Buddhism and the Big Bang | Geshe Dorji Damdul

The origin of the universe from the point of view of modern physics, Big Bang, and from the point of view of Buddhist philosophy. Again, there's a whole cosmological theory there. Whether or not time has a beginning. These are very big questions. When I was in school, before I became a monk, when I was in class, age 16 or 17, when I was introduced to the concept of Big Bang and the Doppler effect, it was really, really, really fascinating and very thrilling indeed. Extremely thrilling. I thought, wow, it's an amazing concept! The whole universe is what we are seeing today. Through the Doppler effect experiment and research, from there we can see that the universe is expanding exponentially, accelerating in the expansion. Accelerating meaning that at one point, the universe was much closer to each other. Closer amongst the paths, amongst the world systems, various galaxies closer to each other. Then even the speed is less, because it's seen accelerating today through the Doppler effect. At one point, like 15 billion years ago, then all these universes, like the Milky Way galaxy and all these galaxies, and the solar system, are just a tiny dot within the Milky Way galaxy. And the Milky Way galaxy, in turn, is also a tiny dot in the expanse of the whole universe. So 15 billion years ago, they were all just together at one point, which the quantum physicists would call a singularity. So at this point, everything merged together. This is an amazing concept, and we cannot really deny this reality. At the same time, the question arises, there are paths, the universe, when we speak about the universe, are we talking about the whole universe, or are we talking about the visible universe? So this is another thing that we should really think about. Some physicists would say that we are only talking about the visible universe, because we see the universe expanding, and that too at an accelerating speed. Which means that it's a visible universe. Which means that what is unseen is not really included here. The visible universe, no doubt, came from the Big Bang. Then the question is, this Big Bang, whether it's a single Big Bang or a multiple Big Bang? Again, this is a big question. So some of the scientists are saying it's a single Big Bang, some of the scientists say that it's a multiple Big Bang. The point is that there are many areas, explanatory gaps there. The scientists don't really agree. If somebody believes in a single Big Bang, there are many questions there, the questions which you can easily contradict yourself. For example, the singularity. Singularity, what made it to explode? If you say it has so much energy, so to speak about the energy, there must be a time. Without the time, we cannot speak about the energy. And then if you say time, the time has a beginning, middle, and end. You use these reasonings and logic, then you see that to explain a single Big Bang is very complicated. It will end up in so many contradictions. Whereas multiple Big Bangs, so just as there's a Big Bang, Big Bang, for example, say the universe is expanding now, at a certain point, then the universe will slow down, de-accelerate. Like when you're shooting a gun, the bullet will first accelerate, and at a certain point, it will reach a peak, and de-accelerate, and then it will fall down. Likewise, the universe is expanding, accelerating, at a certain point, it will reach the peak point, and then it will drop. It will drop, then what happens? It will stop. It will stop expanding. The moment it stops expanding, then because of gravity, they will all pull back. Again, acceleration happens, pull back, this is a Big Crunch. So just as there's a Big Bang, there's a Big Crunch. This is what many physicists are talking about. Big Crunch, Big Bang. The moment we explain this, then the multiple Big Bangs automatically come into being. And then in other areas, multiple Big Bangs in this part of the universe, multiple Big Bangs in another part of the universe are unseen, which we cannot see now. And then millions and trillions and infinite number of Big Bangs can be happening simultaneously in the different parts of the unseen universe. So from this, what we learn is that this concept can rightly fit into the Buddhist explanation of cosmology. And the details of the Buddhist explanation of cosmology, like the Mount Meru, these things are not really acceptable, to be very honest. To be very honest, it was more like the pre-Buddhist time, the acceptance of the cosmology, according to pre-Buddhist time, they were brought down, they were being taken as a standard position. So this is a problem there. Otherwise, the Buddha taught about the multiple universes, and in terms of time, it brings less time. So there we see that with the multiple Big Bangs, then the beginningless time can be explained. With a single Big Bang, then there's no room for... Then it's a total contradiction with the Buddhist philosophy.