Let us continue our investigation into the mysteries of the universe. In previous articles, I have discussed many topics that will bring great excitement to the scientifically interested layman. What can be more interesting than juxtaposing the truths uttered by the incomparably wise Buddha with our ever-evolving modern scientific understanding of the world? Few topics can surpass such profoundness and offer intellectually stimulating food for thought. If Einstein were alive today, I believe that he would resonate deeply with the content of these articles. He might even write some of them himself. After all, it is his great work that today’s generation of scientists is building upon to achieve an even greater understanding of the world around us. I remember very vividly the times, roughly ten years ago, in my small studio flat in London when I used to spend day and night studying the theory of General Relativity. As a keen physicist, I really wanted to understand it. Before that, back in Germany, I had already spent six months of my bachelor’s degree studying the geometry of curved spaces, one of the most complex mathematical tools that Albert Einstein used to explain his theory. I was so pleased when I began to understand the fundamentals of his work and how it explained many phenomena in the universe, such as black holes, GPS technology and many others.

As difficult as it might seem for an interested layman to understand the basic principles, and 
formulae that govern the theory that Albert Einstein had formulated, the basic idea is not so difficult at all. However, in this article, I don’t want to focus on his Theory of General Relativity but rather on another development of modern science that gained a lot of track at the beginning of the 20th century and for which Albert Einstein was also partly responsible: the discovery of Quantum Physics. Although the Theory of General Relativity was Einstein’s most impressive discovery, he was never awarded the Nobel Prize for this discovery. Maybe that was because he had already been awarded one earlier. In 1905, he was curated for a very different work of his, namely the discovery of the photon.

In this work, he proposed to the world that electromagnetic waves, such as X-rays, microwaves, radio waves, UV light and the visible light we know, did not actually consist of continuous waves (as you would imagine a water wave in the ocean), but that one should rather think of them as a big stream of discrete particles called “photons” (more like droplets of water that don’t mix or dissolve with each other).

As you may or may not know, Einstein himself, later in his life, became rather sceptical of the way that the scientific community around other famous scientists such as Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schroedinger had developed and interpreted the newly discovered theory of Quantum Physics. The debates around Quantum Physics stand to this day, with many interpretations that offer us valuable, even if contradictory, views about the meaning and truth behind the Quantum Nature of the world. Here, the key question scientists are still trying to resolve is the so-called “measurement problem”.  

Do you think that Buddha Dhamma could have any chance to help us in our investigation into the smallest dimensions of nature? Could it help us by providing some answers to finding the “Theory of Everything” that many physicists are eagerly trying to find?

Today, I want to delve with you into the world of atoms. I promise you, it won’t be overly complicated. If you have some basic science knowledge from school, that would be enough. My goal in this article is to give you a new perspective for understanding, what an “atom” really is. If you can understand that, then you will also be able to understand what an electron, a proton, or anything for that matter (pardon the pun!) is. 

One of the most famous German poets in history was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In his epic play “Faust”, Goethe describes a young scholar named Dr. Faustus, who wants to know the answer to the legendary question: What keeps the world together at heart?

It is to this very question the Buddha has actually given us an answer. Let’s dive right into this profound question, the mysteries of the universe, and, rather unexpectedly, you might say, the nature of our mind itself! It might not be the answer you would expect. Fasten your seatbelts: I will now try to explain everything you need to know. 

Let’s start with the picture in this article. 

What do you see?
Is this 
a) a heap made up of sand grains, 
or are these just 
b) sand grains?

This question will be essential for our understanding of the atom later on. 

Which of these two answers is correct, in your opinion? Is this a heap made up of sand grains, or are these (just) sand grains? Maybe you would argue that both of these statements are correct, and you might even wonder why I even make this distinction.

Let me explain to you the difference between these two statements. 

In the first, we assume that these sand grains are part of a collection, family or group. They are taking part in the aggregation of “making a heap of sand”. In this case, we talk about a “heap of sand” as an object that is “made up of sand grains”. 

Let’s stick with that statement for a moment. Would it be correct to say that? Your intuition will probably affirm this notion. Now, let’s think about it a little differently. 

Why do you feel that these grains of sand belong to each other? That they are part of one family or a group? I encourage you to draw parallels to groups that you belong to, such as your own family, your colleagues, your classmates, your social club etc. Why do you feel that you belong to a group or larger unit? Is this sense of belonging simply not something in your mind? Something that you must know to feel that way? Conversely, if you didn’t consciously know that you were part of a group, would you still be? And now, coming back to the heap of sand, these grains of sand cannot “know” anything about a heap, a group, each other, or even about themselves as they do not have consciousness. And so, they don’t feel that they are part of a bigger entity in the same way. So, if they do not feel or perceive they are part of a group, are they?

Imagine that a gust of wind would blow against the heap of sand. But wait, does the wind blow against the heap of sand, or does it simply come into contact with the individual grains of sand? If one grain of sand is scattered one way, and the other grain of sand is scattered the other way, would these grains of sand experience that they are being “separated” in some way? 

