In the Buddhist parable of the poisoned arrow, a monk is so troubled that the Buddha hasn’t addressed these types of existential questions that he threatens to abandon his monastic vows unless he can get satisfactory answers. The Buddha responds by comparing him to a man wounded with a poisoned arrow who, absurdly, won’t accept treatment until he knows who shot him, what clan the archer was from, what the archer looked like, what materials the arrow was made of, and so on. “The man would die,” the Buddha concludes, “and those things would still remain unknown to him” (Majjhima Nikāya 63).
