For the John Templeton Foundation, I wrote about an engaging dialogue between an Italian physicist and the Dalai Lama’s personal physician.
An expert in quantum gravity and a Hollywood-born family doctor-turned Buddhist monk met recently to discuss whether the writings of a second-century Buddhist thinker could address some of the metaphysical paradoxes of modern physics. In the October 29 event, Carlo Rovelli, the author of the acclaimed Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and Helgoland**, spoke for nearly three hours with Barry Kerzin, who balances his monastic vocation with work in academic medicine and as the personal physician to the 14th Dalai Lama. Their discussion centered on Nagarjuna, who lived in India around the second century C.E. and wrote Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, the foundational text of the madhyamaka (middle-way) school of Buddhist philosophy.
“What is real? Nagarjuna’s Middle Way” was hosted by the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (QOOI) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, with funding from the John Templeton Foundation. The discussion was moderated by Marios Christodoulou, an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong, where Kerzin is also an adjunct professor.