The Living Universe - Duane Elgin [29]
Turning to even older sources of wisdom in the Hindu tradition, the texts of the Upanishads, we find this declaration:
Out of himself he brought forth the cosmos
And entered into everything in it.
There is nothing that does not come from him.
Of everything he is the inmost Self.
He is the truth; he is the Self supreme.
You are that . . . you are that.
—CHANDOGYA UPANISHAD
Hindu mythology portrays the cosmos being born anew at each moment through the cosmic dance of Shiva. “Nature and all its creatures are the effects of his eternal dance.”17 All expressions and aspects of the living world are but momentary flashes from the limbs of the Lord of the dance.18 In the Hindu view of the universe, there is nothing permanent; rather, the cosmos is seen as one body being continuously danced into creation by the divine life force.
For a more contemporary Hindu perspective, the writing of the revered sage and philosopher Sri Aurobindo is insightful. He wrote: “. . . there is but one Force in the world, a single unique current which passes through us and all things . . . it is this force which links up everything, animates everything; this is the fundamental substance of the Universe.”19 Finally, when Mahatma Gandhi, the great spiritual and political leader of India, was asked what he considered to be the essence of Hinduism, he quoted the first verse of the Isha Upanishad, which begins with these lines:
Filled with Brahman are the things we see,
Filled with Brahman are the things we see not,
From out of Brahman floweth all that is:
From Brahman all—yet is he still the same.20
Again and again, in Hinduism, we find the theme of a life force continuously regenerating the universe in a dance of cosmic-scale creation. Heinrich Zimmer, the respected scholar of Indian art and civilization, summarizes Hindu cosmology by saying: “There is nothing static, nothing abiding, but only the flow of a relentless process, with everything originating, growing, decaying, vanishing.”21
Buddhist Views
Buddhism is a family of wisdom traditions and its followers comprise about 6 percent of the world’s population. These traditions have their origins in the historical person of Siddhartha Gautama, who was born in the foothills of the Himalayas in India in the sixth century B.C.E. Siddhartha was an Indian prince who eventually renounced his power and wealth to meditate on the nature of reality. After his “enlightening experience” other monks saw his newly discovered radiance and knowing, and asked him, “Are you a God?” He replied no. They then asked if he were an angel? Again he answered no. “Then what are you?” they asked. He replied simply: “I am awake.”22 He became known as the Buddha, which means “the one who is awake.” After his awakening, he taught for the remaining forty-five years of his life, traveling through northeastern India, teaching and mentoring a diverse community of people. Primarily, he taught that, through meditation and spiritual inquiry, anyone could awaken from the sleep of ignorance and directly realize the nature of the universe and their own nature.
What was the core realization that the Buddha awakened to? At the foundation of the Buddha’s teachings is his description of the simultaneous arising of all things in the universe. Variously translated as “interdependent co-arising” and “interdependent co-origination,” the Buddha said this insight was at the heart of his awakening. According to the Buddha, to discern the moment-to-moment, interdependent co-arising of all things in the universe is to awaken to a reality that is subtle, sublime, hard to perceive, and not accessible through logic alone. Because the co-arising of all things in the universe is a process that completely includes us, we