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, sent to meet Death by his father in a fit of anger, asks the God of Death the question that has puzzled all civilizations. Most religion started as a form of ancestor worship.
Nachiketa's speaks for all of humanity when he asks this question in the Katha Upanishad, "When a person dies, there arises this doubt: "He still exists," say some; "he does not," say others. I want you to each me the truth"

As the cousins assembled at the battlefield, the warrior prince Arjuna was struck by the enormity of the fratricidal war he was embarking on. His question to Lord Krishna was "What is my duty and how should I do it?" The second chapter of the Bhagavad Gita summarizes the answer and Krishna goes on the delineate it in more detail in the subsequent discussion between him and Arjuna.

The problem of evil and suffering has plagued humanity ever since the earliest societies contemplated the human condition. In the fifth century BCE, Gautama, a young prince from India left his palace to seek the answer to the question: "What is the cause of suffering and how do we transcend it?"

As science advanced and societies were disrupted, the question of the existence of God arose again. In the late 19th century, a young college student, Narendranath Datta (later Swami Vivekananda) asked his Guru, "Does God exist and can we see Him?"

 I hope to expand on the answers to these questions based on my reading in subsequent postings.

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