Buddha developed a profound and detailed, universal theory of unity, which accounts for everything related to mind and consciousness. The Buddha obtained his deep insights by means of mental techniques and training. Using his own mind as both research equipment and research object, his approach was at least as empirical - i.e. verifiable by experience or experiment - as that of modern physics.
Contemporary, mainstream quantum physics and cosmology in unison are close at what is dubbed a "Grand Unification Theory" which supposedly explains all phenomena and is based on empirical evidences gathered in a handful of High-Energy Physics Laboratories. Well, rather, they were close at it by the end of the 20.th century whereafter the quest for a unified theory, prevalent in main-stream physics for most of the 20'th century, seems to have dissolved into a plethora of theoretical speculations, which seem to have in common that they are un-verifiable by experience or experiment and thus are neither empirical nor scientific.
The great stumbling block for modern physics is that at the very experimental frontiers, where experiments are conducted under extreme conditions, it has been verified that the behavior of matter / energy / fields at the very smallest observable scales, ponderable in the labs, depends on how it is being observed. It is exactly here the teachings of the Buddha can come in handy. Buddha came to the same conclusions about the physical reality on the very smallest scales as modern physics. However, Buddha didn't need any multi billion dollar high-energy physics laboratory and tremendous amounts of explosive energy to make his discoveries - the shade of a tree, a pillow and a properly trained mind is all that it takes.
Regards, Project Buddha Society.
Excerpt of the Day
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by Bhikkhu Bodhi
To eliminate ignorance we need wisdom, but how is wisdom to be acquired? As indubitable knowledge of the ultimate nature of things, wisdom cannot be gained by mere learning, by gathering and accumulating a battery of facts. However, the Buddha says, wisdom can be cultivated. It comes into being through a set of conditions, conditions which we have the power to develop. These conditions are actually mental factors, components of consciousness, which fit together into a systematic structure that can be called a path in the word's essential meaning: a courseway for movement leading to a goal. The goal here is the end of suffering, and the path leading to it is the Noble Eightfold Path with its eight factors: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.