My Ancestors

I find some things quite weird. For instance, I was quite intrigued to realize that one time decades ago my mother carried me in her arms and then she put me down, and then never ever picked me up again.

Picking me up and putting me down was an unremarkable action up to that time—she’d done that hundreds of times before—but she did not realize that that was the last time she would ever do so. She put me down that one last time and never picked me up in her arms again.

That’s something that must certainly have happened to you as well: that last time when your mother fed you, or bathed you, or dressed you. And then she never did it again.

But of course, we didn’t know at that time when it happened or precisely when it happened. Simple logic forces us to conclude that it did happen someday but now we don’t know when.

I have had ancestors, as we all must have had. That’s an unremarkable fact. What astounds me is that my ancestors were around for all of the history of the universe. Let me take small steps to express my astonishment.

None of my ancestors (with the exception of my parents) ever had the experience of soaring 40,000 feet above the ground at 500 miles per hour. That’s an uneventful experience for anyone reading this piece. But think about it and you’d realize that of the 100 billion or so humans who have ever lived, this is an unimaginable event. That we don’t marvel at this is a most marvelous fact of our lives.

I wasn’t around when the British Raj ended in 1947 but my parents and grandparents were. I wasn’t around when the Muslims invaded the Indian subcontinent and slaughtered millions of my ancestors contemporaries but my ancestors were around.

My ancestors were around when Gondwana split up and the plate carrying India collided with Asia around 40 million years ago.

My ancestors were around for all of earth’s existence. I would not be here otherwise. Nor would you be here. But it gets weirder than that. A few of my ancestors belonged to the taxonomic group labeled homo sapience; but most of my ancestors were not. Our tribe is only about 300,000 years old at most. For a few billion years our ancestors were not humans. Being human is a recent innovation.

Our ancestors were around when a huge rock slammed into the earth around 65 million years ago in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. It’s known as the Chicxulub crater.  (It’s easier to pronounce — chix-a-lub — than to spell.) That ended the reign of the dinosaurs and began the age of the mammals. My ancestors survived that catastrophe — and so did yours — else we would not be here.

That’s only 65 million years ago. Not that long a time if you consider that our ancestors have been around for about 2 billion years, give or take a billion or so.

But wait! There’s more.

How old are the bits that we are made of? An astounding 13.8 billion years, if you care. Every atom in our bodies is ancient. We are just a temporary agglomeration of atoms forged billions of years ago. Hydrogen has been there from the beginning but most of the other elements were “manufactured” in many generations of stars.

I am a weird product of stuff that has been around for billions of years. And so are you. We aren’t all that different if we think about it.

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Let’s listen to Prajñāpāramitā ~ The Perfection of Wisdom ~ sutra also known as the Heart Sutra.

The idea that resonates the most with me is that “form is emptiness and emptiness is also form.” That leads to the excellent mantra of the sutra — Om Gate, gate, paragate, parasam gate, bodhi svaha. Om.

Om gone, gone, gone beyond
Gone absolutely beyond
Enlightened mind, so be it. Om.

Thank you, good night and may your god go with you.