The Search For Enlightenment

The new series of the BBC’s Wonders of the Universe with Professor Brian Cox is superb. Brian Cox is the new pin-up boy of science, but his easy style and the excellent way he conveys some difficult concepts make this a must-watch series.

I have my own telescope and have seen many amazing sights around the night sky, but the graphics on the program are stunning. The nebulae are some of the most beautiful objects, but are also the birth place of new stars the eventually create the building blocks of you, me and everything on Earth.

As I listened to Professor Cox explaining how all the elements are created during the death of a star, and that all the elements on Earth were create that way, it struck me that again, science is coming ever closer to the Buddhist understanding of the Universe and the Wheel of Life.

Our bodies are made of a collection of the same elements as those created in the stars, iron, carbon even a little gold, but in essence, we are all stardust. When we die, those elements are returned to the Universe and the cycle goes on.

The Universe is around 13.5 billion years old and the cycle of birth and death has been going on for much of that time. We have come from the Universe, we will go back into the Universe. Science facts for the last few years and Buddhist beliefs for more than two millennia. As I say, science is finally catching up with Buddhism.