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What a Medieval Zen Monk Can Teach Us About Quantum Computing
John Himes
August 9, 2024
You may think it strange to reach for a Zen Buddhist text written in Japan in 1233 to reflect on quantum computing (QC) in the 21st century. But quantum is strange.
So what does something written nearly 800 years ago have to do with cutting-edge technology in 2024?
As I’ve learned more about QC over the past couple years, I’ve found myself coming back to the writings of Zen Master Dōgen, a renowned monk, writer, poet, and philosopher. In his work Actualizing the Fundamental Point, there are parallels between the analogies he presents to describe an ontological philosophy and the fundamental concepts of QC.
Both are strange. They approach the incomprehensible.
They touch on what is most foundational about reality, the proverbial iceberg hidden beneath the waves, and they give us ways of approaching or even interacting with that reality under the surface. It’s always tangential—never direct—and it’s tough to wrap our minds around.
But what I love, both about this Zen philosophy and about quantum technology, is that that’s kind of the point. Reality is there, whether or not we are able to swallow it whole and come up with tidy words to describe it.
The journey to understanding is long and circuitous. This claim applies just as wholly to engineering quantum technology as it does to practicing Zen in pursuit of enlightenment.
A vastness contained within the miniscule
“Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water,” writes Dōgen in Actualizing the Fundamental Point. “The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dew drops on the grass, or even in one drop of water.”
This metaphor speaks to how completely reality is reflected within each of us, or perhaps even within every being. It links the external and the internal, holding them distinct while simultaneously merging them together. A tiny drop of water holds a great vastness within itself.
There’s also the makings of a qubit here.
The fundamental building block of a quantum computer, the qubit, is special for a few reasons. One of them is that qubits exhibit superposition, the quantum mechanical property that lets them exist in a liminal, probabilistic state between one and zero.
While in superposition, the qubit represents one, it represents zero, and it represents the infinite span of real numbers in between these two integers. On the other hand, digital computing (emphasis on the word digit) can only use ones and zeros.
A qubit’s probability distribution along this spectrum varies depending on the moment, but the idea here is that a single thing—in this case an incredibly small thing like an individual atom—is representative of a reality that is so much larger than itself.
Let’s think about this as containerized infinity.
Just as the moon is wholly reflected within a single dewdrop, a qubit in superposition contains a vastness that far exceeds its diminutive stature.
The result is a simulation of reality that is reflective of reality itself. Unlike the traditional computer’s digital bits that affix themselves rigidly to ones and zeroes, the quantum computer’s qubits reflect reality as it truly is, without the limitation of compromise. Information in bits is limited to the finite past, while information in qubits can contain the infinite yet bounded possibility that is the future.
“The depth of the drop is the height of the moon,” continues Dōgen. “Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, and realizes the limitlessness of the sky.”
It’s not just that the dewdrop is painting a picture of the moon. It’s that the vastness itself is fully embodied by the dewdrop, that by reflecting the moon it actually contains the entirety of the moon in that moment.
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The observer effect
The problem with all of this is that we can never directly observe it.
Incredible vastness may exist within the dewdrop, but we can only look at it from one given angle at a time.
Dōgen gives an example to help us think about this. “When you sail in a boat to the middle of the ocean, no land is in sight, and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular, and does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round nor square; its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time.”
Our perception cannot take in the infinite.
In quantum mechanics, we encounter a similar phenomenon called the wave function collapse. Think of Schrödinger’s cat. When it’s in the box, we can’t see whether it’s dead or alive, and therefore it is simultaneously both dead and alive. This superposition is mathematically defined by a wave function, with the probability skewing more toward dead as more time passes and the cat is more likely to die. Open the box and that wave function collapses: the cat is either dead or alive.
Basically what this means for quantum computing is that we can never measure—and therefore never perceive—a qubit in superposition. The very act of looking at it collapses its vastness down to a single point. The infinite gradient between zero and one instantly becomes zero or one, either/or.
This is at least true for us, those who do the perceiving. If we did not know any better, we would easily assume that the face value we perceive is the truth itself. We would not understand the entirety of our situation, the infinite yet bounded possibility that underwrites every outcome, because all we see is the end. We see the results, the one or the zero made manifest.
By capturing these fundamental truths that are not at all obvious or intuitive, both quantum computing and Zen philosophy help us to reach beyond ourselves and conceptualize the nature of things as they are. Only then can we act accordingly.
That could mean reaching a state of enlightenment, as Dōgen would have it, or it could be running computer simulations that incorporate the containerized infinities that make up our physical reality.
Practical quantum technology in 2024
By understanding that the vastness of the moon may be held within a single dewdrop, we gain something real, something tangible.
As Dōgen puts it, “When you find your way in this moment, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point.” For him, this practice came in the form of sitting meditation as well as traveling, learning, writing, teaching, and even opening his own school of Zen Buddhism.
Developing quantum technology is practical engineering. Its uses are practical. So while the journey itself may at times seem abstract and difficult to grasp, the end result is fully centered in the here and now.
The fundamental point is where theory meets practice. It’s where scientific research and theoretical physics actualize into functional technology.
Today’s innovators are finding their way in this moment to create quantum information processing systems that can run analysis on fundamental truths incapable of being captured by digital information. These are the same truths about reality that a Zen monk wrote about so many centuries ago.
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