y not,
greetings to you too.
you said: Is it not that living beings have ‘no discernible beginning’? … that is,that there was never a time when they were not? How is it that here it is said that they ‘come to be’, they being sankata arising from strong kamma beeja, these in turn having arisen from abhisankhara?
This is how I understand it: Living beings come to be due to the arising of the five skhandhas in a new bhava. These five skhandhas in a new bhava are merely the infinite different manifestations or existences of individual streams of kammic energy. These kammic streams of energy have no discernible beginnings. However each of these various existences linked to an individual kammic stream of energy has a beginning and an end, which depends on the strength of the kamma beeja that gave rise to it.
Hope I have not confused you even more with my explanation.