First off, the Buddha discourages us from dwelling too much on the origin and the workings on the universe, as He once told Malunkyaputta, fearing that it will distract us from the real concern which is self-enlightenment. He emphasizes to his audience at the time, that people’s knowledge and concepts were too limited to fully describe the true nature of the universe as He sees it. He did attempt to describe it though, using analogies and phrases such as “as many as the grains of sand in the Ganges”.

Fast forward to last week. I watched an episode of the Known Universe that aired on The National Geographic channel, and it struck me. Imagine this, if the Buddha was alive and walking among us today, in a world full of richly visual and sensually titillating teaching aids, deliverable via such a multitude of communication devices and channels, if someone then would come to the Buddha and asked him about the universe, He would probably be more willing to satisfy the request, don’t you think? Then the sermon that He would give would be something very similar to the Known Universe episode that I just watched. I think the Buddha, if He was alive and walking among us today, wouldn’t be surprised by all the scientific discoveries of the atomic world, of the “emptiness” of the universe, right down to our bodies, of the nothingness of matters, where everything is comprised of particles which themselves are just energy fields. It’s all a matter of perspective, how close you look at matter. The closer you get, the more resolution you can make out.

This realization just shook me again, it held me in such awe of the “awesomeness” (channeling Jack Black in Kungfu Panda) of His knowledge 2500 years ago, repeatedly validated by modern science again and again. Was it a coincidence, that at one point in this episode, a woman scientist walked on a beach, scooping up handfuls of sand, and used the number of grains of sand in all of the seas to describe the vast number of stars (note, stars, not planets; a star can have multiple planets) in the universe? Here is a quote lifted right out of the Facts list posted on the Known Universe web page:

Space is extremely vast. Each galaxy is home to around 200 billion stars. This is more stars than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of planet Earth

Is this a conscious or unconscious credit to the Buddha? OK, it could be that in His time, it’s a common way to describe infinity by refering to the number of grains of sand, but still, His description of the universe to his comtemporaries is still valid today. Even today when we watch this episode, it’s still mind boggling to us, so no wonder 2500 years ago the Buddha must have had much difficulties trying to describe the same thing to his audience who had no knowledge of modern space-time theories, no Hubble telescope, no sophisticated terrestrial radar arrays, no powerful computer programs to visualize the universe on screen.

One thing for sure though, He would still emphasize that all this quest is useless to the true concern, which is self-enlightenment. Liberate yourself, then all other questions and matters will fall into its place, the only thing is then, you would think how silly you were trying to understand the universe when you’re are tapped in the cycle of death.