Review of Alan Wallace's Hidden Dimensions

Quote from review by Nathan Senge at the Center for Buddhist Studies Weblog:

There is a quiet revolution afoot. The last century has witnessed Buddhists and quantum physicists quietly moving into perigee, however unwittingly until the last twenty years. In Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Cloth, 176 Pages), B. Alan Wallace gives an incisive portrayal of this merging of minds and argues that these two paths are not just complementary—they are intimately related...

In Astronomy we use a telescope to see distant starts. In a similar way, Buddhists use a mental telescope. Wallace calls this “quiescence”—it refers to a very specific form of introspection. Wallace explains:

“…[A]ny meditator who has not yet achieved it [quiescence] is technically regarded as a novice… Once one has achieved this exceptional level of attention balance, one should be able to effortlessly remain there, with the physical senses totally withdrawn, for at least four hours, with unwavering mindfulness and an extraordinary degree of vividness” (88).

Tall order. And perhaps seemingly impossible to the laymen. Nevertheless, someone untrained in metallurgy, geometry, and optics would be clueless in constructing a telescope. The analogy is sound.

According to Wallace, Buddhists advance a theory of an interdependent reality. This is often described in the context of the doctrines of Dependent Origination and Emptiness. Meditators trained in quiescence (remember the telescope?) probe the nature of mind and reality with a discriminating eye. Each constituent particle is shown to be relational and devoid of intrinsic existence. Wallace calls this realization "contemplative insight." Make no mistake—this is not nihilism. Nor is it an assertion of relativism. The absence Wallace describes is not no-thing, it is merely the lack of some-thing. And that something is the fiction of an independent reality. A something that has never existed, will never exist, but is nonetheless reified by most people. This tendency to reify is at the root of human suffering and is the target of the Buddhist philosophical project.

Read the whole piece.