Cesar is right here now

[Houzan]

I came across this article about a book yesterday. Interestingly, we are all Cesar, dinosaurs, stars and the universe. No surprise to us though

https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/are-we-really-breathing-caesars-last-breath

Gassho, Hōzan
satlah

[RobP]

I came across this article about a book yesterday. Interestingly, we are all Cesar, dinosaurs, stars and the universe. No surprise to us though

Gassho, Hōzan
satlah

Hi Hōzan, it's an amazing thought isn't it? A real illustration of the interconnectedness of everything. Now I just need to fully realise this and become a Boddhisattva. Why is that so much easier to say than done ?
Gassho, Rob.
Sat/LAH

[Kotei]

When thinking the person next to us is looking strangely familiar, now we know .
We once were the same supernova that created the elements we are made of.

I've read an essay somewhere, where they wanted to calculate how many atoms of the body of a dead person XY are in any one of us now.
The conclusion was that already during the lifetime there was so much exchange of carbon, water, oxygen... that the original question misses the point completely.

Gassho,
Kotei sat/lah today.

[Shinshi]

When thinking the person next to us is looking strangely familiar, now we know .
We once were the same supernova that created the elements we are made of.

I've read an essay somewhere, where they wanted to calculate how many atoms of the body of a dead person XY are in any one of us now.
The conclusion was that already during the lifetime there was so much exchange of carbon, water, oxygen... that the original question misses the point completely.

Gassho,
Kotei sat/lah today.

We Are All Made of Stars - Moby



Gassho, Shinshi
SaT-LaH

[Houzan]

Now I just need to fully realise this and become a Boddhisattva. Why is that so much easier to say than done ?

It is difficult (!), and also not! I need to remind myself once in a while that: realization and practice are one. Just sit and realization is expressed right there and then. Just practice wholeheartedly and it’s complete in itself. Being no one, going nowhere

Gassho, Hōzan
satlah

[Jundo]

You might be a little interested in my new book. The manuscript is all finished, now hunting for a publisher as it does not quite fit into the "Buddhism" category ...

The title and subtitle say it all ...
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How the Whole Universe Led to YOU!

The improbable, implausible, nearly impossible twists and turns
of physics, chemistry, biology, evolution, human history and more,
from the Big Bang to YOUR own Birth.

by J.M. Cohen
with Dr. Carsten T. Beuckmann
Ph.D. in Chemistry, Specialization in Biochemistry

In order for you to be sitting where you are right now, self-aware of seeing this book you hold, every single force and factor, event and eventuality in physics, chemistry, stellar and planetary development, biology and evolution, bodily systems and human brain structure, world history and your own family history, from the weather in Warsaw, to the wanderings of prehistoric herds, the endings of distant stars and blendings of countless atoms, all of it had to work out just so, just right, from the Big Bang all the way to your own conception … bar none in the billions of years … if those particular happenings were indispensable to your eventual birth.

Not a wrong turn turned, not one stumble stumbled, not a single miss missed, if such turn, stumble or miss would have resulted in the world’s missing out on your presence.

The robust proof is no other than you, right now, when (we easily might assume) there would not be you had things been more than a little bit otherwise.

In telling this tale, your tale, we find amazing coincidences, seeming accidents and chance conditions interconnected in the most startling ways, flukes, fortuities & lucky breaks, level upon incredible level, stretching as far or farther than time itself. They reach from the dawn of the cosmos, through the birth of the stars, from the first hint of life on our planet and its sweet atmosphere to breathe, to your parents’ first embrace … right down to you.

...

Hydrogen, with helium and a small bit of lithium following on its heels, was created in the Big Bang’s early moments. Almost every atom of the other natural elements was created later, as a descendant of those three, forged within the cores of stars, the universal furnaces, or in the fires of massive exploding stars.[1]

It was not an instant process. The later elements were not present in any significant quantities for the first two billion years and more. The cosmos does take its own time, creating some things in a flash, other things after ages. One need not rush a baked cake.

Still, except for a most miniscule fraction, each and all of the atoms which make up you, and all the rest of this planet too, were fashioned by nature a very long time before you or this planet were fashioned from them.

Of course, our bodies evolved to survive through natural selection, employing the materials available on this planet. But had those materials not first been available on this planet, any evolution of our species through natural selection would never have been possible in the first place. It is as if each brick, board and nail was fully formed and on hand long before ground broke for our little house to be built. Billions of years before.

Seemingly, any one or more key materials could have been lacking, either out of stock, too rare or never available at all. None ever were. Your life’s status “in stock” now is conclusive proof of this.

Among all potential combinations of sub-atomic particles as atoms, and atoms as molecules, with all possible chemical properties that can thereby result, the universe somehow forged and deposited on this Earth a very fine collection: Namely, those atoms and molecules indispensable and irreplaceable for our lives, some without substitutes, many of which we simply could not have evolved to do without. Your life is fully dependent on the happenstance that those needed substances were physically possible as phenomena in the first place, then delivered when and where we someday needed: As we shall further see in later chapters, fortunately, the required mixes and quantities of those ingredients happened to find their way to our planet.

