Apologies in advance - I have a thing for this quote...
A month or two ago my son had an upset stomach and took some Pepto-bismol. He said something to me like, "You know, bismuth cannot form in most stars, only red-giants that eventually go super-nova. Through massive explosions our upset stomachs are calmed."
But, one of my favorite deliveries of this line comes from the character Delenn on Babylon 5.
> The molecules of your body are the same molecules . . . that burn inside the stars themselves. We are star stuff. We are the Universe, made manifest, trying to figure itself out.
>> ~ Delenn, Babylon 5, _A Distant Star_
A while back I really got into exploring this expression of "being starstuff". In particular the word "stuff" really strikes me - so non-specific and simple. Another word for "dharmas", or for the "red dust" of some of the old Zen stories.
But, I found that there is an older usage of the term in this context. This one by science author H. Gordon Garbedian in 1929:
> We are made of the same stuff as the stars, so when we study astronomy we are in a way only investigating our remote ancestry and our place in the universe of star stuff. Our very bodies consist of the same chemical elements found in the most distant nebulae, and our activities are guided by the same universal rules.
>> ~H. Gordon Garbedian, 1929 August 11, New York Times, Section: New York Times Magazine, _The Star Stuff That Is Man_ by H. Gordon Garbedian, Quote Page SM1.
But, it is possible that he in turn borrowed it from Albert Durrant Watson who used it in a way even more aligned with "dharmas" or "skanhas" in 1918:
> Thus we come to see that if our bodies are made of star-stuff, and there is nothing else, says the spectroscope, to make them of—the loftier qualities of our being are just as necessarily constituents of that universal substance out of which are made, "Whatever gods there be."
> We are made of universal and divine ingredients, and the study of the stars will not let us escape a wholesome and final knowledge of the fact.
>> ~Albert Durrant Watson, The Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Volume 12, Number 3, _Astronomy: A Cultural Avocation by Albert Durrant Watson (Retiring President’s Address_, Annual Meeting, January 29, 1918
Perhaps there are older formulations. I do not know. But how lovely it can be when science, astronomy, philosophy, and religion find the common ground of truth. Right here in the world of the red dust - starstuff.
Deep bows,
Sekishi