They wouldn’t feel that, would they? The grains of sand do not have any preference about how close or far they should be. In the same way, the grains would not be aware of the so-called “heap of sand”. Each grain simply exhibits its characteristics and responds to its environment. Each grain is unaware of the other grains and, therefore, does not conflate with each other to produce anything new. Collectively, adding up all the different contributions of each of the grains, they produce a resultant force. This is why, when you drop an object onto the heap of sand, it will be caught by the collection of sand grains, whose network of interactions will result in a net effect: the object is being slowed down and caught or absorbed. Although this is a collective effort of all of the grains of sand (and even the surface that the grains lay on and any number of other causes), this does not mean that the grains of sand are meant to belong to each other as being part of one object. It is simply how the individual contributions have played out in that particular instance.

That is why a gust of wind is perfectly capable of making an impact on the sand grains themselves. They are merely being rearranged. There is no “heap” that has a separate existence from the grains of sand that is scattered by the gust. What we refer to as a “heap of sand” is merely that net effect, that resultant force of all these grains of sand and their interplay as well as their embedding into the right environment. 

Therefore, coming back to the question: Is this made up of sand grains, or are these sand grains? You should now be able to understand that there are merely sand grains in a particular arrangement. The perception that there is an entity separate from these grains, called a “heap” is therefore flawed. It is a misinterpretation in our minds. 

Let’s come to the atom now.
Here’s a picture of a Hydrogen atom. What you can see in the middle is a proton (the blue dot), and the red dot is an electron. I want you to think about the following question: Consider what you are seeing here. Is this atom made up of an electron and a proton, or is an atom not simply an electron and a proton?

In the same way as the above heap of sand, try to think about the atom. 

If you pull apart the electron from the proton of the hydrogen atom, where is the hydrogen atom itself, which we claim the electron and proton have made? 

And: Does the electron have some kind of awareness that it belongs to the proton? Or does it not just happen to be around the proton, due to the forces that keep it in that position?

Therefore, in this instance an electron and proton are not actually a family or a separate unit which belong to an atom. Rather, their union gives rise to a manifesting characteristic or a net effect, which has some features distinct from electrons and protons themselves.

As you can see, the same logic that applies to the heap of sand can be applied to the atom or just about anything in this world. It is the logic itself that I wanted to convey to you.

How do we make sense of this concept and and how does it help us?
We have now learned that the concept of “something made up of something else” is wrong. 
Asking the question, “Is a heap made up of sand grains?” assumes that there is a unique entity, “a something” that is “made up of sand grains”. We have then understood that it is the wrong question to ask, but instead, we should think of the reality as dependently originated: the heap of sand, the atom, the electron, the laptop, the voice, and the sand grain are not really separate entities, but rather net-effects, manifesting due to causes and conditions.

This means that what holds true for the heap of sand will hold true for the sand grains themselves. In the same way, we could point to a sand grain and ask: Is this made up of atoms, or are these atoms?

And we would understand that there is no separate sand grain, but there is only a net effect. The same logic applies to the atoms as well. 
Actually, when you think about it, the logic does not apply to the heap of sand, the sand grain or the atom, but rather, the logic explains this world. 

We have to conclude that it makes no sense to describe “what” something is made up of or what it is that something else makes.

Let’s take the number 6. As you know, 
6 = 3+3. 

Is 6 made up of two 3s? Is the number 6 kept together by two 3s?

If you say yes, then how come 6=4+2?

So then, is 6 made up of two 3s or is it made up of one 4 and one 2?

Think about that question. What is 6 made out of? If it is made up of two 3s, how can it be made up of a 4 and a 2?

We can’t say that. What we can say is that 6 is the net-effect of causes. In other words, 3 and 3 come together to manifest 6, just as 4 and 2 come together to manifest 6. 

Neither the effects nor their causes are separate entities or things. They are manifestations.

The characteristics of anicca, dukkha and anatta are now becoming evident to us:
from a regular common mindset, we perceive the world in this way: This world is full of entities or things, which all entail their own characteristics and separate existence. Those entities can serve as causes to make or create other entities, which also have their own characteristics. 
If electrons had their own essence, and protons their own, how can their union bring us something so different to both protons and electrons? We tend to think of the atom as another separate essence that exists in this world. And so we see a world of differences.

In the trained mindset, we can now perceive the world in a very new way, the way that the Buddha preached to the world:
This world is in a never-ending process of rearranging energy. This is characteristic of anicca. Energy, which can expand and condense and, by virtue of its arrangement, manifests different characteristics as net effects. Precisely because there are only net effects, these can serve as causes to mingle, rearrange and thereby produce new net effects that are seemingly different in their characteristic but nevertheless still retain their manifested nature. Differences in this world are only differences in arrangement, not in intrinsic essences. That is because there is no essence that keeps the world together. 
Anything in this world is never intrinsically bound together, but rather, is kept together due to energies acting on it. That means the creative potential, the potential for “Creation”, is simply unlimited. Creation is never done; it keeps happening. Nothing is ever finished.  The “content of the world” cannot be distilled down to formulas and patterns that we label as electrons, atoms or give various other names to. The world is “deathless”. Death and birth are only perceptions that appear in our minds when we perceive separate entities, when we cannot perceive the underlying principle, the underlying unity and the underlying nature.