The origins of humanity and questions like what was there before the Big Bang and what will happen after the impending Big Crunch or Big Freeze have been messing with our heads for a long time now. Various religions have given us different ‘origin stories’and possible doomsday scenarios. Which of these you subscribe to depends on what you find the most convincing and/or appealing.
The Abrahamic religions seem to agree on the brief account given in Genesis, and Hinduism, too, tells us of a supreme creator god who calls all the shots. However, Buddhism, interestingly, remains one of the handful of mainstream religions to not directly deal with the beginning of time and, instead, talks about how everything that has ever existed and will ever exist is the direct result of the simplest and yet most complex concept ever – causality.
Buddhism then goes on to say that pondering over such matters is an exercise in futility. But it doesn’t matter how we got here. We are here – now. But what next? What happens to a person when they die? I believe that’s where religion plays its trump card: The promise of an afterlife. (Including the otherwise scientifically watertight Buddhism). Here’s my question:
If all beings are made of matter, and matter is composed of atoms that in turn consist of neutrons, protons, electrons, quarks and other subatomic particles, it is safe to assume that when a being dies, the matter it is composed of is simply and completely and wholly re-arranged upon decomposition or converted to energy upon cremation – because matter cannot be destroyed (as per Conservation of Mass/Energy). That’s law. Ashes to ashes,
dust to dust… If the above is true, then, what is this alleged afterlife made of? What leaves a being’s
body when it dies? Does the soul exist?
Even Buddism, while it denies the existence of a soul the way it is traditionally understood in the West, talks of a cyclic Sansara, where a being undergoes an endless cycle of births and deaths until it is liberated through Nirvana. So, something (be it a thought, a characteristic, whatever) leaves the being’s body – something physical – a material entity. Why material? Because it’s got to be made of matter. Everything is.
Unless we’re talking Dark Matter or Dark Energy here. But that’s another kettle of fish altogether. To get back to my question, what is it that “moves on”? DO we really move on? Does it even matter? |
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