What is more, atoms and molecules that would prevent our lives were never once found in places where they would prevent us. There is deadly stuff too! But so long as you are alive to read these words, nature has kept at bay, or provided you with sufficient defenses countering, each and every chemical reaction that would do you in, no exception. There are countless potential killers, and guaranteed birth preventers. However, never once has nature engaged in a single chemical reaction that would preclude your life had it done so—not even one time—as shown by the fact that you sit here, unprecluded.

(At least for now… for one’s lease on life will run out sometime.)

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[1] The story of the formation of the elements is detailed in: Giora Shaviv, The Synthesis of the Elements: The Astrophysical Quest for Nucleosynthesis and What It Can Tell Us About the Universe (Berlin: Springer 2012).

Gassho, J
stlah

[Junsho]

Yesterday, I was looking at this photo taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, and I was truly amazed by it. What looks like stars isn’t. Every single point is a galaxy with billions of different stars, planets, and forms of existence. We are just a tiny grain of sand—actually, not even—that exists within the whole universe. All of existence is right here and now, and our human mind cannot even comprehend the size of it.

Gassho and deep bows.
SatLah

[Hosui]

I share in the same wonder, Jusho. Walt Whitman expertly expresses the wonder I feel, thus: "I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars...." and "There is that in me.... I do no know what it is....but I know it is in me" (WW, Song of Myself, Leaves of Grass, 1855).

Gassho
Hosui
sat/lah

[Koriki]

Coincidentally, I've been pondering lately about the earth's crust. For millions of years everything that has ever lived has died and decomposed into the soil (or water). Then, everything after grows out of, or is nourished by, that compost over and over. It's not hard to imagine our connectedness to all previous life with that in mind, nor to see our connectedness to everything else that exists on earth as we all come from the same compost pile.
Gassho,
Koriki
s@lah

[Jundo]

Yesterday, I was looking at this photo taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, and I was truly amazed by it. What looks like stars isn’t. Every single point is a galaxy with billions of different stars, planets, and forms of existence. We are just a tiny grain of sand—actually, not even—that exists within the whole universe. All of existence is right here and now, and our human mind cannot even comprehend the size of it.

"We are just tiny" may not be the only way to judge things. As well, you may actually be at the center, and be a center, of the universe. My new book also explains ...

It is true that, with a few glances through powerful lenses, humanity has been relegated from centerstage in the universe to a rocky planet in one corner of a galaxy, itself unremarkable amid trillions of galaxies.

However, the center of the universe may not be what or where we think it is.

... Physicists and mathematicians point out that all the universe is“the center of the universe” in actuality, because the Big Bang happened here, there and everywhere in the universe as a single singularity’s blossoming. It is not that the Big Bang happened far away. Rather, all has unfolded as the Big Bang’s unfolding, and every point in space has arisen equally “inside” the singularity … and still is. Every place is equally the singularity unfolding in that one place. Thus, here, there and everywhere is “the center” of the universe because the cosmos remains one point expanding. [1]

And there is another way in which you, me and every individual thing is “a” center of the universe:

According to some models of the universe, each spot of the universe is “a” unique center of the universe because none is more privileged above any other. This may be better understood if we see the cosmos as resembling the surface of an expanding sphere, much like the outer skin of an expanding balloon …
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dataurl837823.png
Were one to take a pen and place a dot on the surface of a sphere, no matter the place or size of the sphere, that point would be as much the center of the surface as any other possible point. In that way. every point is just as much the “starting point” of the sphere which spreads forth from that point in all directions, and thus as much the center of the sphere as any other. No point is more … or less … privileged as the center of the totality.

If doubtful, check with mathematicians and physicists on this “point.” [2]
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[1] See: Don Lincoln, “Where Is the Center of the Universe? Here, There, and Everywhere.” Big Think, 2022. Accessed August 5, 2025. https://bigthink.com/hard-science/ce...-the-universe/.
[2] See: Rob Coyne, “Where Is the Center of the Universe?” The Conversation, 2025. Accessed August 5, 2025. https://theconversation.com/where-is...niverse-252695. In fact, there is a surface (4-dimensional) in the universe, but no "ball/volume" inside or under this surface, thus it is technically incorrect to think of a surface embedded into a larger space with larger dimensions.

and

The size of the known universe may leave one feeling that we earthlings are but fleas clinging to a speck of dust in one galaxy among countless galaxies … so apparently unimportant given our relative tininess in scale. There is a whole lot of space and stuff in this universe, and we occupy but a micro-miniscule bit. However, importance in value is largely an “eye-of-the-beholder” judgement, as is unimportance: If nothing in the universe is more privileged than any other then, if you are unimportant, all things are also unimportant; If all things are important, you can be judged so too. In fact, the Copernican Principle implies our ordinariness. Thus, we can rephrase the conclusion to say that every individual and thing in space and time is “equally important,” while also noting that each is special and unique in its own way for having its own particular characteristics and place different from any other. For example, leaves on trees are largely fungible in one sense, and yet no two will ever be precisely the identical shape, nor consist of exactly the same molecules in equal number and configuration, and every leaf has its one unique place in the sun.[1]

