Fred Cooper: 08-27-2014: Quantum Physics and Emptiness: How do they inform one another?

Summary: Episode Description: Dr. Cooper considers the affinities, and divergent aims, between the deconstruction undertaken by physicists and the deconstruction/de-reification of Dharma practice: for instance, relaxing into the unfabricated Nature of Mind isn't a physicist's aim. And yet, he says, there are deep parallels, and modern physics offers a valuable store of metaphors for meditative experience, subtle metaphors that improve in certain ways on colloquial "ocean and wave"-type imagery. Along the way he gives several quick and zesty physics lessons in such topics like the quantum vacuum and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Bio : Dr. Fred Cooper is a quantum field theorist who was a Ph.D. student of the Nobel Prize-winning Physicist Sheldon Glashow, one of the co-inventors of the Standard Model of Elementary Particle Physics. He has written over 200 published papers in various physics Journals and has co-authored a book, "Supersymmetry and Quantum Mechanics." He has been a student of Tai Situ Rinpoche since 1981. He has also received direct Mahamudra transmissions from the first KaluRinpoche and VV Mingyur Rinpoche. Fred has been teaching meditation at Karma and ShangpaKagyu centers affiliated with Kalu Rinpoche for over 20 years and he currently is the President of Kagyu Shenpen Kunchab Buddhist Center in Santa Fe, NM.