Buddhism and the Origin of Life Essay Example

the origin of life and the size of the universe are under The 14 Unanswerable Questions which the Buddha described as counterproductive in the search to self-liberation.

As a result, many Buddhists do not think about these kinds of questions as meaningful to the Buddhist goal of relieving oneself and others from suffering. When a potential follower asked the Buddha for an answer to the problem of cosmogony (Any scientific theory concerning the coming into existence or origin of either the cosmos or universe and the so-called reality of sentient or rational beings), He replied by saying “Suppose someone was hit by a poisoned arrow and his friends and relatives found a doctor able to remove the arrow.

If this man were to say “I will not have this arrow taken out until I know whether the person who had shot it was a priest, a prince or a merchant, his name and his family. I will not have it taken out until I know what kind of bow was used and whether the arrowhead was an ordinary one or an iron one. ” That person would die before all these things are ever known to him. ”This further reiterates Buddha’s’ position on the matter, that our immediate mission is to be enlightened and not to speculate on the metaphysical which we are unlikely to find the answers to.

Although he states that the question is unnecessary in the quest to Enlightenment, The Buddha appears to give a highly detailed answer to this issue. This is found in the Agana Suta which is in the Pali Canon . The Pali Canon is

the standard collection of scriptures in the Theravada Buddhist tradition as preserved in the Pali Language . It is the most complete extant early Buddhist canon. The Buddha, speaking to ;Vasettha who was a former high priest or Brahmin ; goes on to present a model of cosmology that describes the universe expanding and contracting over extremely long periods of time.

This description has been found by some to be consistent with the Big Bang Theory and the Expanding Universe model. The Buddha seems to be saying in the Agana Suta that the universe expands outward, reaches a stable point and then turns its motion back to a central point and is thus destroyed . This process is then repeated infinitely . As this process is repeated, the objects within the universe go through periods of development and change over those long periods of time, according to the environment the find themselves in.

This is often interpreted as a very rough theory of Evolution. The Agana Suta creates an important question as to whether the question of Origin of Life really is meaningless or not. The answer to this question can be that Buddha likened his teachings to a doctors’ medicine to cure a patients suffering . The medicine must be of the right content and right amount to the right patient at the right time. Thus there is no absolute truth as there is no single, absolute cure-all medicine fitting all patients.

This is why he may have given Vasettha; the former Brahmin; the answer above, as he may have considered him close-minded due to his former education as a high

priest in the Hinduism religion. In conclusion, Buddhists are taught that they do not need to know the origin of life, nor agree with the Buddha’s position on scientific topics in order to achieve the desired result which in this case is the state of Enlightenment.