Pagan origins of Adam and Eve story

(Historical Rabbit Hole)

Adam and Eve as kundalini energy (Artofit)

Is there a Buddhist parallel to this popular Western story of a Garden, a first human couple, a Wisdom Tree, and a tricky shapeshifting Serpent? There is. One need only look at the Agganna Sutta, "A Buddhist Genesis," a discourse given by the Buddha "On Beginnings."

But first it may be better to question the Sumerian, Jewish, Christian version -- made silly by its oversimplification over the millennia. The Christian version makes next to no sense, the Jewish interpretations a little more sense, and the much older Sumerian roots from texts like the Epic of Gilgamesh the Enūma Eliš. All of these are creation myths rooted in some kind of history.

Sadly, many readers misunderstand the Buddhist version of "Genesis." The Buddha is in no way explaining how life began. It is preexisting. He is merely explaining how it came to Earth and how karma (deeds) impacts the environment. As people become so, too, the world declines. We are not evolving so much as devolving from a Golden Age (Satya Yuga), and it is all cyclical. It happens again and again.

This is an echo of the older Vedic (Hindu) and Shramanic (Jain) versions, and that is because "Buddhism" does not begin with the historical Buddha. He is constantly referring back to previous buddhas (Great Heroes or Ford-makers as Jainism calls them, avatars and sages in the Old Vedic Religion that became Brahmanism and much later Hinduism).

But here's some insight in these themes from Urgyen Jigme (Mel Pine) in Melting Pot Dharma inspired by Amie Zor in Adam & Eve (& the Self):

Adam, Eve, and Mara (Buddhist story)

Don't touch that fruit! - But I need wisdom!!

At their pure inner core, all beings know that they are not separate from one another. In that state of mind, it is as if they live in a Garden of Eden, where they have no need for shame, no need to differentiate friend from foe, good from evil, and no need to imagine a creator god to oversee their behavior.

They have no expectations that their lives should be other than they are. 

It's all me. I created everything. - Even us?

But something in our nature likes to delude us into forgetting this oneness [or unity] of all things and into believing that life should be fairer than it is.

We give that demon a name, Mara [Death, the Obstacle to Enlightenment], to help us identify it.

Suppose that, a very long time ago, the first two human beings evolved from earlier beings. We’ll call them Adam and Eve. Their inner core, or Buddha-nature [or natural state of only dreaming and soon to awake], was pure, and they had no fear of other beings, no sense of good and evil, no self that was separate from other beings and from whatever force brought them into being.

Adam and Eve did have a sense, though, that one of the trees in their garden bore intoxicating [entheogenic] fruit that they should stay away from.

That was the Tree of Duality. Looking for an opportunity to trick Adam and Eve into believing they were distinct separate beings, Mara [the Deceiver] took the form of a snake to talk with them.

No beings had ever lied to Adam and Eve, and they had no way of knowing that the snake was not really a being, so they listened as the demon Mara told them how much fun it would be to become intoxicated on the fruit of the Tree of Duality.

Zarathustra, Iran (Persia)

So Adam and Eve ate the fruit and became drunk with duality. They began to see the world as a conflict between good and evil [as taught in the novel Near East religion of Zarathustra called Zoroastrianism].

They decided that only a cruel god would create such an unfriendly place, so they invented the god of the Old Testament and then hid from him.

Because Mara had taken the form of a snake, they feared and despised all snakes. They made distinctions everywhere: friend and foe, human and animal, smart and dumb, handsome and ugly, strong and weak, rich and poor. They began to see old age, sickness, and death as unfair, as burdens, as suffering.

Four prophets: Mani, Zoraster, Buddha, Jesus

They thought child-bearing was punishment. So that was how Mara, for thousands of years to come, deluded human beings into forgetting that they could return to the Garden of Eden.

Every parable is supposed to have a moral. I’d say the moral is: Some believe in an original sin that requires salvation. Other believe in a delusion that requires awakening. — Mel Pine (Urgyen Jigme)