This post summarizes a thought experiment I developed through a conversation about Buddhism, consciousness, quantum mechanics, and the structure of the universe. It is not intended as a claim that Buddhism is physics, nor as an established scientific theory. Rather, it asks whether several ideas can be understood through a common conceptual model.
1. Could the universe be like Conway’s Game of Life?
Conway’s Game of Life begins with remarkably simple local rules. Yet those rules generate complicated structures: oscillators, gliders, self-reproducing patterns, and computational behavior.
This suggests a possibility: perhaps the physical laws we observe are not necessarily the deepest rules of reality. They could themselves be high-level emergent patterns produced by something much simpler underneath.
In this picture, the universe can be thought of as an evolving state:
current state + foundational rules + constrained randomness -> next state
What we call particles, fields, chemistry, biology, minds, and perhaps even spacetime could be increasingly high-level stable patterns within that evolution.
2. Cause, condition, and dependent origination
This immediately reminded me of the Buddhist idea of dependent origination (缘起): phenomena do not exist independently; they arise when the necessary causes and conditions are present.
A compact expression is:
此有故彼有，此生故彼生。
When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises.
Instead of imagining the universe as a collection of fundamentally independent objects, we can imagine it as a continuously evolving network of relationships and conditional transitions.
In that sense, perhaps the deepest “rule” is not a list of objects at all, but a rule about how states condition subsequent states.
3. Randomness cannot simply be noise
I initially wondered whether true randomness might be fundamental to consciousness. Quantum mechanics appears to contain irreducibly probabilistic measurement outcomes, whereas conventional computers and AI systems normally use deterministic computation plus pseudorandomness.
But an important refinement emerged: randomness by itself explains almost nothing.
Pure randomness produces noise. For complex structures to emerge, randomness must operate inside constraints. Quantum outcomes, for example, are probabilistic, but their probability distributions are highly structured by the quantum state and its dynamics.
So the more interesting model is not simply “rules + randomness,” but:
structured possibility + lawful evolution + constrained randomness
The rules determine what transitions are possible and with what probabilities; randomness selects among possibilities. Persistent structures survive because the rules permit them to persist.
Whether quantum randomness is actually necessary for consciousness remains an open and speculative question. Randomness alone certainly does not constitute consciousness or free will.
4. Perhaps time is not a flowing substance
The Game of Life does not really need a metaphysical river called “time.” It has configurations and an ordering relation: state N gives rise to state N+1.
This raises the possibility that what we experience as time is an emergent description of ordered change.
Relativity makes this idea more interesting. There is no universal absolute “now.” Different observers divide spacetime differently, while causal influence is constrained by light cones and the invariant speed of light.
That suggests replacing the image of a universal clock with a causal structure:
event -> allowed influence -> subsequent event
From this perspective, the speed of light is deeply connected not merely with motion but with the geometry of causality: it determines which events can influence which other events.
This does not prove that the universe is a cellular automaton. But it makes the analogy more interesting: a fundamental theory might be built around relationships and causal transitions rather than an externally flowing time parameter.
5. The Big Bang might not be the absolute beginning
Another possibility follows naturally. If the deeper system has no privileged first step, perhaps any sufficiently complete state can be treated mathematically as an “initial condition” for evolution in one direction.
Then the Big Bang might represent the beginning of our observable cosmological history without necessarily being the beginning of all reality.
There are cosmological models in which our observable universe is only a region of a larger structure, although none of this establishes a particular multiverse theory.
The Buddhist idea of beginninglessness (无始) becomes an interesting philosophical parallel: asking for the first link in an endless causal network may itself be based on an inappropriate model of time.
6. Individuals as temporary local patterns
In this framework, an individual is not a permanent substance. A person is a highly organized, self-maintaining local pattern that persists for some interval and eventually dissipates.
This is close to the Buddhist concepts of impermanence (无常) and non-self (无我).
The important point is that “temporary” does not mean “isolated” or “meaningless.” Quite the opposite: a local pattern exists only because of the larger network of conditions sustaining it. The boundary between individual and environment is useful, but not absolute.
