Venerable Geshe Dorji Damdul is the Director of Tibet House, Cultural Center of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, New Delhi, since 2011.
After 15 years of study in Buddhist philosophy he finished his Geshe Lharampa Degree (Ph.D.) in 2002 from Drepung Loseling Monastic University. He joined Gyudmed Tantric College for a year for Tantric studies. In 2003, the Office of H.H. the Dalai Lama sent him to Cambridge University, England for Proficiency English studies.
He was a visiting fellow at Girton College, Cambridge University. Venerable Geshe Dorji Damdul served as the interpreter and translator for His Holiness the Dalai Lama within India and abroad. He is one of the chief editors and co-author of scientific, philosophical, Buddhist and secular books with prominent professors in the UK and USA as well as with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. These books are being used at Centers and Institutes all over the world to study more thoroughly on Buddhist philosophy, metaphysics,
epistemology, and science. He has translated several important Buddhist philosophy texts and has contributed various papers for National and International conferences.
Venerable Geshe Dorji Damdul’s profound knowledge of science and interactions with world renowned physicists gave him the unique ability to teach Buddhist philosophy with a modern twist that many of his non-Tibetan students appreciate
Abstract of the lecture
In modern physics the properties, for example, charge, spin etc. of elementary entities like electron, proton, photon and quark etc are considered to be “intrinsic property” or “svabhava” of the entity.
According to Nagarjuna philosophy, the fundamental reality(emptiness) does not consist of independent, substantial components i.e., absence of “svabhava” in contrary to modern physics. In Buddhism the emptiness does not mean nothingness but the absence of inherent existence.
Superposition principle plays a great role in quantum theory. According to this principle, the superposition of two wave functions associated to mutually exclusive aspects of an entity in the microscopic domain obeys quantum equation like Schrodinger equation as satisfied by individual wave function associated to wave or particle. The underlying logic is Non- Boolean in character.
The inner contradictions of four extreme concepts of reality (catuskoti, meaning ‘four corners’) in Buddhism is Non-Boolean in character.
Quantum entanglement and nonlocality in quantum theory are considered as two important concepts in quantum theory. Quantum entanglement, also known as quantum non-local connection is a property of quantum mechanical systems. This connection contains two or more objects which are linked in such a way that it is not possible to describe the quantum state of a constituent of that system without fully mentioning its counterparts, even if those individual parts are spatially separated.
Buddhists see the world, not as a collection of isolated objects, but as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent. The Buddhist worldview, therefore, is holistic because it sees the world as an integrated whole rather than as a dissociated collection of parts. It recognizes the fundamental inter-dependence of all phenomena in the world and everything is dependent.
According to Copenhagen interpretation as propounded by Niels Bohr et al we can not say anything about its existence unless one observes it. In a sense the reality in the microscopic domain is epistemic in nature. This raises a long-standing debate how the psyche or mind or more specifically consciousness plays a role in quantum reality.