Human beings have always been fascinated by questions regarding the origin of the world and different myths and legends we have inherited over the ages and continents tells of the many ideas of how the universe and planet earth came to be. These ideas have formed the foundation of many religions.
Did the Buddha discover and share a similar explanation?
The following two Suttas help to shed some light on what the Buddha discovered.
'.. I entered & remained in the fourth jhana: purity of equanimity & mindfulness, neither pleasure nor pain. But the pleasant feeling that arose in this way did not invade my mind or remain.
"When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilement, pliant, malleable, steady, & attained to imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of recollecting my past lives. I recollected my manifold past lives,
i.e., one birth, two...five, ten...fifty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand,
many eons of cosmic contraction,
many eons of cosmic expansion,
many eons of cosmic contraction & expansion:
many eons of cosmic contraction,
many eons of cosmic expansion,
many eons of cosmic contraction & expansion:
'There I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure & pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose there. There too I had such a name, belonged to such a clan, had such an appearance. Such was my food, such my experience of pleasure & pain, such the end of my life. Passing away from that state, I re-arose here.' Thus I remembered my manifold past lives in their modes & details.
"This was the first knowledge I attained in the first watch of the night. Ignorance was destroyed; knowledge arose; darkness was destroyed; light arose — as happens in one who is heedful, ardent, & resolute. But the pleasant feeling that arose in this way did not invade my mind or remain. ..'
- Mahā-Saccaka Sutta: The Longer Discourse to Saccaka MN 36
(Source: www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.036.than.html)
(Source: www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.036.than.html)
'.. "Again, the Tathagata recollects his manifold past lives, that is, one birth, two births, three births, four births, five births, ten births, twenty births, thirty births, forty births, fifty births, a hundred births, a thousand births, a hundred thousand births,
many aeons of world-contraction,
many aeons of world-expansion,
many aeons of world-contraction and expansion:
'There I was so named, of such a clan, with such an appearance, such was my nutriment, such my experience of pleasure and pain, such my life-term; and passing away from there, I reappeared elsewhere; and there too I was so named, of such a clan, with such an appearance, such was my nutriment, such my experience of pleasure and pain, such my life-term; and passing away from there, I reappeared here.' Thus with their aspects and particulars he recollects his manifold past lives. That too is a Tathagata's power...'
many aeons of world-contraction,
many aeons of world-expansion,
many aeons of world-contraction and expansion:
'There I was so named, of such a clan, with such an appearance, such was my nutriment, such my experience of pleasure and pain, such my life-term; and passing away from there, I reappeared elsewhere; and there too I was so named, of such a clan, with such an appearance, such was my nutriment, such my experience of pleasure and pain, such my life-term; and passing away from there, I reappeared here.' Thus with their aspects and particulars he recollects his manifold past lives. That too is a Tathagata's power...'
- Mahā-sihanada Sutta: The Great Discourse on the Lion's Roar MN 12
(Source: www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.012.ntbb.html
(Source: www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.012.ntbb.html
On the Science front
With the advent of the telescope in the 1600s by Galileo Galilei, the "father of observational astronomy", the heavens came to be recorded.
The Expanding Universe and the Big Bang Theory
Fast forward to the 1900s, advances in telescope design allowed Edwin Powell Hubble (November 1889 – September 1953) on his arrival at Mount Wilson Observatory, California in 1919 to utilise the newly completed 100-inch (2.5 m) Hooker Telescope, then the world's largest.
At that time, the prevailing view of the cosmos was that the universe consisted entirely of the Milky Way Galaxy. His observations, made in 1922–1923, proved conclusively that these nebulae were much too distant to be part of the Milky Way and were, in fact, entire galaxies outside our own. This idea had been opposed by many in the astronomy establishment of the time but Hubble's findings fundamentally changed the scientific view of the universe.
In 1929, Hubble examined the relation between distance and redshift of galaxies, combining his own measurements of galaxy distances with earlier data from fellow astronomer Vesto Slipher plus Milton L. Humason's measurements. He found a rough proportionality of these objects' distances with their redshifts, nowadays termed Hubble's law.
It was Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Catholic priest and physicist, who found that Hubble's observations supported the Friedmann model of an expanding universe based on Einstein's equations for General Relativity, which is now known as the Big Bang theory.
Simply put, the Big Bang theory states that the universe began with an intense burst of energy at a single moment in time — and has been expanding ever since.
The Big Bounce
'An international team of researchers has backed up the growing hypothesis that the Big Bang was actually a 'Big Bounce', meaning that the Universe didn’t pop into existence. Instead, it simply started expanding again after contracting fully. ..'
The search continues ...
Sources:
Galileo Galilei : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
Edwin Powell Hubble : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_HubbleGalileo Galilei : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
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