Phajān is a ritual to destroy the elephant's soul.
A ritual in which a baby elephant captured in the wild is tied up and starved and beaten for several days until it completely loses resistance.
Half of the elephants cannot endure this and die, but the strong ones survive and become a means of making money by carrying tourists on their backs.
Elephants may not be able to think, but their souls are shattered and, from the depths of their instincts, they have come to understand the harsh world dimly.
That I must not look for my mother anymore, and that the pain of the club cannot be overcome.
The way elephants survive is simple.
It's about pretending not to hear the voice within you that cries out for freedom, and pretending that the world isn't in chaos.


We are led to think about evil.
Anger flares up at the poor men wielding clubs performing the Pajan ritual.
But if we don't stop at anger and look into their lives, we see that, as with all issues, this goes beyond a simple question of good and evil.
Perhaps those who perform the Pajan ritual are also victims.
Their souls may have already been shattered.
When they first hesitated to beat the baby elephant, his family and society would have spoken kindly to him.
Stop asking questions.
It doesn't help you make a living.
Act like an adult for the survival of your loved ones whom you must protect.
In the end, he would have pretended not to hear the voice inside him, and that the world was not in chaos.


This story is your story.
What about you? In some places you've been a beaten elephant, in others you've been a club-wielder.
What we need to worry about is not whether we were victims or perpetrators, but whether our souls have already been destroyed.

---From the "Prologue"

Whenever we look into the vastness of the universe, we cannot help but think about our status as human beings.
The triviality of my daily life feels so insignificant in the face of transcendent grandeur.
What is the philosophical reason why, even in modern times, humanity cannot let go of "God"? It is because of human values.
The idea that the god who created this vast world might be the origin of humanity relieves my ontological insignificance.


But this comfort easily crumbles when we consider the size of the universe.
If all existence actually originated from the creation of God, if He created the multiverse of hyperspace and watched the birth and death of countless mini-universes flickering through eternity and infinite space, and if He watched the birth and death of hundreds of billions of galaxies in one of those mini-universes, and after witnessing the birth of countless life forms on the third planet of a solar system, a speck of dust on the outskirts of one of those tiny galaxies, why should He interfere so much with the brief existence and disappearance of human life on that Earth? Is there even a reason for Him to do so?
---From "The Size of Our Universe"

The programming of C. elegans easily extends to the idea of ​​human programming.
Of course, human neurons are much more numerous and complex, with approximately 10 billion neurons, compared to the 302 neurons of the C. elegans worm.
But this is a quantitative difference, not a qualitative one.
If in the near future the information about human neurons becomes clear and we can program this information, we will encounter something within the program that reacts and speaks like a human being.
And likewise, to understand what this program human means, we will have to engage in a philosophical debate.
If we are not prepared, we will be confused when the day comes when the program human asks the questions.
He might ask us:
“What is life?”
---From "The Birth of Life"

Great teachers have been born in countless times and places.
Among them, there was one particularly wondrous time.
2500 years ago, the period known as the 'Axial Age' arrived.
According to British religious scholar Karen Armstrong, the Axial Age was a time of great turning point in the history of human thought.
In India, the Upanishads and Siddhartha Gautama emerged, in China, Lao-tzu and Confucius were active, in ancient Greece, Socrates and Plato were born, and in Israel, Elijah, Jeremiah, and Isaiah were born.

The first person to use the term "axial age" was the German existential philosopher Karl Jaspers.
In his 1949 book, The Origin and Goal of History, he presented the concept of the Axial Age as an era that could not be denied as the spiritual origin of all mankind, regardless of East or West.
We do not know specifically why, during this particular period, the great teachers commonly preached grand ideas.
However, it is clear that the period immediately preceding it was a turbulent one, with rapid urbanization and population growth across the globe.
From this point on, mankind, who were born in nature and wandered across vast fields, were born in huge cities and began to live within a system of culture and symbols.
Urban life has narrowed the physical distance between people, exacerbating economic, political, and social conflicts, which have culminated in violence and war.
Perhaps the Axial Age was the inevitable result of humankind's struggle to develop civilization and face the problems it brought.

---From "The Great Teachers"