A whirlpool is recognizable and persistent, but it cannot be separated from the river. Likewise, an individual may be understood as a dynamically maintained pattern within a much larger causal process.
7. Entanglement: correlation without classical separateness
Quantum entanglement initially seems compatible with this picture because an entangled pair is described by a joint quantum state that cannot generally be decomposed into two independent states.
But the classical “two points on one wave” analogy is inadequate. A classical wave has definite properties whether or not we measure them. Quantum entanglement involves probability amplitudes and correlations that cannot be reproduced by a simple local hidden-variable picture.
A better conceptual connection is therefore not “everything secretly communicates instantaneously,” but rather:
what we call separate objects may not correspond to independent underlying states.
Measurement gives a definite outcome to an observer while preserving correlations prescribed by the joint state. Importantly, entanglement does not permit faster-than-light communication.
How to interpret the apparent collapse is interpretation-dependent. Copenhagen-like interpretations, Many-Worlds, relational quantum mechanics, QBism, and other approaches tell different ontological stories while agreeing on the experimental predictions.
So the “single evolving pattern” idea is best treated as a philosophical intuition, not an explanation that replaces quantum mechanics.
8. Observation and the observer’s experienced world
One idea that emerged was that each observation selects a definite experienced history from a set of quantum possibilities.
That wording must be handled carefully. It does not necessarily mean human consciousness physically collapses the entire universe. In modern physics, measurement can be understood as physical interaction and decoherence without requiring a conscious observer.
Still, from the first-person perspective, we never experience a probability distribution as such. We experience outcomes. Our lived world is always a particular history.
This creates an interesting distinction between:
- the mathematical space of possible outcomes,
- the physical processes governing their probabilities,
- and the particular sequence of outcomes experienced by an observer.
9. What, then, is free will?
I considered whether free will might simply be a manifestation of fundamental randomness.
But randomness alone is not agency. If a decision were generated by a quantum coin flip, it would be unpredictable, but it would not thereby become “mine” in the meaningful sense of intention or responsibility.
A more interesting possibility is that what we call agency is an emergent property of a self-modeling causal system: past conditions constrain it, stochasticity may contribute variability, and higher-level feedback allows the system to model alternatives and modify its future behavior.
From a Buddhist perspective, this fits reasonably well with conditioned intention. There need not be an absolutely independent self for intentions and choices to have causal consequences.
10. Twelve links of dependent origination as a self-reinforcing process
The Twelve Links of Dependent Origination can be interpreted as a description of how a self-sustaining psychological and existential loop arises:
无明 ignorance -> 行 formations -> 识 consciousness -> 名色 name-and-form -> 六入 six sense bases -> 触 contact -> 受 feeling -> 爱 craving -> 取 clinging -> 有 becoming -> 生 birth -> 老死 aging and death
At a psychological scale, the sequence can happen repeatedly within ordinary experience. Contact produces feeling; feeling conditions craving; craving becomes grasping; grasping reinforces a particular mode of becoming and identity.
Seen as a dynamical system, samsara (轮回) is therefore not merely “a soul traveling from body to body.” It is a self-reinforcing causal process that continually reconstructs identification, craving, action, and suffering.
The Buddhist intervention is fascinating: change the causal process and the downstream pattern changes. Remove ignorance and craving, and the feedback loop no longer reproduces itself in the same way.
11. The Four Great Elements as properties, not modern chemical elements
The Buddhist 地、水、火、风 (earth, water, fire, wind) should not be confused with modern fundamental particles or chemical elements.
They are better understood phenomenologically as classes of experienced physical qualities:
- 地: solidity, resistance, extension;
- 水: cohesion and fluidity;
- 火: temperature and transformation;
- 风: motion, pressure, expansion and contraction.
In meditation they function as a way of decomposing “my body” into impersonal processes and qualities. Instead of experiencing the body as a single permanent entity, one observes changing physical phenomena arising according to conditions.
That fits the broader pattern perspective surprisingly well, without pretending that ancient Buddhist categories are modern physics.
