The Dialogue
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Vince had been long awaiting his meeting with Ajan Rimpoche, an affable and notable Buddhist who would come out of his months of retreat to meet with people. Ajan had spent his childhood and teenage years as a rebellious and arrogant young man, until one day when a turn of events led him to attend Buddhist talk followed by a retreat in Vietman. One thing led to another and there was no looking back. He had been a Buddhist for decades and had spent several years in Dharamshala with the Dalai Lam.

Vince had some questions and views he had long thought about, and wanted to discuss them with Ajan.

Vince drove to the monastery over at Berkeley where Ajan was supposed to give a talk and have an evening of discussion with the people who were attending the event. The place was located in a quite street. It had a meditation hall, and a discussion room. Ajan was with a fellow Buddhist talking with people who had gathered to have a dialogue. Following the discussion, there was a session of meditation. Later on Vince got a chance to talk to Ajan.

"If human psyche is manifestation of a universal consciousness and we waver between one level of consciousness to the other, does that mean that God is also in doubt at times, that he is also trying to figure out his own nature. Or rather we, as human race aspire to become one with her - the one who is all aware."

Ajan smiled, carefully adjusted his robe over his arm and said, "The ocean is vast and infinite composition of water. Think of us as ripples in this huge body of water. If what you experience as God were to be this ocean, we would be the ripples. As a ripple tries to attain harmony with ocean, the ocean pervades entirety and these ripples as well."

"Only that the ripples in this case are intelligent and have devised measures to try to observe the ocean," Vince said with playful sarcasm.

Ajan smiled, "You are right, we can look beyond our confined existence and try to fathom the entirety and magnanimity of the entire existence."

There was a brief pause as Ajan took a sip of tea from the cup.

Vince said, "Where do science and spirituality merge? There seems to be reluctance in the minds of mainstream scientists to accept the possibility of something beyond what we know within the realm of science and that can be modeled, observed, and quantified. Young faculty members at universities have their tenures to defend, aspiring scientist have a career to pursue, and young entrepreneurs have businesses to build."

"There are increasing number of minds exploring the boundaries of science and spirituality. In the absence of either, we as human race would be missing the realm of a complete experience. Physicists are convinced of entanglement of particles in the universe, the quantum uncertainly opens up the possibility of several new models beyond the views of world based on the Einstein’s and Newton’s works," said Ajan.

He continued, "Feelings like serenity, faith, trust and optimism have remained unaccounted and disregarded over the past century, at least in the mainstream science. Anything unquantifiable has been dismissed as unreal. We cannot write equations to describe the joy we feel watching a child play, listening to a rhythmic composition, or admiring a work of art. These are perhaps the reasons why we have evolved to a materialistic viewpoint. The influence of the religion, concept of a creator with certain attributes came with its costs and caused humanity to suffer, and science served as a savior then. Today we are at a point, where we have discounted the essence of looking beyond what lets us bridge the complexity of life. If you think about it, our bodies and minds have evolved to give us a glimpses of the scheme of things - glimpses that we can process, that we can efficiently store in our mind’s operating system and get along living our lives. Our brain matches patterns as our eyes capture the world as we see it. We thus relive our past experiences."

Vince and Ajan chatted for several hours. The sun had set and it was dark outside. Vince had enough food for thought, until he saw Ajan again in another three months.

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