Bridging the Gap between Science and Religion: A Conversation between David Bohm’s Implicate Order and Huayan Buddhist Metaphysics

David Bohm’s implicate order extends far beyond the sole prospect of quantum mechanics. The non-locality embedded in the mathematical formalism indeed calls for a reinvented ontological model that fosters wholeness as an intrinsic characteristic of reality. Such emphasis on wholeness offers a renewed and vividly enlightening way to approach the science and religion relationship, as a model of integration of seemingly diverging discourses on reality. By adducing the possibility that reality is a constant process of enfoldment and unfoldment, which concurrently provides a natural bridge between mind and matter as two mutually entailing aspects of a similar underlying reality, Bohm converges with a religion-philosophical insight instantiated in a Chinese school of Buddhism known as Huayan . As a particular illustration of a wholistic mindset in religious thinking, Huayan presents a metaphysical vision of the cosmos as a vast web of interpenetration, wherein the many parts of the universe reflect a dynamical oneness analogous to a unified mind. The proximity between the two showcases Bohm as a thinker of two worlds, evolving at the frontier where the physical and the spiritual meet. The paper will thus investigate the profundity and uniqueness of Bohm’s wholistic worldview as a way to promote a multidimensional integration between science and religion.