12. The four jhanas and four formless attainments
This led to the question of meditation itself.
The four jhanas (四禅) can be understood as progressively quieter and more unified configurations of experience. Coarse sensory desire and discursive activity diminish; joy becomes subtler; equanimity and clarity become increasingly prominent.
The four formless attainments then refine the object of experience further:
- 空无边处 — boundless space
- 识无边处 — boundless consciousness
- 无所有处 — nothingness
- 非想非非想处 — neither perception nor non-perception
It is tempting to interpret these as literally accessing deeper layers of the physical universe. I think that would go too far. A more defensible connection to our thought experiment is phenomenological: these states progressively dismantle the ordinary model of “I am this bounded body located here, looking at a world over there.”
They demonstrate experimentally, from the first-person perspective, how radically the structure of experienced reality can change when the conditions constructing it change.
13. Why jhana is not enlightenment
This distinction became crucial.
A highly stable or expansive state is still a state. It arises because of conditions and disappears when those conditions disappear.
The Buddha’s awakening was therefore not simply “the deepest possible meditation.” Traditional Buddhism describes the decisive transition as insight: seeing the conditioned nature of experience, dependent origination, impermanence, non-self, suffering, and the cessation of the processes that generate suffering.
Using the Game of Life analogy:
- ordinary consciousness is absorbed in a particular pattern;
- concentration makes the pattern extraordinarily stable and clear;
- formless meditation radically changes the scale and structure of the experienced pattern;
- insight recognizes that every one of these states is itself conditioned;
- awakening is no longer mistaking any transient configuration for an independent, permanent self.
This is perhaps the most important connection to the whole thought experiment.
14. Awakening as awareness of being part of the process
The formulation I find most compelling is simple:
You are part of the evolving pattern, and you are aware of that.
But Buddhist awakening would require one additional step. It is not merely intellectually believing “I am part of the universe.” Even that statement can preserve a subtle entity called “I” that supposedly merges with another entity called “the universe.”
Dependent origination points somewhere more radical: both “self” and “world” are relational constructions arising from conditions. There is no need to discover a permanent observer outside the process.
Awareness itself is part of the conditioned unfolding.
The practical consequence is not cosmic omniscience. It is freedom from compulsively treating transient processes as “me” and “mine.” That weakening of grasping is what connects insight to the cessation of suffering.
15. A compact model
The whole thought experiment can be summarized like this:
Reality: an evolving network of conditioned relationships.
Rules: constrain how one configuration can give rise to another.
Quantum randomness: may select among allowed outcomes, but always within lawful probability structures.
Physical laws: possibly fundamental, possibly emergent from deeper structure—we do not yet know.
Time: perhaps better understood through change and causal ordering than as an independently flowing substance.
Individuals: temporary, self-maintaining local patterns.
Consciousness: an unresolved phenomenon arising within this process; quantum randomness alone does not explain it.
Samsara: self-reinforcing causal patterns of ignorance, craving, grasping, becoming, and suffering.
Meditation: a way to manipulate and directly inspect the construction of experience.
Awakening: seeing conditioned phenomena as conditioned, ceasing to mistake temporary patterns for an independent self, and thereby ending the grasping that generates suffering.
Closing thought
Perhaps the most interesting meeting point between Buddhism and science is not the claim that ancient Buddhists somehow discovered quantum mechanics. They did not formulate modern physics, and physics does not experimentally establish Buddhist metaphysics.
The deeper similarity is methodological and structural.
Both invite us to distrust the apparent solidity of things and ask instead:
What are the conditions under which this phenomenon arises? What relationships sustain it? What happens when those conditions change?
Conway’s Game of Life gives us a powerful intuition: extraordinarily complicated worlds can emerge from surprisingly simple rules. Buddhism adds another question: if the thing we call “self” is also an emergent, conditioned pattern, what happens when that pattern becomes capable of seeing its own construction?
That may be one useful way to think about awakening: a local pattern in the universe becoming lucid about its own dependent arising.