there surely is more to it. When I clutched the pickpocket in my arms, besides feeling his heart beating wildly, his gasping breath, and even the scratch of his whiskers, I also felt his suffering. A genuine tenderness welled up in me toward him. More than physical intimacy, I had contacted the broken life that led to the event, a brokenness that was likely to continue well after the prison term that was sure to follow. It is one thing to reflect quietly on suffering while reading a book, and another to feel it squirming against your body.
Elsewhere in Ethics for the New Millennium, the Dalai Lama (below) writes: “When we enhance our sensitivity toward others’ suffering through deliberately opening ourselves up to it, it is believed that we can gradually extend our compassion to the point where the individual feels so moved by even the subtlest suffering of others that they come to have an overwhelming sense of responsibility toward those others. This causes the one who is compassionate to dedicate themselves entirely to helping others overcome both their suffering and the causes of their suffering. In Tibetan, this ultimate level of attainment is called nying je chenmo, literally ‘great compassion.’’’
I certainly have not attained anything like an advanced level of nying je chenmo, but I have seen how opening, even unwittingly, toward the suffering of others makes me appreciate the profound interconnectedness we all share.
According to the Middle Way Buddhists, this interconnected feeling, which I experienced through my sense of connection with the pickpocket, is our most profound or ultimate nature. Unfortunately, our false belief in our independent or inherent existence prevents us from appreciating this truth and its far-reaching moral implications. Our minds unconsciously project independent existence onto our sense of self and the objects surrounding it. This projection is then the false foundation for our attachments and the associated suffering. The Middle Way expends much effort in carefully defining independent or inherent existence, and then showing in the doctrine of emptiness that all subjects and objects exist only as a complex web of interrelationships, as multifaceted expressions of dependent arising. Deeply understanding emptiness weakens the attachment to our ego and leads to the practice of universal compassion.
Emptiness and Quantum Nonlocality
As a physicist and a student of Buddhism, I have long been struck by the extraordinarily precise resonance between Middle Way emptiness and quantum nonlocality, the most important finding at the conceptual foundation of modern physics. If we can understand the deep connection between emptiness and modern physics then, since emptiness leads to compassion, we might find that physics indirectly points toward love. Since physics shapes our modern worldview and thereby influences our actions, gaining a greater appreciation for these connections encourages universal compassion. Moreover, as my experience in Barcelona showed me, a feeling of connection toward the suffering of others naturally leads to a deeper appreciation for the interdependence mirrored in quantum mechanics and emptiness. In this way, love can lead to knowledge.
Physicists rarely discuss how their discipline shapes our worldview and influences our culture. A notable exception is the late David Bohm, internationally known for his important con-tributions to quantum mechanics. Bohm writes: “It is proposed that the widespread and pervasive distinctions between people ... which are now preventing mankind from working together for the common good, and indeed, even for survival, have one of the key factors of their origin in a kind of thought that treats things as inherently divided, disconnected, and ‘broken up’ into yet smaller constituent parts. Each part is considered to be essentially independent and self-existent.”
Quantum nonlocality—the inability to localize a particle in a finite region of space—differs radically from the assertion that “each part is essentially independent and self-existent.” The most penetrating understanding of quantum nonlocality comes from the celebrated Bell’s Inequalities, which analyze correlated pairs of particles. “Correlation” is used in the sense that two gloves or two shoes comprising a pair are correlated. Analysis of Bell’s Inequalities is independent of the current formulation of quantum mechanics; therefore, any future theory must embody nonlocality. In other words, nonlocality is not an artifact of present day quantum mechanics but a fundamental property of nature.
Analysis of Bell’s Inequalities has its origin in the famous paper by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, commonly referred to as “EPR,” which considered correlations between pairs of widely separated particles. Although Einstein pioneered quantum mechanics, he was never happy with it. From the 1920s to 1935, when EPR was published, he engaged in a number of debates with Niels Bohr about the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics. Many consider the Einstein-Bohr debates to be the most thrilling and important discussions in the history of modern science.
We can go to the heart of the controversy by examining Einstein’s most explicit formulation of his position:
“The concepts of physics refer to a real external world, i.e., ideas are posited of things that claim a ‘real existence’ independent of the perceiving subject ... It appears to be essential for this arrangement of things introduced in physics that, at a specific time, these things claim an existence independent of one another ... Without such an assumption of the mutually independent existence of spatially distant things, an assumption which originates in everyday thought, physi-cal thought in the sense familiar to us would not be possible ... For the relative independence of spatially distant things (A and B), this idea is characteristic: an external influence on A has no immediate effect on B; this is known as the principle of local action.”
