Infinite past

General discussion, particularly exploring the Dharma in the modern world.
Urgyen Dorje
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Re: Infinite past

Post by Urgyen Dorje »

I really shouldn't put my beak in here, but what the heck...

The word "infinity" gets in the way of these meditations sometimes.

For me personally, whenever I encounter a teaching, I try to see how it applies as an instruction. So for me, when I hear teachings about all the infinite lifetimes in samsara, I try to direct that to an appreciation of how precious this opportunity to practice is. I also try to direct that to a sense of joy and humility in having been this for a very long time in the past to have had the karma to encounter this again. And when I encounter teachings about all the infinite number of beings in samsara for an infinte amount of time, I try to direct that to a sense of closeness for all beings, as well as compassion, as we've all been bumping into eachother for a very long time. We're all kin.

For me personally, some of these "cosmological" teachings in the dharma are a little challenging, and I *do* have a scientific mind and a mathematical background. "Infinity" is a particularly loaded word. If you were ask how many points there are on a line one inch long-- infinite would be the right answer. If you were then to ask how many points were on a square one inch long and one inch wide-- infinite would also be the right answer, but that infininty would be bigger than the infinity from the first answer. So it's a little tricky.

So for me personally, I try to make sense of teachings on infinite beings in infinite worlds in infinite universes across infinite time as really just a teaching to drop my conceptions of space, time, and being. Whatever it is, it doesn't fit into my little scheme of a world the size of my self interests, or family, or kin, or nationality, or nation, or species-- or anything. Reality is big. The space of being is big. And we've all been running around like crazy people in this bigness for a long time. Big time. Bigger than the scale of my attention span, interests, life, etc.

There is a special point in all of this, and it isn't some future point called nirvana, or some past point called samsara. It's the present. When we look at our experience from the vantage point of confusion, from the vantage point of the path, there is all this infinity of space and time, an infinity of embodiments, an infinity of confusion, pain, suffering, madness. When we look at our experience from the vantage point of awakening, confusion is dispelled in the moment of the present. As it says in the Aspirational Prayer of Samantabhadra, the only difference between a "sentient being" and a "buddha" is recognition of the nature of mind. As a sentient being we're lost in convoluted concepts of space and time, with nirvana and samsara at distant poles of some continuum that is really just our own thoughts... but in the next moment, a moment of recognizing that nature, we're buddhas, and concepts of samsara and nirvana, as well as concepts of space and time vanish without a trace.

just some thoughts.
lostitude
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Re: Infinite past

Post by lostitude »

Thank you all. The book I am reading indeed fails to stress how the Buddha phrased his answser, not saying textually that there is no beginning. I guess this nuance explains many things then.
What I now wonder about is why the Buddha compared the number of tears shed theoughout the cycle with the number of drops in the ocean, making this whole business of infinite cycles something extremely concrete and material, and possibly taking the listener away from the idea that all this is only an illusion and doesn't really exist.
Urgyen Dorje
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Re: Infinite past

Post by Urgyen Dorje »

This is a provisional teaching. It's intention is to demonstrate the amount of suffering in the cycles of samsara It's not a metaphysical, ontological, or cosmological statement.
lostitude wrote:Thank you all. The book I am reading indeed fails to stress how the Buddha phrased his answser, not saying textually that there is no beginning. I guess this nuance explains many things then.
What I now wonder about is why the Buddha compared the number of tears shed theoughout the cycle with the number of drops in the ocean, making this whole business of infinite cycles something extremely concrete and material, and possibly taking the listener away from the idea that all this is only an illusion and doesn't really exist.
Rakz
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Re: Infinite past

Post by Rakz »

Beings are infinite otherwise it's safe to say there's a creator god who sets a number.
Urgyen Dorje
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Re: Infinite past

Post by Urgyen Dorje »

"Infinite beings" is another place where the term "infinity" becomes a little slippery. Since a being, even a small one, has finite spatial extent, we'd have a hard time arguing that there is an infinite number of beings on Earth, as the planet is a closed system. There are really only two ways to go with that. One is that the intention of "infinity" is just "uncountably large". The other is that there are multiple world systems. Then one has to face that there are an infinite number of beings only if there are an infinite number of world systems, and we have the same fork in the road. Are there just an uncountably large number of world systems, or a truly infinite number? The way I work with that is to go back the abhidharma cosmology, like the Myriad Worlds book from Kongtrul's Treasury. There it discusses the causes and conditions for world systems to arise, and that is the karma of beings and the aspirations of Buddhas. Given that the aspirations of Buddhas are infinite, then it is understandable that world systems and beings are infinite.

Even then, I try to work with this less as a cosmological lesson and more as an instruction to practice. To generate a sense of largeness, expanse. To put my intellectual arrogance in check, that I can't possible understand the vastness of things, only a Buddha can. There are there infinite beings, and thus my job with the Great Vow is big. That gives me courage and pushes me on.

One benefit of understanding inifinite beings in infinite worlds is that we can understand the arising and falling of beings on this planet.
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Kaccāni
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Re: Infinite past

Post by Kaccāni »

Beginnings are beyond the extremes of singularity or multiplicity. That's difficult to imagine if equipped with sense organs that produce a 3d+time image and prime thinking that way.

Numbers don't exist before beginnings. They are not independent from beginnings to happen in the first place. Beginnings are a precondition for numbers (and concepts of zero or infinity) to even exist. Numbers only exist because beginnings and ends, or generally either pair of conditioned extreme, is observed, is separated by conceptualization from all other observations, is observed regularly, and then generalized, and the repetition given some kind of order by comparison (spatial or temporal) that is expressed in numbers. With the ripening of the concept, you invent a zero (the non-existing number), or infinity (the never-reachable number). Older cultures just wrote a sufficiently large number instead of infinity.

Now you take this concept that arose on beginnins and try to apply it to something which is beyond the beginning. Beginnings are neither countable nor infinite, they are beyond numbers. If they do happen, you can count them. If they don't happen, you cannot. Then you may compare that non-happening to other concept, and assign that zero. And you can phantasize about what is beyond the first or the last, or in between two happenings. But that's all thought that is caused by beginning, and cannot describe it.

Best wishes
Kc
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