“(1) One class of creation myths can be called myths of creation by sacrifice. (2) The Proto-Indo-European myth is such a myth. (3) The chief surviving independent variants are the Germanic, Roman, and Indo-Iranian versions. (4) The Greek… and Jewish versions depend on the Iranian…” (Lincoln, Bruce. “The Indo-European Myth of Creation.” History of Religions 15.2 (1975): 121-45.)
At a certain point, according to the logic of most Indo-European creation myths (including the Big Bang Theory), something had to come from nothing. If Christianity sprung from Judaism, then of what did Judaism spring? If in the beginning there was the word of God (Logos1), then of what was God created? Indeed, of what are the words (and their meanings) which communicate these origin myths created?
Buddhism sidesteps this issue by holding that all we can know is that everything’s creation depends on the existence of another creation. And so this quality of phenomena which Tibetan Buddhists call emptiness (selflessness / dependent arising) is the only starting point we can be sure of. Emptiness is a quality of the macro (universe) as well as of every micro instance within the universe - words, religions, our minds, each thought: everything depends on something else in one long continuum.
From the perspective of the Highest Yoga Tantra school of Tibetan Buddhism, the ultimate nature of reality is the inextricable union of emptiness and luminosity2.
Tibetan Buddhism itself arose from a number of Indo-European religious vectors: the early Vedas of India in the Vedic and Sanskrit languages (around 1200 BCE); Buddha Śākyamuni’s Persian reform of the Vedic and Sanskrit religion and theology from around 300 BCE; and the pre-Tibetan evolution of Indo-European Buddhism over many centuries at Nalanda Monastic University in Bihar, India (from around 300 CE).
In the Power of Mana (http://www.powerofmana.net), we will look carefully at the Mana element in Luminosity (and in the “muni” element of the Buddha’s Śākyamuni epithet). Here, let’s just look briefly at how an understanding of emptiness can inform how we elucidate the conventional wisdom that Christianity only or mainly sprung from Judaism.
Emptiness in this sense signifies that all existents, all phenomena (including words, and religions) are dependent on other phenomena for their existence. Selflessness / Dependent Arising / Dependent Origination / Emptiness signify precisely the same phenomena. They’re synonyms. Emptiness is a simple designation that for something to exist, something else must also exist. That a word does not have an inherent meaning, for example, follows from this.
:: footnote-content For a summary of the evidence and references, please see:
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“…The Philistines were a group of people from the Aegean who arrived on the southern Palestinian coast at about the same time that the Israelite tribal groups were forming in the highlands…” in Kinship and Kingship: The Early Monarchy: https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780195139372.001.0001/acref-9780195139372-chapter-6;jsessionid=3F74A742DBE59F8A2C1B4F479AD95CBF
“A highly influential and popular Mahāyāna scripture used in both Tibetan and east Asian Buddhism; the full title is ‘The Sūtra of the Heart of the Perfection of Insight’. This scripture, only one paragraph in length, is a terse summary of Perfection of Insight (prajñā-pāramitā) teaching, and describes the truth realized in meditation by the BodhisattvaAvalokiteśvara. This truth is that form (one of the five skandhas and here standing in for all individual, differentiated phenomena) is emptiness (śūnyatā, the transcendent and undifferentiated absolute) and vice versa. In this way, it affirms that the transcendent is found only in its manifestation in the immanent and nowhere else. It ends with a mantra to be recited, the effect of which is to induce understanding of ultimate truth in the reciter. Because of its extreme brevity, it has been used both as a summary statement of Mahāyāna truth, and as a liturgical and ritual text. Recent research has shown that the Heart Sūtra is almost certainly a Chinese composition back-translated into Sanskrit” in “A Dictionary of Buddhism”,” Oxford University Press (https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780198605607.001.0001/acref-9780198605607-e-723?rskey=2OLl24&result=2)
Dalai Lama teaching heard directly by the author 16th June 2016, Dharamsala, India.
“Prehistoric Religions: The Eurasian Steppes and Inner Asia .” Encyclopedia of Religion. . Encyclopedia.com. (February 23, 2023).