By “local action,” Einstein means that the velocity of light is the maximum transmission speed for any information or physical effect. Since light speed is finite, there can be “no immediate effect” of a particle in region A on another particle in region B, or vice versa.
Einstein’s reference to “mutually independent existence of spatially distant things” is pivotal. Objects separated in space and free from any interaction with other objects (because of locality) must exist independently or have well-defined, intrinsic properties. Relationships between objects are then built on this fundamental independent existence; however, the relationships are less fundamental than the “mutually independent existence” of the related entities.
Einstein believes the mutually independent existence “originates in everyday thought,” since we believe that objects free of interaction with other objects have an independent existence. If this “mutually independent existence” were absent, then “physical thought in the sense familiar to us would not be possible.” In addition, Einstein claims that things have a “‘real existence’ independent of the perceiving subject.” He thus assumes objects have two essential properties: mutually independent existence and independence of our knowing.
Einstein’s two assumptions are precisely a belief in what the Middle Way defines as independent or inherent existence—what we unconsciously project onto subjects 
and objects. For the Middle Way, it is critically important to clearly define the “object of negation.” Without such a precise definition, we are in danger of nihilism or eternalism. Einstein (left, with Niels Bohr) is doing us a great favor by carefully defining precisely what emptiness denies.
Deriving Bell’s Inequalities only requires assuming locality (local action) and mutually independent existence. Physicists are fully confident that nature embodies locality. Therefore, the experimental violation of the inequalities—which today students can demonstrate in an undergraduate lab—conclusively shows that the correlated particles do not have mutually independent existence. Instead, as quantum mechanics implies, nature is nonlocally interconnected. Therefore, despite Einstein’s objections, what happens in region A is instantaneously influenced by what happens in region B, regardless of the distance between A and B.
The inequalities’ analysis, however, does not replace our erroneous view of objects as having independent existence with a new principle. Just as in traditional Middle Way arguments establishing emptiness, there is a massive negation of independent existence without invoking any principle beyond nonlocality.
The correlated particles are instantaneously interconnected in mysterious ways. We are so used to conceiving of a world of isolated and independently existing objects that it is difficult to appreciate this rigorous experimental refutation of independent existence. The very nature of physical reality demands a major paradigm shift—one with enormous implications for fields well beyond the boundaries of science and philosophy.
In Middle Way Buddhism, emptiness characterizes all phenomena, from the nature of elementary particles to our deepest level of consciousness. The realization of emptiness—the complete lack of independent existence in all subjects and objects and their profound interdependence with each other—decreases egotism and increases a genuine concern for all life. If my deepest reality is one of mutual dependence on other life forms and my environment, how can I be concerned with just me? How can I focus only on the needs of just one intersection among the innumerable dependency relations that define all people and things? We have no rational justification for our self-centeredness and self-cherishing. Nevertheless, these firmly ingrained ten-dencies are painfully difficult to uproot.
The greatest obstacle to appreciating emptiness is our inveterate belief in the independent existence of our own egos. Practicing compassion weakens this false belief that blocks the doorway to the wisdom of emptiness. Thus, a genuine concern for others deepens our assimilation of emptiness, our profound interconnectedness with all of life. Emptiness and compassion have a synergistic relationship that ushers in a responsibility for the welfare of all sentient beings and the environment.
I have always wanted to understand the connection between emptiness and compassion more deeply. I actually wanted to derive compassion from emptiness, to see how it flows logically from interdependence like a result in physics. Perhaps my years of doing theoretical physics predispose me to this approach. Although emptiness certainly implies compassion, it was never satisfying to derive compassion from intellectual analysis alone.
Fortunately, my experience in Barcelona showed me a little about approaching compassion through the heart, about taking in the pain of others and making a deep feeling connection to them. I then become more open to them and the reality of their suffering. Instead of approaching compassion through the emptiness doctrine or nonlocality, I try to open to the suffering of others and thereby assimilate my profound interconnections with them.
The ultimate goal is to expand this openness to include all suffering beings. Such openness to the suffering of others softens my habitual focus on my ego and its needs. The connection is through the heart, not through the head. It leads to a feeling realization of emptiness. I then appreciate how connec-tions to others establish my identity. Without these relationships, there is no me at all.
Such realization through the heart complements the intellectual understanding of quantum nonlocality and emptiness. That man I grappled with in the Barcelona airport, accused of being a pickpocket, could have been my son. As much as Einstein and Bohr educated my intellectual understanding, he educated my heart and helped me move toward a union of love and knowledge.
Professor Vic Mansfield died soon after finishing this essay. A member of the physics and astronomy faculty at Colgate University, he was the author most recently of Tibetan Buddhism & Modern Physics (Templeton Foundation Press). We send our heartfelt condolences to his family.—The editors.
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