Physics and cosmology tell us that the first constituents of the universe burst into existence, without reason, necessity or purpose, in a Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. The theoretical and observational evidence confounds all our commonsense assumptions and yet, sooner or later, we will have to accommodate ourselves to the reality of a world that came from nothing. There is no Big Bang theory in Buddhism. But Mahāyāna Buddhism (and Zen...