Hi there! Welcome to the tenth episode of Stories That Made Us! In this season, we visit the creation stories from around the world. This episode covers the Buddhist tale of our origin. 

Now, Buddhism does not have a "creation myth" in the traditional sense. The religion, after all, is atheist in its core. In fact, questions about the eternity or infinity of the universe are counted among the 14 unanswerable questions which the Buddha maintained were counterproductive areas of speculation. He insisted that time and effort were better spent in achieving the meaningful goal of self-realization than to discuss and debate hypothetical questions like these. 

However, there is a tale in the Agganna Sutta that may be considered as the Buddhist creation myth. Many believe this text to be a satirical fable. They claim that this sutta is less about creation and is more of a refutation of the caste system, which is a prevalent Hindu ideology of a rigid class system determined by birth. Nevertheless, this tale was orally handed down to generations, until it was finally transcribed around the first century BC.

Regardless of whether one believes the fable to be a creation myth or not, it remains a doorway to our understanding of Buddhist thought. In fact, Buddha's message in the text is clear, that the most important thing in the world is Truth or Dhamma and everything is created, measured, and valued based on this Truth.

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The music used for the episodes are either free to use, or under creative commons license. Below are their links and attributions -

Angel Guides

Artist: Jesse Gallagher

Source: YouTube Audio Library

Divine Life Societies

Artist: Jesse Gallagher

Source: YouTube Audio Library

Song of Sadhana

Artist: Jesse Gallagher

Source: YouTube Audio Library

Lift Motif by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100176

Artist: http://incompetech.com/