ABSTRACT
In 1997, I attended a Mind and Life dialogue between H. H. the Dalai Lama and prominent American and European physicists in Dharamsala, India. Among them was Professor Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna, an expert in quantum mechanics who, the following year,oversaw the first successful quantum teleportation experiment. Afterdescribing the sequence of experiments that established quantum mechanics as a field, research in which light was found to be paradoxically both a particle and a wave, Professor Zeilinger asked the Dalai Lama if he had any questions. The Dalai Lama, attentive and absorbed in the narrative explanation, nodded and began an intriguing exchange, which went something like this: “This history and these findings confirm theBuddhist view that if you analyse any phenomenon in search of its essence, as you scientists have done with light, you will arrive at the realization of its ultimate lack of inherent existence: its emptiness. Yet, I am left wondering how this knowledge, these insights about the nature of light, affected you.”
