The Big Questions
A technology or a civilization is judged based on the problems it is trying to solve. The Western world sought to address the big challenges of science which led to breakthroughs such as the Theory of Relativity and also double-edged technologies such as nuclear science. The big questions that originated in India were related to us, what happens to us in the universe we exist in and how we can transcend it. Most of Indian thought started with questions and we see this in almost all the scriptures. The universe is vast and our knowledge is limited. The 7th-century BC Greek poet Archilochus is famous for one line: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing", while in the Mundaka Upanishad, Saunaka asks " What is that, through the knowledge of which, everything becomes known? " In other words what is the one big thing? Humanity has always been puzzled by death, the transition to the unknown . In the Katha Upanishad, the young boy Nachiketa...