Submitted by Little Buddha on
There is a story that the Buddha was once addressing his sangha, the monastic community who had gathered around to listen to him preach, when one of his bright young followers posed a series of questions. What, he asked his spiritual leader, is the origin of the Universe? Is the cosmos infinite? Is it eternal, or did it have a beginning?
After the student had finished, he looked up to the Buddha to hear his pearls of wisdom, but the older man was silent. Eventually, the young monk left, disappointed, only to come back the next day with the same queries. Once again, however, the Buddha remained quiet. On the third day, the young man returned and said in frustration: ‘I have asked you these questions twice. If you don’t know the answer, then admit that you don’t know. If you do know but you think I won’t understand, then just say that, but I urge you to try to explain. If, however, you stay silent, then I’m going to leave and not return.’
Finally the Buddha replied, saying gently but firmly that these are simply not issues to which the Buddha speaks. ‘What I address is human suffering and liberation from this suffering,’ he said. ‘Nobody asked you to come here, and you are always free to leave.’
This tale was recounted to me by Abhay Ashtekar, a physicist at Pennsylvania State University who, over the past two decades, has delved deeply into meditative Buddhist philosophy. In tandem, however, he has investigated precisely those puzzles about the origins of the Universe and the nature of time that the Buddha deemed irrelevant. Unlike the Buddha, Ashtekar sees profound resonances between his spiritual quest and his scientific one. Though his theories of the early Universe are not directly based on Buddhist concepts, Ashtekar has inadvertently uncovered some surprising similarities, both in the methods of his scientific and spiritual practice and in some of the answers that they can offer about the nature of physical reality.
Read more @ https://aeon.co/essays/can-buddhist-philosophy-explain-what-came-before-the-big-bang