Question asked by danny
dear pastors…
tashi delegs. i would like to ask, in the context of buddhism, where did human came from? as other religions they said its from adam and eve. how about buddhism? i know some says its from emptiness but where does it originated from. so that whenever people of other faith ask about that we able to answer them. any sutra mention of it?
regards,
danny
Dear Danny,
According to the Buddha, the universe is beginningless. It is impossible to find a first cause for life. In Buddhism, we believe in cause and effect. In the cycle of cause and effect, a first cause is incomprehensible. In the Samyutta Nikaya, the Buddha said, “Without cognizable end is this recurrent wandering in Samsara (cycle of birth and death). Beings are obstructed by ignorance and fettered by craving. A first beginning of these beings is not to be perceived.”
In other religions, they believe in a first cause, i.e. a creator who created Adam and Eve from whom the human race is descended. But it is only logical to say that for the creator to exist, there must have been a creator who created him and so on. So this theory is not accepted by Buddhists. For Buddhists, it is not important to know where humans come from. What is more important is to work hard to become an enlightened being, a Buddha. You can tell people that the goal of the Buddhist is to seek enlightenment, that is, to achieve the qualities of the Buddha. The sutra you can read is the Anamatagga Samyutta in the Samyutta Nikaya (Pali Canon) or the Samyuktagama of the Sanskrit Tripitaka.