This is also so regarding judgements of importance in value based upon relative sizes in scale, whereby small things are commonly appraised as less important than big things. That is also a subjective judgement. We are too quick to judge that a small thing, such as an ant or microbe, is somehow more “insignificant” or “inconsequential” when compared to a big thing, such as a mountain, the sun or whole galaxy. Were the ant asked its opinion, it might disagree. Who is to say that Mars is less of a planet than the giant Jupiter, plus each has its own orbit, characteristics and role in our solar system. Only human beings impose their personal value judgements: We cannot even say that a pound of gold is “more valuable” than an ounce of gold apart from a human subjective value judgement. All we can say is that the pound contains more gold atoms by quantity than does the ounce. My dog values neither, and much prefers kibble.

...

In reality, the size and age of the universe may constitute, not evidence of how inconsequential we are, but rather, two more remarkable coincidences necessary to our being. They show, rather than our minor peripherality, our indissoluble intimacy with the history and state of all space-time.[1] In describing our universe, we face a tremendous range in scales of size, from 10^-19 for the smallest of sub-atomic particles, to 8.8 × 10²⁶ (or thereabouts) meters as the total span of the known universe itself. As well, we find events occurring over eras of time measured in billions of years. But those great ranges of universal scale in size and age are not unrelated to our own personal existence: A universe which lacked such wide ranges, which was substantially bigger on its smaller end, or smaller on its bigger end, might never have spawned the incredible complexity and hierarchy of structures which it contains, and which sustain all human life. Simply stated, your life and all human life would be much less likely to exist in a universe much younger or smaller, or with a subatomic realm of much different size and thus properties.[2]

Thus, you are near the center of time and scale too. All complex life may be.
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...


You would not be alive right now, dear reader, were the cosmos and this planet much younger or older than they are, for complex life evolution seems to take time. In 1961, Robert Dicke noted that the universe can only contain living observers during the span of a certain "golden age," neither too young nor too old.[1] It is much as observers need to exist in a “golden place,” a planet with all the elements and other physical qualities that make sentient life possible. Likewise, we must find ourselves in this “golden time.” Where and when else would one expect to find some living being capable of being an observer?

When it comes to your particular life, dear reader, the window of existence stood open but a micro crack: Examining the web of historical events and delicate arrangements necessary to your birth, we find that little could have been much otherwise in time, pace or place. Had an ice age ended but millennia prior, were the New World discovered with a century’s delay, had your grandfather died just a year earlier, or your parents missed their assignation by moments … there might be somebody somewhere on this planet, but not you.
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[1] See: Robert H. Dicke, “Dirac’s Cosmology and Mach’s Principle,” previously cited.

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[1] About the unlikelihood of complex life were the universe much younger, and thus smaller than its current size in expansion, see: Abraham Loeb, Rafael Alves Batista, and David Sloan, “Relative Likelihood for Life as a Function of Cosmic Time,” preprint, June 27, 2016, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1606.08448., also:
Abraham Loeb, “On the Habitability of Our Universe,” preprint, June 29, 2016, available at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.08926v1. Accessed August 6, 2025. See, also:
Robert H. Dicke, “Dirac’s Cosmology and Mach’s Principle,” Nature 192 (1961): 440–441, https://doi.org/10.1038/192440a0.; and: Marcelo Gleiser, “From Cosmos to Intelligent Life: The Four Ages of Astrobiology,” International Journal of Astrobiology 11 (2012), https://doi.org/10.1017/S1473550412000237. Loeb suggests that complex life on Earth appeared very quickly after the window of opportunity for such life first opened in this universe, although future epochs may be even more conducive to complex life.
[2] Some argue that the size of the human body is strangely near midway in scale between the size of the universe (of course, we cannot know how far that is beyond the visible horizon) and the smallest particles. The claim is open to doubt both as to its accuracy and its significance. The notion may arise from a miscasting of an Arthur Eddington statement [Arthur Eddington, Between Atoms and Stars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1924).] related by Julian Huxley in a 1929 essay in the Atlantic Monthly, “The Size of Living Things,” The Atlantic Monthly, September 1929, https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/ar.../132380477.pdf. Accessed August 6, 2025.
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[1] A philosopher offers his opinion on our significance, or lack thereof: Guy Kahane, “Our Cosmic Insignificance.” Nous 48, no. 4 (2014): 745–772. https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12030. Available at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4340547/. Accessed August 5, 2025.

Gassho, J
stlah

[Junsho]

Interestingly, nothing has just one explanation or just one perspective. Very interesting, Roshi. Thank you for the explanation.

Gassho and Deep bows
SatLah