HUỲNH DUNG

1.     Christianity

The first book of the Bible describes how God (the creator), after creating the universe, created man from clod of earth: ADAM (male) and EVE (female). They are the first people on earth.

The lesson of Jesus: God used the clod of the earth to create man and gave him life and full freedom. Man might live a short or long life, under good or bad conditions. He however is fully responsible himself for his life and his destiny. But at the moment when he has to leave this world, he cannot take anything with him. Because the body of the human being is made by clod, he returns to the earth.

Thus the day man arrives in this world he possesses nothing. The same way he will leave this world without any possession – ashes to ashes as dust to dust.

                           This is the law of equality of all humans before God.

2.     Buddhism

According to Buddha’s teaching the life man receives today is the result of the former one. When man ends his present life, he will be reborn for a future life. This is the Buddhist’s concept of "reincarnation".

This explains why a person who receives in the present life positive things such as happiness and wealth… it's because in his previous life, he was a good person. Those who get just misfortunes, it's because they were bad persons in previous lives.  

The Ideology of Buddha:

If someone wants a better life in the future life cycle, he must be good in the present life. A bad guy in the present life might escape the judgment, will however suffer in the coming life cycle. Buddha called this “the law of cause and effect”.

Birth, death and rebirth are the concept of reincarnation of human life. The life cycle repeats endlessly like the rotation of the earth and the universe never ends. Whenever man dies and is reborn, he must accept all the sufferings of life (birth, diseases, misfortunes, social fights, old age and death...).

Therefore if man wants to escape from the cycle of life and sufferings, he has to be of good heart and do good deeds to others. The day when he leaves this world, he will be freed from the cycle of reincarnation and be able to reach an eternal life in Buddhist’s heaven (Nirvana).  

3.     Two philosophies of the past

The first explains: Life is a dream and death is the moment of waking up to live another life.

According to this ideology while sleeping man makes strange experiences and is confronted with unknown situations. When he wakes up, he realizes that it was just a dream.

Conclusion: Death is not death, but it is the awakening from a dream to live another life.

The second explains: Sleep is like a short death with a wake-up, while death is like a long sleep with no more wake-up.

According to this philosopher, the human’s sleep occupies 1/3 of his life time, because man needs more time to live (2/3 of the time) in order to resist and to cope with all different circumstances and emotions of life.

The author’s opinion: For this reason nature lets the child enjoy a longer sleep than older people, because the child has still a very long way of life before him; there is no haste to be involved in the society. While for the old man, he doesn't need to spend his time sleeping, because he must enjoy life as his time will run out soon.

4.     Sciences

Leaving the doctrines of the two religions and the two philosophers behind, what does science tell?

Scientists have discovered that the earth is 4.5 billion years old. At the beginning there were different sorts of organism that live in the water like fish. Then these animal species slowly crept out from water on land. They transformed their shapes all the time... And during some time the dinosaurs dominated other species on earth (240 million years ago). When the dinosaurs died out, small animals arrived which can still be found today on five continents. Finally, the human primates who share common ancestors with the monkeys, appeared 2.8 million years ago.

So scientists explain that the 'monkey' might be the ancestor of human being!

(This assumption is unacceptable for the religions!)

Despite the extraordinary progress of science and medicine, researchers and scientists cannot confirm how human being is created (compared with the ideologies of the two religions, Christianity and Buddhism). Nor do they explain the existence of dreams during human sleep as assumed by the two philosophers.

But we can say that sleep is composed of 4 stages: The 1st is a light sleep; the 2nd follows with a little deeper sleep; the 3rd and 4th stages are of very deep sleep, during which dreams are produced. Dreams do last no longer than 20 minutes, because if they exceed 20 minutes, man wouldn’t wake up anymore.

Nevertheless, medical researchers can nowadays create a child by using sperm from the man and woman's egg and placing the fetus in the womb of a surrogate mother or in the incubator of laboratories. Researchers can also create clones or many children... (like a factory of robot men). The scientists explain: the heart is a pump whose function is to circulate the blood in the body; the brain is the central computer that directs all functions.

The author is wondering:

How the soul enters into the fetus created in the laboratory? – Does it come from the brain? –Or from the heart? – Or from both? – And when man's life ends, does the soul fly away after death or is it dissolved with the body?

Scientists cannot explain everything about human life, but still we must honor the world’s pharmaceutical laboratories which continuously develop new drugs to save human life and extend it longer.

A recent innovation is that surgeons can engraft a healthy organ from a person into the body of a sick patient to prolong his life. This extraordinary medical progress can save human life – at the same time cost another human life taken by criminals of organ-trade!

The conclusion of the author:

Researchers nowadays might be able to create human life. But still we don't know yet where the soul is located. Despite the most advanced progress in science there are no explanations why there are different fates and lives as well as why human beings dream while sleeping. All these remain a mystery.

This is the secret of God that man will never discover!

HuynhDung Ruhier

Novelist & Poet