Western science and Eastern mysticism?

• Niels Bohr’s self-designed ‘coat of arms,’ featuring Yin/Yang and “contraries in complementarity.”• “It is wrong to think that the task of physics

is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature.”

• “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”

• At the micro-level, quantum physics tells us there’s no ultimate substance-brick of the universe. “It is no more particulars than energy-packets; nor more energy packets than particles…Both ‘this’ and ‘that’ are different ways for the same entity to be” (C. Li)

•To adhere dogmatically to ‘that’s it’ of an entity is to discriminate against alternatives. But in doing so one is obstructed from seeing the reality of the Tao. “To know the Tao is not to discriminate against alternatives, but to be open to them” (C. Li).

Stayin’ in ‘the pivot of the Tao’

• “ When there is no more separation of ‘this’ and ‘that,’ it is called the pivot of the Tao. At the pivot in the center of the circle one can see the infinite in all things.”—Zhuangzi

• “To know the Tao is not to discriminate against alternatives, but to be open to them” (C. Li). Staying at the pivot of the ‘potter’s wheel of Heaven’ is called “letting both alternatives proceed.”

• “Everything is a ‘that,’ and everything is a ‘this.’ You cannot see it as a ‘this’ if you are from the viewpoint of ‘that’; you see it as a ‘this’ when you are from the viewpoint of ‘this’… Thus the sage does not bother with these distinctions but sees all things the way they are….” “The Way is the pivot of all things”—TTC 47