Quantum Buddhas

Can we bridge knowledge and wisdom to repattern our entangled futures, here and now? Reflections from a mindfulness retreat with climate leaders and activists suggest that it's possible.

“We cannot solve a problem of despair at the level of the intellect.”

Dharma Talk, Plum Village, September 2024

Limiting assumptions

Two weeks ago, I was in despair over our missing cat, Charlie. We all longed to see him again. Guided by rationality, we searched for him in all the places that seemed likely or probable. This was the way I have been taught to respond to problems.  

Yet the solution was literally right in front of our eyes. Charlie was locked in our neighbor’s garage while they were away on vacation. Why didn’t we look there?

Our actions were limited by our assumptions. I assumed that it was impossible to get trapped in that garage because the adjacent door was always open. My husband assumed that Charlie was not in there because the neighbors had gone on vacation before he went missing. We were wrong.

Amidst our feelings of despair, the realization that our missing cat was trapped in the garage right in front of us gives new meaning to the saying, “the answer lies within.”  

Bridging knowledge and wisdom

What else am I missing? I know that I have a partial view, thanks to my limiting beliefs and assumptions, blind spots, projections, and biases. I recognize that these factors influence how I perceive problems and solutions. I think about this often.

However, putting this knowledge into practice is more difficult. This is where wisdom comes in. Wisdom is related to insight, including the ability to discern inner qualities and relationships. I leave little space for wisdom when I am dwelling on the past and worrying about the future.

If solutions are right in front of us and the answer really does lie within, the timing was perfect for me to attend a mindfulness retreat at Plum Village in France. This monastery was established by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk who was exiled in 1966 after opposing the Vietnam war and is considered to be the father of mindfulness.

The event, organized by Global Optimism, brought together 150 climate leaders and activists for three and a half days of meditation, deep relaxation, mindful walking, plant-based meals, and dharma talks on topics such as nonduality, relating to nature, interbeing, and the power of presence.

I entered this mindfulness retreat with a mind full of facts, data, information, and knowledge. Review comments, definitions, findings, references, figures, tables, and annexes. After working relentlessly on revisions to the IPBES transformative change assessment, key messages were floating through my head and I was editing text in my sleep.

If I am honest, I would have preferred to attend a mindlessness retreat.

Wake Up

Instead, I turned off my computer and phone for three and a half days, taking my attention away from the assessment and my hopeless efforts to keep up with emails. Finally, a time to reflect on how I can act with integrity in a world of uncertainty and have a positive impact on the future, without being attached to outcomes.

But first, I needed sleep. A lot of sleep. I was not the only one who arrived exhausted. Most of the participants are working day and night, pushing themselves to the limits to make a difference in relation to climate change and biodiversity loss. After the retreat, many would be traveling directly to New York City to organize or attend multiple events at Climate Week. The retreat forced us to put a hold on whatever urgent business we were stressing over — it interrupted our busyness.

On our pillows they had placed a book, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet. This book, written by Thich Nhat Hahn in 2021, emphasizes the importance of waking up, both to the beauty of the Earth and to the suffering in the world. He explains how a strong desire and a mind of love can help us to be buddhas in action:

We have to wake up together. And, if we wake up together, then we have a chance. Our way of living our life and planning our future has led us into this situation. And now we need to look deeply to find a way out, not only as individuals but as a collective, a species. You can no longer count on the elder generation alone. I have often said that one buddha is not enough; we need a collective awakening. All of us have to become buddhas in order for our planet to have a chance.

The miracle of agency

The dharma talks by the monks and nuns at Plum Village stressed that the energy that we bring to each moment through our presence is our impact in the world. Our energy is our impact. Past actions continue to vibrate, and time is circular, not linear. We are encouraged not to underestimate our actions, because our actions always continue to ripen into other actions. We are patterning the world.

Christiana Figueres, the co-founder of Global Optimism and former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) who negotiated the 2015 Paris Agreement, talked about the beauty of our agency. She emphasizes that we can and have to make a choice because we have an effect around the planet: “The miracle of agency is that we touch everything that we do in this present moment. We influence spheres outside of ourselves. In complex adaptive systems, one piece affects the whole. Every thought, word, and act carries our signature over space and time, and we are always rippling out.”

Quantum buddhas

The talks and experiences at Plum Village resonate with my ongoing inquiry into quantum social change, not the least in relation to how wisdom in action and a quality of agency influences the whole, in every moment. Patterning the world is about creating fractals of change, not fragments.

Whereas fragmented patterns maintain separation, fractal patterns produce a coherence that captures both diversity and unity. Social fractals replicate values that apply to the whole, acknowledging the interbeing of people and nature and our entanglement across time and space.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s concept of interbeing means recognizing both conventional truth and ultimate truth. The former describes a relative, historical truth that we relate to through labels and appearances, while the latter describes a deeper, absolute truth. Sister Chân Lăng Nghiêm compared this to David Bohm’s distinction between the explicate and implicate order. They are not separate, and both are necessary. She reminded us that ultimate truth does not erase historical truth – they don’t cancel each other out. As with classical and quantum physics, both truths have their place. Nevertheless, it helps to know which truth a person is speaking from.

Without being mindful that multiple views of reality exist, I get trapped in my limited perspective, and it is easy to feel despondent about the state of the world. Often I do feel grief and despair. I forget about interbeing, intra-actions, entanglement, actionless action, relationality, oneness, and our intra-connections with each other and nature. These elements of timeless wisdom are present in so many philosophies, cosmologies and traditions, including Indigenous and local knowledge.

Does knowledge without wisdom limit our perspective on problems and solutions to one conventional truth? What if our knowledge assessments reflected not just facts and findings, but wisdom? Wisdom is vital, and as Dr. Monica Sharma points out, it is often missing in modern leadership: “When we manifest wisdom in action, we address the underlying causes or root factors of an issue. We operate from a passionate, enthusiastic place, which is essential for empowering others and inspiring them to take action.”

The experience at Plum Village left me and many others smiling and feeling more joyful. I am imagining a world of entangled quantum buddhas who are patterning the past, present, and future in caring and compassionate ways. I see us collapsing a wave of potential here and now, and surprising ourselves with how rapidly change spreads.

I want to be a quantum buddha. And I know that consistency and coherence take practice — mindful practice. And that practice starts now!

“ Act with the urgency of today, but with the actions of eternity.”

The teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh
(as presented by Sister Chân Lăng Nghiêm)