DNA Decipher Journal | July 2013 | Volume 3 | Issue 3 | pp. 383-384 

 

 

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Brief Biography 

Graham Smetham, B.A., studied Mathematics at Essex University, England and Philosophy 

of Religion at Sussex University. During his time at Sussex he taught a subsidiary course for 

scientists on the interconnections between Western science and Eastern philosophical 

perspectives and it was through the investigations undertaken during the preparations for this 

course that he began to have the insights which later developed into wide ranging and 

detailed explorations contained in his first book Quantum Buddhism: Dancing in 

Emptiness. At Sussex he was also part of the Religious Studies society and at one of its 

meetings he met the inspirational Western Theravadin monk Ajahn Sumedho, then the abbot 

of Chithurst monastry, Sussex.  Ajahn Sumedho electrified the audience with his joyful 

effervescent presence and wisdom. At the time Graham was becoming increasingly 

disillusioned with the Western academic practice of endless conceptual juggling with no 

transformational practice and the contact with the community of Chithurst monks and nuns 

convinced him of the need for both intellectual understanding and transformative meditation 

practice. 

Although at that time Graham had a publisher eager to publish his Ph.D. work, illness and 

increasing disillusionment with Western-style academic life led him to abandon an academic 

career and he gave up working on the Ph.D., subsequently he began to lose contact with his 

intellectual and spiritual roots as he pursued other aspects, ultimately less fulfilling, of life’s 

pathways. During this time, however, Buddhism and the philosophy of science always played 

a part in the background as he was always drawn to these subjects and somehow ‘knew’ that 

they were significant for him. He always had a strange feeling that something which had been 

left behind for the moment was still lingering in the wings. 

Then, some twenty years after leaving Sussex University, at a time of extreme personal crisis, 

Graham returned to a serious meditation practice, something that had fallen by the wayside. 

During one meditation session he was astonished to have a profound meditation vision, like 

having a cinema screen inside his head, during which he was surrounded by an assembly of 

Manjushris whilst a bowl of orange nectar at his heart radiated channels of orange nectar to 

the hearts of the surrounding Manjushris. Graham was further astonished to come across a 

book a week or two later in which the vision was described as being one of a set used by 

Buddhist practitioner-philosophers prior to writing dharma texts. Graham subsequently joined 

a Buddhist community and resumed the researches that he had abandoned twenty years 

earlier. The result is Quantum Buddhism: Dancing in Emptiness–Reality Revealed at the 

Interface of Quantum Physics and Buddhist Philosophy. 

Graham has written three more books: The Grand Designer: Discovering the Quantum Mind 

Matrix of the Universe, Quantum Buddhist Wonders of the Universe and Quantum Buddhism 

and the Higgs Discovery: The Power of Emptiness. Further details of these can be found at 

www.shunyatapress.com. Further details of the first book, and some free articles, can be 

found at www.quantumbuddhism.com. 

Graham is currently working on his fifth book Evolution: The Greatest Illusion on Earth, the 

articles in the current issue are draft chapters from this work. 

http://www.shunyatapress.com/
http://www.quantumbuddhism.com/


DNA Decipher Journal | July 2013 | Volume 3 | Issue 3 | pp. 383-384 

 

 

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