“…For orientalists, there is no avoiding the conclusion that the Aryan takeover of northwest India was related, somehow, to the appearance of Aryans in Mitanni and the Levant. But this takeover, which had probably occurred by ca. 1500 B.C., seems to have resembled the others only in its objectives and not in the way in which it was carried out. Even though its relationship to the end of the Indus Valley civilization remains unclear, the Aryan takeover of northwest India must have been far more violent and destructive than the other takeovers reviewed here, and must have been effected by a force far larger than those that took over states in the Fertile Crescent…” from Drews, Robert. The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
“…One of the best examples of the aggrandizement of David is the Goliath story; the accomplishment of Elhanan in slaying the Philistine warrior (2 Sam. 21.19) becomes part of the David legend (1 Sam. 17)… Reading the biblical account of the emergence of the monarchy while simultaneously considering social-science models of state formation has led recent investigators to reassess the role of the Philistines…True, the early Israelite state is linked to the need for military forces that could deal with Philistine incursions. It also had to repel the raids of such groups as the Ammonites (1 Sam. 10.27) and Amalekites (1 Sam. 30.1), and perhaps meet threats from neighboring Moab, Edom, and Syria (1 Sam. 14.47; 2 Sam. 8.1—14)…The tenth century [BCE] saw the recovery of tribal lands lost to Philistines, the capture or incorporation of nontribal enclaves still surviving in tribal territories, the development of regional centers, and the establishment of trade routes…”See Kinship and Kingship: The Early Monarchy: https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780195139372.001.0001/acref-9780195139372-chapter-6;jsessionid=3F74A742DBE59F8A2C1B4F479AD95CBF
See Drews, Robert. The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
“…the rites performed at the Sintashta burial ground (in the southern Ural region, northeast of Magnitogorsk) had a pronounced Indo-Iranian character. The tribes that used this and related burial grounds from the eighteenth to the sixteenth century BCE carried out both individual and group interments. The wooden burial cover was held up by wooden posts; the most ancient of Indian scriptures, the Ṛg Veda, makes reference to a similar practice…The sacrifice of animals is reminiscent of another ancient Indian sacrificial custom, the Agnicayana. The Sintashta burial ground reflects a stage of ancient Indian beliefs earlier than that found in the Ṛg Veda. Moreover, elements of the funeral rites have parallels to those in a wider area…” in Litvinskii, B (2005) “Prehistoric Religions: The Eurasian Steppes and Inner Asia,” Encyclopedia of Religion, 11, pp. 7382—7388.
Gimbutas, Marija. The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, 6500— 3500 B.C.: Myths and Cult Images. Berkeley, 1982.
Mallory, J. P, and Adams, D. Q. The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006
The story of Yama is told first in the “Ṛg Veda dating from between *c.*1700 bce and *c.*1200—1000 bce…were first put into an orally transmitted saṃhitā collection, arranged into ten maṇḍalas, or ‘books’, possibly around 1200 bce…“https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780198610250.001.0001/acref-9780198610250-e-2083?rskey=QG7Wjx&result=3
Rees, Alwyn D, and Rees, B. R. Celtic Heritage : Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales. London: Thames and Hudson, 1961. Print.
John Carey “The Voice of Amairgen, and Ireland’s Myth of Itself.” In private correspondence Professor Carey (http://research.ucc.ie/profiles/A007/jcarey) confirmed Rees brothers’ (as well as Myles Dillon and Kuno Meyer’s) view that Yama and Donn are cognates.
See “German Mythology” in The Oxford Companion to World Mythology (https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780195156690.001.0001/acref-9780195156690-e-605?rskey=Wjxz8S&result=1)
See “Germanic Divinities in Weekday Names,” Strutynski, Udo in Journal of Indo-European Studies 3, 1975, pp. 363—384
Puhvel, Jaan. “Remus Et Frater.” History of Religions15.2 (1975): 146-57.
Lincoln, Bruce. “The Indo-European Myth of Creation.” History of Religions 15.2 (1975): 121-45.
Lincoln, Bruce. “The Indo-European Myth of Creation.” History of Religions 15.2 (1975): 121-45.
Lincoln, Bruce “The Indo-European Myth of Creation,” History of Religions , Nov., 1975, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Nov., 1975), pp. 121-145. University of Chicago Press (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1061927).
“In 1887, Egyptian peasants rummaging in ruins on the plain of Amarna found inscribed clay tablets… Eventually, the corpus of letters, with four attached inventories, would number 350…The language of the Amarna Letters, with a few exceptions in Assyrian, Hurrian, and [Indo-European-European] Hittite, is Babylonian… Correspondence with independent powers to the north is attested from late (about the thirtieth year) in the reign of Amenhotpe III to early in the reign of Tutankhamun, a period of about twenty-five years…” in the Oxford Companion to Ancient Egypt (2005): https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780195102345.001.0001/acref-9780195102345-e-0026?rskeyEJzn9r&result=2
See page 59 of Drews, Robert. The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
See Drews, Robert. The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.