Transcriber: Beck Kerdman Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
Mathematics and meditation.
These are the two extreme opposites in life.
Between these two opposites, life spans.
Why do I want today
to draw your attention to mathematics and meditation?
Which both, I guess, are fields which are quite far from most of you.
So the first reason is because since I was 17,
I devoted my professional life to mathematics.
First as a student, then as a university professor,
as a teacher but also as the head of a technology center
which is called Softwarepark Hagenberg.
And at the same time, since I was 17,
I became very much interested in meditation,
and since I was 31,
I'm regularly meditating.
So I just want to share
most part of my life with you today.
And the second reason is
because if you understand
mathematics and meditation, and the span in between,
then we can understand current world and current life,
which for some people look very complicated.
But in fact, it is simple.
In order to understand mathematics and meditation,
we just have to understand these three arrows,
and in fact, a fourth one.
And the fourth one bends back -
comes from the three arrows and bends back.
So, what do these arrows mean?
They explain how we deal with life, with reality.
For example, here you see a platform,
oil platform, drilling platform,
and we want to control the valves and the pipes -
50 valves, 50 pipes - in an optimal way
so that finally, we want to optimize the flow of crude oil.
And what we have to do is to observe many things about these platforms:
the pressure and the construction, and the length and many different things.
Observation, observation.
Not only by our senses,
but of course today by devices for measuring.
And then we have to think,
how to solve this problem of optimal flow.
And this basically is a mathematical problem.
I promise you not to shock you today with any formula,
but in principle, it is what we call a nonlinear system of equations.
And if you know how to solve this,
then you can find the optimal position of the valves
that makes it possible to control the flow of crude oil in an optimal way.
So by thinking, we find out how we should act
before we even touch any of the valves.
So observing, thinking, acting, these are the three arrows.
And in an oversimplified way,
we could say that the cultivated -
over the centuries, cultivated way of observing,
this is called science.
And the cultivation of thinking over the centuries,
this is called mathematics.
And the cultivation of acting is called technology.
So it's science, mathematics, technology.
And now you can do some exercises about millions and millions of situations
you will encounter in real life
but also in more technical life.
For example, if you go to a supermarket,
and you see two boxes of apples, and one is,
say, 1.50€ for two kilos,
and the other is 2.50€ for three kilos,
you observe this,
but then you start thinking a little bit.
I hope you found out which choice is better.
And when you did this little calculation,
little mathematics,
then you'll choose the cheaper one.
And millions of other situations and then you will see,
observing, thinking, acting,
these are the three arrows.
It's like a wheel.
And these situations can be arbitrarily complex.
For example, you can observe, so forget about the platform,
you can observe on a computer
a person who has raw files,
and then he encodes the files
with some encoding encryption system like Keka, for example,
and you'll see the non-encrypted files,
the encrypted files, thousands of such pairs,
and then you could find out the password,
only by thinking.
And interestingly enough,
the method that is behind finding out passwords in such a way
is again, solving nonlinear systems of equations.
Now, these are the three arrows. What is the fourth arrow?
The fourth arrow, we call it reflection, self-application.
Self-reference.
And what is means is the following:
that all this development of science, mathematics and technology
over the past centuries
must not only be used in order to make our life more successful,
the material life more successful, more goal oriented,
and solving problems from real world, but all the recites of this cycle,
observing, thinking and acting,
was also used in order to improve
our technology of observing,
thinking and acting.
So we also could say:
invention was used in order to improve our technology of inventing.
So it is bending back. This is self-reference.
It's self-application,
and self-application is not something artificial,
it is basically the intelligence of nature
and the nature of intelligence.
It is how evolution happens.
Now, this is great. It’s all great.
And we all experience the big success and benefits
of this observation, thinking, acting cycle
and its self-reflection.
Our lives become, in some way, from the material point of view,
more and more easy, more speedy, more effective.
And of course, all this is great, and we all can enjoy this,
but there’s also a downside to this,
and maybe many of you experience this,
that this hectic run of this wheel
of observing, thinking, acting,
it’s getting faster and faster.
We have the feeling it’s getting so fast that for some of us it’s too fast,
and people have the feeling that they’re not driving this wheel
but they get more and more driven by this wheel.
And first-class citizens of our technological age
are in danger
to becoming first class patients in first class hospitals for burnout
and all these diseases of modern life.
