OUR COSMIC LIFE

Blue Orb, Internet Domain
Cosmos, Internet Domain
Space, Internet Domain

Buddhist philosophy teaches that we and our planet Earth are linked into one living, breathing cell, eternally linked in symbiosis. Neil DeGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist that extends that thought into the entire cosmos. When we have the luxury of time not spent on basic survival we can begin to contemplate our place in the cosmos as well. The few astronauts that have had the perspective of viewing our blue orb from outer space always seem to be able to succinctly verbalize this concept. Frank Borman, NASA Apollo 8 Commander, famously said “When you’re finally up on the moon looking back at the earth, all those differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend, and you’re going to get a concept that maybe this really is one world and why the hell can’t we learn to live together like decent people?”

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist Zen master, notes that “we contain earth, water, air, sunlight, and warmth. We contain space and consciousness. We contain the continuing DNA string of our ancestors…Looking into the child, we can be in touch with her parents and ancestors, but equally, looking into the parent, we can see the child…Everything relies on everything else in the cosmos in order to manifest—whether a star, a cloud, a flower, a tree, or you and me.” Neil Tyson notes that “I learned in biology class that more bacteria live and work in one centimeter of my colon than the number of people who have ever existed in the world…From that day on, I began to think of people not as masters of space and time but as participants in a great cosmic chain of being, with a direct genetic link across species both living and extinct, extending back nearly four billion years to the earliest single-celled organisms on Earth.” He concludes, “We do not simply live in this universe. The universe lives within us.”

We can get pretty wrapped up in ourselves and our daily struggles at times. As folks grow older, it’s understandable that their world slowly collapses into a very small corner of the world. We older adults can also get too focused on all the boundaries and differences that separate us on this blue planet in the darkness of space. But for our younger generation, it’s important to experience a general change of vision and ponder the reality that we are living on one planet in a galaxy of over a hundred billion stars, and the known universe contains over a hundred billion galaxies! There are currently forty billion Earth-like planets now cataloged in the Milky way alone that exhibit properties similar to Earth. The possibility of multiverses is even more mind-blowing. Things that separate us in this world are far less important than everything that we share.

Edgar Mitchell, NASA Apollo 14 astronaut, observed that “There seems to be more to the universe than random, chaotic, purposeless movement of a collection of molecular particles. On the return trip home, gazing through 240,000 miles of space toward the stars and the planet from which I had come, I suddenly experienced the universe as intelligent, loving, harmonious.” Homo sapiens need to look outward to the stars more often rather than focusing inward to a self-centered Earth-bound life and reach up to a more God-centered cosmic life.