01 The Universe

  

1   Most religions have myths that attempt to explain the origin and nature of the universe. The  ancient Egyptians believed that the god Khnumm created the universe, and then made men out of clay after which the godess Hathor breathed life into them. The ancient Greeks believed that  everything was made by Oceanus, the primodial waters. The ancient Jews and Christians had two creation legends, both contained in the Bible.

The first says that the Hebrew god created the universe and light and darkness on the first day,  the water and dry land on the second day, all the plants on the third day, the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day, all the birds and animals on the fifth day, and the first man and woman on the  sixth day.

The second creation legend in the bible says that God made the earth, then the first man, then all the plants and animals, and finally he created woman. In ancient China they believed that P'an Ku chiselled the universe out of chaos and then changed his bones into rocks, his flesh into earth, his teeth into metal and so on, the whole process taking 18,000 years. The different religions have ideas concerning the age and extent of the universe, but most of them are within the bounds of very limited human imagination. The Bible, for example, implies that the whole universe is only several thousand years old. All of these myths and legends have been replaced by the modern scientific model of the universe.

2 The development of modern physics has caused scientists to come to the conclusion that the universe does not have an ultimate beginning. It is constantly changing from one form into another, coming into being and being destroyed, a process without either beginning would require explaining how all the energy in the universe came into being out of no-thing, and this would contradict every principle of physics. The Buddha agrees that the universe, or as he calls it, samsara, is without beginning. He says:

Undetermined is the beginning of this universe. The Furthest point of beings moving on from birth to birth, being bound by ignorance and craving, cannot be known.

3 Scientists now believe that the universe is a pulsating system, that it expands to its furthest limit then contracts with all energy compressed into a single lump, until pressure becomes so intense that there is an explosion, or "big bang", once again sending all energy outwards. This expanding and contracting of the universe takes place over a period of billions of years. Again, the Buddha was familiar with the idea of an expanding and contracting universe. He says:

Sooner or later there comes a time when, after a long period, this universe contracts...But sooner or later, after a very long period of  time, this universe begins to expand again.

4 The invention of the conventional telescope and the more recent radio telescope has allowed astronomers to understand not only the origin and nature of the universe, but its actual structure.  We now know that the universe is made up of billions of stars, planets, asteroids and comets. In places, all these objects cluster together into disk- or spiral-shaped forms that astronomers call galaxies.  Our own planet earth is a tiny speck in the Milk Way galaxy, which contains about 100 billion stars and which is about 60,000 light years across. It is also now known that galaxies occur in groups.

The Milky Way is one of a group of about two dozens galaxies have only been known about in the West since the invention of sophisticated scientific equipment, Buddhist texts speak of most of these things. The ancient Buddhists, just like modern astronomers, described galaxies as being disk- or spiral-shaped, the Pali word for galaxy being "cakkavala",  which is derived from he word "cakka"  (wheel).  

The Buddha very clearly and very accurately describes the groups of galaxies that scientists have only recently discovered. He calls them world systems (loka dhatu)  and says that they are of different sizes:  the thousand-fold  world  system, the ten thousand-fold world system, the major world system, and soon. He describes them as consisting of thousands of suns and planets, although astronomers today talk not of thousands but of millions.

As far as these suns and moons revolve, shining and shedding their light in space, that far extends the thousands-fold world system. In it there are thousands of suns, thousands of moons...‚

5 Until fairly recent times, people simply could not think of the vast distances in either time or space that are needed to understand the nature and extent of the universe. Their imagination was  very earthbound. The Bible, for example, conceives of the whole universe being created in six days and implies that creation is a mere few thousand years old.

Today astronomers number the stars in the thousands of  billions, and measure distances in light years, one light year being the distance that light travels in one year. Ancient man simply could not imagine categories this huge. The Buddha, however, was an exception. His wisdom, being infinite, was quite able to understand the concept of an infinite universe. He speaks of  " the black, gloomy regions of darkness between the world systems where even the light of our sun and  moon, powerful and majestic though they are, cannot reach..."  It takes many “kappas” for a world system to disintegrate and then reform, and when the Buddha was asked how long a kappa was, he answered:

          "Long is a kappa. It is not easy to calculate by counting years, 

           centuries or even thousands of centuries."

           "Then can it, Lord, be indicated by a parable?"

          "It can. Imagine a great crag, a great mountain without any chasms or clefts, a solid mass one mile wide, one mile across and one mile high. And imagine that once every hundred years a man were to rub that mountain once with a piece of  Benares cloth. That mountain would sooner wear away than a kappa would pass. And more than one, more than a thousand, more than a hundred thousand such kappas have already passed".

Thus the Buddha  used a simile such as this to give the idea of vast distances in time, just as modern astronomers use the distance that light can travel in a year to give the idea of vast distances in space.

6 The Buddha talks about the nature and extent of the universe only in passing. He did not consider such theorizing and speculating to be essential to the main task in hand, which is the ending of suffering and the attainment of the happiness of  Nirvana. When someone once insisted that the Buddha answer his questions about the extent of the universe, the Buddha compared him to a man wounded with a poison arrow who refused to have the arrow removed until he knew all the details about the person who shot the arrow.

The Buddha then said:

Living the holy life could not be said to depend

on whether the universe is finite or infinite or

both neither. For whether the universe is finite

or not, there is birth, there is ageing, there is

dying, there if grief, sorrow, suffering,

lamentation and despair, and it is for the

overcoming of these that I teach.

Quite clearly, knowing how the universe began cannot help us overcome our suffering nor can it help us develop generosity, virtue or love. And to the Buddha, questions regarding these things  were far more important then idle speculation  about how the universe began.

7 However, the Buddha's  remarkably modern and accurate conception of the universe compels us to ask how he came to know these things. How could someone know about clusters of galaxies and that galaxies are spiral-shaped long before the invention of the telescope ? How was he, living so long ago, able to comprehend the infinity of time and space ?

The only possible answer is that he was what he said he was, a fully enlightened Buddha. His mind was so utterly free from the usual prejudices and delusions that cloud the ordinary human mind that his knowledge was able to extend far beyond the normal human range.

 The Buddha claimed to be a `knower of the worlds' (lokavidu) and evidence supports his claims.