Revised May 22, 2018; May 25, 2022; October 3, 2023
1. To understand the Buddha’s message, one needs to grasp the unimaginable length of the samsāra (the rebirth process). The Buddha said that there is no discernible beginning to conscious life. It always existed, and it will exist until one attains Nibbāna.
- Infinity is a mind-boggling concept; see “The Infinity Problem in Buddhism.”
2. This is a bit difficult concept for many because many cultures/religions have the idea of a set time of Creation. If there is a First Cause (such as Creation), then there must be a time that everything got started. But if there is no Creation, then there cannot be a set time for a beginning.
- Even as recently as at the beginning of the 1900s, Lord Kelvin, one of the top scientists of the day, estimated that the age of the Sun was < 40 million years based on gravitational contraction (scientists did not know the atomic structure at that time). Our knowledge of the universe was pretty much limited to the Solar system.
3. Vindication of the Buddha’s teachings on the long samsāra started at the beginning of the 1900s with the advent of quantum mechanics and relativity.
- The discovery of radioactivity in 1898 by Becquerel and Einstein’s explanation of the photoelectric effect in 1905 led to the quantum theory of atomic structure. That, in turn, led to the correct picture of nuclear fusion as the source of solar energy.
- By 1956, scientists knew the age of the solar system to be > 4 billion years. Yet, even billions of years are hardly the same as “beginning-less time”!
4. But there was more to be discovered. By 1929, Edwin Hubble showed that distant galaxies are moving away from each other and that our galaxy is just one of many galaxies. That was a vast understatement since now we know billions of galaxies exist in our observable universe! And they are flying away from each other, meaning the universe is expanding.
- The discovery of microwave background radiation in the 1960s led to the “Big Bang Theory” that our universe started with the “Big Bang” about 14 billion ago.
- However, it is just a theory.
5. The currently accepted explanation for the “big bang origin of the universe” (by scientists) is the inflationary theory of Alan Guth; see the book, “The Inflationary Universe” by Alan Guth, 1997. In the inflation theory, if one “Big Bang” is possible, then it is a given that many other “Big Bangs” are possible. The total energy of our universe is entirely consistent with adding up to zero.
- If a universe requires zero energy to produce, then “the universe is the ultimate free lunch,” as Guth explains in his book (pp. 247-248). Thus, implied in the inflation theory is the existence of multiple universes.
- However, there are some contradictions to the “Big Bang Theory” emerging in 2023.
- According to the “cyclic theory” model, an alternate theory, the same universe comes to a “Big Crunch,” which leads to another Big Bang, and the whole process keeps repeating. So, there is no beginning to time either; time is infinite.
6. There are several theories currently being explored in quantum mechanics related to cosmology. One theory requires a universe to exist for each possible event! So, there may be an infinite number of parallel universes. For example, see “The Beginning of Infinity” by David Deutsch (2011). In all these theories, multiple universes always exist.
- If that is not enough to boggle one’s mind, another theory in quantum mechanics is called the “Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.” It speculates that multiple universes arise each time a quantum event takes place!
- All the above are mere speculations as of now.
7. Buddha explains how the universe operates in the Aggañña Sutta (DN 27). However, all English translations available today are not correct. A good translation of the sutta with details would need a good background in Buddha Dhamma.
- I wrote an introduction to Aggañña Sutta in “Buddhism and Evolution – Aggañña Sutta (DN 27)“.
- Also see “Infinity – How Big Is It?“.
8. I would like to close this essay with a simile from the Buddha that he used to describe the unimaginable length of samsāra and to point out that our time in this life is less than a blink of an eye to the length of samsāra. The Buddha used a great eon as the measurement unit to help his followers visualize the enormous length of samsāra.
- In Buddha Dhamma, the Earth goes through a cyclic process: it forms, stays in that state, starts being destroyed, and stays in that destroyed state. That whole process takes a great eon (mahā kappa), and then the entire process repeats again and again.
- The Buddha gave a simile to describe the length of a great eon (mahā kappa.) It is longer than the time it would take a man to wear away a mountain of solid granite one yojanā (about 7 miles) around and one yojanā high by stroking it once every hundred years with a silk cloth.
- These days, scientists use the word “eon” to denote the duration of a universe (from the “big bang” either to a “big crunch” or just fading away). That will be proven to be incorrect in the future. I hope I will live to that day!
9. For fun, I estimated the mass of the material that needs to be removed by the silk cloth each time (this happens every 100 years). Using a 7-mile cube of stone with a density of 2515 kg per cubic meter, I calculate the mass of the mountain to be 3.5 x 10 ^6 kg.
- Assuming our Solar system’s lifetime is 10 billion years, I calculate the mass removed by each stroke is about 36 grams or about 1.2 ounces. That appears to be a reasonable number!
- When we try to visualize the wearing of a mountain, we can imagine how long a time period that is.
10. Yet, that is still nothing compared to the length of the samsāra. Infinity is a concept that is hard to wrap one’s mind around; see “Infinity – How Big Is It?”.
- One day, the bhikkhus asked the Buddha how many great eons had already passed and gone by. The Buddha told them, “Suppose, bhikkhus, there were four disciples here, each with a lifespan of a hundred years, and each day they were each to recollect a hundred thousand great eons. There would still be great eons not yet recollected by them when those four disciples pass away at the end of a hundred years. Because, bhikkhus, this samsāra is without discoverable beginning”.
- Another simile given by the Buddha to indicate the length of samsāra is the following: Every living being has been one’s mother, father, or a close relative in this unimaginably long samsāra.
- One could understand why infinity is so hard to fathom by reading about what scientists say about infinity; a very entertaining book is “The Beginning of Infinity” (2011) by the physicist David Deutsch.
July 20, 2019: New series on “Origin of Life.”.
