Without Discoverable Beginning (The limitations of science)

by dhw, Monday, January 16, 2012, 16:28 (4693 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: The Blessed one said this:
"Monks, this samsara is without discoverable beginning. A first point is not discerned of beings roaming and wandering on hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving. Suppose, monks, a man would cut up whatever grass, sticks, branches, and foliage there are in this Jambudipa [Pali for "rose apple land"] and collect them together into a single heap Having done so, he would put them down, saying for each one: 'This is my mother, this my mother's mother.' The sequence of that man's mothers and grandmothers would not come to an end, yet the grass, sticks, branches and foliage in this Jambudipa would be used up and exhausted. For what reason? Because monks, this samsara is without discoverable beginning. A first point is not discerned of beings roaming and wandering on hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving. For such a long time, monks, you have experienced suffering, anguish, and disaster, and swelled the cemetery. It is enough to become disenchanged [disenchanted?] with all formations, enough to become dispassionate toward them, enough to be liberated from them."

As always, Matt, you find new ways to challenge us! Thank you. I’m tempted to ask: Did the Blessed One really say this? Is it an accurate translation? But perhaps it would be more productive to ask what exactly was his concept of samsara. Did he believe that each human being passes through different lives? (Men only, or do the mothers also come again? And can they achieve enlightenment?) Or that humans endlessly repeat the cycle of ignorance and craving endured by their predecessors? Or that each of us repeats the cycle during our one life? I’ve always felt that the concept of moksha (liberation) might just as well be identical to permanent death (no more rebirth, no more suffering). And it’s all very well being unfettered by craving, but some of the greatest human joys and achievements have also arisen out of craving – not least, the need for love – and without it, the human species would die out within a single generation!

In the context of our discussion on time, how can there be a cycle of birth and rebirth of any kind without a past and a present, and how can moksha be attainable if there is no such thing as a future? All of these terms indicate that time is a sequential reality.

As for a discoverable beginning for samsara, did he mean that we would never know how life originated, or that life on Earth may have been preceded by life elsewhere in the universe, or that we would never know when humans first walked the earth and began to suffer and get themselves recycled?

O Master Xeno, thou know'st more than me,
Myopic as I am, so help me see.
But if to end the cycle of death and life
Means no more chocolate, no more kids or wife,
Methinks my preference will be rebirth,
Since there's so much to live for here on Earth.