1. In Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto, translators, Zen Poems of China and Japan: The Crane’s Bill (New York: Grove Press, 1973), p. 20.

2. Translated by Dennis Tedlock (New York: Simon and Schuster/Touchstone, 1985, 1986), p. 73.

3. What we are describing here is the origin of our Solar System—not the origin of the Universe, or at least its latest incarnation, which is most often described as the Big Bang.

4. The Second Law of Thermodynamics specifies that in any process, the net orderliness of the Universe must decrease. Some places may get more orderly as long as others get more chaotic. There is plenty of order to draw on in the Universe, and nothing in the Second Law is inconsistent with the origin of the planets or the beginnings of life.

5. Except for a tiny fraction generated by the radioactive decay of atoms hailing originally from elsewhere in the Galaxy.

6. Two millennia after his last worshipper died, the name of this god was given to a newly discovered planet.