What Are We Made Of?

In order to examine the nature of life, let’s first consider the stuff of which life is made. According to the famous bacteriologist Rene Dubos (1901-82), the human body is, in one sense, a collection of physical matter, a machine assembled of atoms and molecules that abides by all of the physical laws governing inanimate matter. Yet it is a machine that is capable of controlling its own activities and directing them toward the fulfillment of a lifetime goal that the machine itself has freely chosen.

Like any other physical object, the human body is composed of atoms and molecules. In particular, the body primarily comprises of four kinds of atoms or elements – Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen (the four basic building blocks of all life) – and the molecular compounds they form. In addition, small amounts of other elements such as phosphorus, calcium, chlorine, iron, magnesium, potassium, sodium and sulfur are present and necessary for the body to function properly. The body also requires on a daily basis trace amounts of chromium, cobalt, copper, fluorine, iodine, manganese, molybdenum, selenium and tin.

One scientist has pointed out that the body of a lean; 132-pound man contains enough fat to make seven bars of soap, carbon for 9000 pencil leads, the magnesium found in a single dose of laxative, enough lime to make a ceramic soup bowl, as much sulfur as is contained in a large firecracker, and about 38 gallons of water. The materials that make up the human body could probably be purchased separately in their most rudimentary chemical form for about $1000, all told. Another scientist estimated, however, that it would cost more than $10 million to synthesize from those basic elements the same complex organic compounds found in the body of a male human being. Manufacturing the organic materials that make up the female body, however, would be far more expensive, since female hormones connected with child bearing and milk production are far more complex than any substance found in the male body. For instance, it would cost more than $20 million to synthesize just one gram of the hormone that stimulates the production of milk in a mother’s body. Even if one could afford to produce the body’s many complex compounds through chemical processes, one could never come close to artificially creating a human being.

Though we might guess that differences among individuals are related to differences in the amounts of certain substances in their bodies, this is not the case at all. A person who is stubborn or hard headed, for example, is not so because his body contains more than the normal amount of iron. His body is virtually identical to anyone else’s when it comes to its basic composition. The human body, then, is not extraordinary in its makeup, but comprises of matter that exists anywhere on the Earth’s surface and elements that range throughout the entire universe. Viewing things this way, we find no clear distinction between the world of living and that of the non-living. Yet in the Gosho, Nichiren Daishonin states: “Life itself is the most precious of all treasures. Even the treasures of the entire universe cannot equal the value of a single human life” (The Major Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, Vol. 1, p. 267). There is no material treasure in the universe that can match the value of a single human life.