Buddhism sees right through the familiar problems with cosmological and design arguments for the existence of God.
Cosmologists will sometimes say one can’t ask what there was before the singularity banged or how the singularity got there. What they mean is that “time,” as physics understands it, begins (or becomes a useful concept) with the Big Bang. But this hardly makes the sense behind the question go away. Thus other cosmologists will admit the legitimacy of the question and say they have no clue as to how to answer it. Buddhism is comfortable with an infinite regress of natural causes. Indeed, the idea fits well with the metaphysical idea of dependent origination, according to which everything that happens depends on other things happening.
宇宙学家有时会说，人们不能问奇点爆炸之前是什么，或者奇点是如何到达那里的。他们的意思是，物理学所理解的“时间”始于（或成为一个有用的概念）大爆炸。但这并不能消除这个问题背后的意义。因此，其他宇宙学家会承认这个问题的合理性，并表示他们不知道如何回答。佛教对自然原因的无限回归持开放态度。事实上，这种观点与形而上学的缘起论非常契合，根据这种观点，所有发生的事件都依赖于其他事件的发生。
The rejection of the Vedic (Indic) doctrine of atman, the idea that humans are possessors of an immutable, indestructible self or soul, comes from two lines of thought. First, there is the idea of dependent origination that I have just mentioned. Everything is in flux and all change is explained by prior change. The principle is universal and thus applies to mind. Next bring in experience or phenomenology: One will see that what one calls “the self” is like many other natural things, partaking of certain relations of continuity and connectedness. My conscious being is much more streamlike than it is like Mount Everest (which is also part of the flux, just less visibly so). Conventional speech allows us to reidentify each person by her name as if she is exactly the same over time.
对吠陀（印度）“阿特曼”（atman）教义的拒绝，即认为人类拥有一个不变、不可毁灭的自我或灵魂的观点，源于两种思路。首先，是我刚才提到的缘起论。一切都在变化，所有的变化都可以用先前的变化来解释。这一原理具有普遍性，因此也适用于心灵。接下来引入经验或现象学：你会发现，所谓的“自我”与许多其他自然事物一样，都具有某些连续性和连通性的关系。我的意识存在比珠穆朗玛峰（也是流动的一部分，只是不那么明显）更像溪流。传统的语言让我们能够通过名字重新识别每个人，仿佛她随着时间的推移是完全一样的。
But in fact identity is not an all-or-nothing thing. Personhood is one kind of unfolding. The Himalayas are a very slow unfolding (one answer to how long it takes to reach final enlightenment is as long as it would take for a mountain range 84,000 times larger that the Himalayas to erode if touched once a day with a soft cloth!); humans are a faster unfolding than the ordinary Himalayas; drosophila unfold much more quickly. Each kind of thing in the cosmos is an unfolding in the cosmos, the eternal Mother of all unfoldings, and has a temporal span during which it can be said to be what it is — a mountain range, a person, a fruit fly — and after which it ceases to have enough integrity to be said to be the same thing, itself. At such a transition point, we say the thing, event, or process is gone, over, dead, that it has passed, passed on, or passed away.
但事实上，身份并非非此即彼。人格是一种展现。喜马拉雅山的展现非常缓慢（关于达到最终开悟需要多长时间的一个答案是，如果每天用一块软布擦拭一次，一座比喜马拉雅山大84000倍的山脉就会被侵蚀！）；人类的展现速度比普通的喜马拉雅山更快；果蝇的展现速度要快得多。宇宙中的每一种事物都是宇宙中永恒的展开，宇宙是所有展开的永恒之母，并且拥有一个时间跨度，在此期间，它可以被称为它本身——一座山脉、一个人、一只果蝇——而在此之后，它不再具有足够的完整性，无法被称为同一事物本身。在这样的过渡点，我们会说这个事物、事件或过程消失了、结束了、死亡了，它已经过去了、逝去了或消逝了。
This is the doctrine of anatman, no-self. Nothing is permanent, even things that seem so, aren’t. If properly understood the view is not nihilistic. One of my students once asked in a very disturbed manner, “If I am not myself who the fuck am I?” I am happy to report that further therapy about the meaning of the doctrine of anatman calmed him. Indeed, in the West a very similar view is widely held from Locke to the present. And it fits nicely with contemporary mind science. Furthermore, the doctrine of anatman suits Buddhist ideas that persons can in fact transform themselves, become enlightened, and so on. If one’s nature is, as it were, immutably fixed, it is hard to see how self-transformation is possible.
这就是无我（anatman）的教义。没有什么是永恒的，即使是看似永恒的事物，也并非如此。如果正确理解，这种观点并非虚无主义。我的一个学生曾经非常不安地问道：“如果我不是我自己，那我到底是谁？”我很高兴地告诉大家，关于无我教义含义的进一步治疗让他平静下来。事实上，在西方，从洛克到现在，人们普遍持有非常类似的观点。这与当代心智科学非常契合。此外，“无我”的教义也符合佛教的理念，即人可以自我转化、获得觉悟等等。如果一个人的本性仿佛是不可改变的，那么很难想象自我转化的可能性。
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