So the question for all of us today more than in any other age
must also be: "How can we stay the masters of this wheel,
and how can we prevent to become slaves of this wheel?"
And the answer is meditation.
So what is meditation?
Now again, this is very simple actually
to explain, and I don't do it by words.
Just look to the next few slides.
Okay.
(Applause)
So meditation gives you the possibility to experience silence.
And actually, I should have stopped here.
It's very difficult to stop at the right moment
because actually
the silence you experience in meditation
is not doing nothing.
It's not not-observing, not-thinking,
not-action, it's not the nothing,
it's not boredom.
It is just the moment before the yellow arrows disappear
and only the self-reflection arrow stays.
What can the self-reflection arrow experience?
It can only experience itself.
So in this moment when silence happens,
consciousness experiences itself,
and this is the state of meditation,
this is the state which we can call silence.
We can call it many different ways.
Every word is wrong,
so the experience cannot be replaced by speaking about the experience.
The experience of experiencing silence in meditation
is a very blissful one, it is not an intellectual one.
It's not a mathematical one.
It is a very blissful human experience,
and it can give you the freedom, the feeling
to be the master and not the slave.
It can give you the experience of the freedom
that if you go back to outer life,
you have every option to choose,
every possibility to put your attention on whatsoever.
On our platforms or on apples or on coding or whatsoever,
and be successful with your mathematics.
So mathematics is here for making you successful
in outer life, in real life.
Meditation is here for making you happy.
So, of course, the question is
how can we improve our mathematics,
our ability to do mathematics,
and how can we improve our ability to experience silence?
And of course, already, a little improvement
in both the intellectual capability of doing thinking,
and on the other hand,
improving a little bit our ability to experience science
will have very beneficial and drastic impacts on your life.
And so the question is,
how can you improve your mathematics,
your thinking,
and how can you improve your ability of meditating,
meaning going into the direction of silence?
Now, for the first question
one possibility is,
if you live in my area,
just write me an email
and I will invite you to some of my seminars,
which I call explanation training,
meaning I will teach you a little bit of mathematics,
how to improve our thinking ability without mentioning any formula.
Okay?
And the other question is,
how can you start practice meditating?
There are many possibilities today.
It's a pluralistic society which we can enjoy.
There are so many possibilities.
Unfortunately, in all my hectic life as a mathematician,
I did not find the time for becoming a meditation teacher.
But as Confucius says,
whose temple I just visited a couple of weeks ago,
was very fulfilling -
he has one important message.
And he says life starts only with 17.
So maybe in the rest of my life
I will find the possibility to become a meditation teacher
and hopefully, I can help society more than by my mathematics.
But in the meantime, if you are interested, also write me,
and I will give you the address
of a couple of very good meditation teachers whom I trust.
So finally,
what does all this have to do with the topic of this TEDLinz workshop
whose title is Reconnect the Mathematics,
meaning the center of this scientific,
technological, economic spiral?
Mathematics gives you the possibility to connect in a very efficient way.
To what? To the whole of the universe.
We reach further and further in our scientific discoveries.
It gives you the possibilities
to connect to deeper and deeper levels of nature
until the very finest layers in quantum physics, etc., etc.
It gives you the possibility to connect with all the world in global society
through the internet.
You won't believe, but the basis of the internet is mathematics.
Okay? So mathematics gives you the possibility to connect
more intensively and more intensively.
And meditation gives you the possibility to disconnect,
like a switch in a moment.
You are the master, and you need not stay in the wheel.
But the actual experience of meditation is much deeper.
It is not disconnection, it connects you with all.
So mathematics is the arts of connecting you with everything.
Meditation is the arts of connecting you with all.
So in this sense, it is reconnecting.
This is the reason I thought that maybe it makes sense
if I tell you a little bit today
about mathematics and meditation,
which span life, in a certain sense.
And span means enjoy everything in between,
enjoy your thinking,
enjoy your experience of silence, and enjoy everything in between.
And here is a little question for you:
If you look to this slide,
I want you to explain what it means to experience silence.
And also it explains what is mathematics
because mathematics is now just a thing which is not here.
Please look to this slide
and think about why this slide is incorrect.
Yes, it's incorrect.
There's a copyright on it.
There is no copyright for thinking
and no copyright for experiencing silence.
It's your property.
Thank you.
(Applause)