Of Reality, Life, and Death (Part I)

Ladies and Gentleman, I proudly present to you your daily dose of awesome:


Video Link

This awesome video is from an awesome website called Symphony of Science, hosting a total of six equally awesome videos about science, our world, and the universe. (Did I mention it was awesome?) Thanks to these videos, my two year old can now identify several planets, and knows the words "galaxy","nebula", and "molecule". We're working on "large hadron collider".

However for the sake of being relevant to my blog and its initial purpose, I will draw my perceptive reader's attention to one particular line of the video, courtesy of Richard Dawkins:

"Matter flows from place to place, and momentarily comes together to be you. Some people find that thought disturbing. I find the reality thrilling."

In high school we had a history assignment to interview someone of a different faith. This proved a challenge for many of my waspier classmates in a rural Wisconsin town which truly had more cows than people. My life was made quite simple, however, by the fact that my father was a practicing Buddhist. I "interviewed" him sitting on the couch in our living room, where he gave me a basic overview of the various Buddhist precepts, his own mediation practice, the belief in reincarnation, leading to the inevitable conclusion of "and if a Buddhist is diligent in his or her practice then over the course of many lifetimes it is hoped they can realize their own Buddha nature and achieve nirvana."

My next question was "Well, then what?"

My father didn't quite understand. "What do you mean, 'then what'?"

"What happens after you reach nirvana?"

"Well nothing really. You are taken out of the cycle of life and death."

I got quite worked up over this idea. "So, you just stop? There isn't a heaven or something? All that work and you just 'cease to be'?"

My dad laughed. "Well, yeah."

My exact words were, "Well that sucks", and I walked away from the conversation convinced that my decision to follow my mother's Christian practice was the correct one. At least we got heaven for a lifetime of getting up early on Sunday mornings.

At fifteen, I truly wasn't able to contemplate the idea that maybe there was no afterlife. It was, as Dawkins so rightly put it, "disturbing". I couldn't conceive of "just stopping".

Later, in a college ethics class, my professor posed an interesting question to a group of mainly catholic students. What if there were no God? No afterlife, heaven or hell? Would there still be any reason to be moral if you knew for certain that your deeds would never be rewarded (or punished)? He never pushed us to answer the question, just contemplate it. And for me, it rattled around in my brain for several years before I was adequately able to come to my own conclusion.

Stay tuned, part II to follow. (And I promise, sooner than later.)