In it the Buddha is explaining wrong views other religions have and how they got them.
One of them is “partial eternalism”
The cosmos expands and contracts. When a cosmos contracts many beings go to a blissful mind-made realm.
One of them gets bored and as a result gets reborn out of that realm.
That “first one” gets lonely and wishes there were other beings.
Other beings, still in that bliss realm get bored too and are reborn out of that realm for the same reason.
The “first one” mistakenly thinks he wished them into existence. So do the others. They think he is Brahma, the creator god.
This reminds me much of a favorite science fiction of mine, Babylon 5.
In the setting for that show there are super duper ancient races, some of whom remain behind the scenes, unknown by the younger races to manipulate them.
In the course of the story the protagonist stumbles across “the first one”, the oldest of all the ancient beings who they revere as “the first one”.
Ha!
The creator of Babylon 5 was ripped off Hinduism, at least partially.
"The Minbari are based on Asian culture, in general, I think, with the religious caste being a combo of Chinese and Zen Buddhism, the warrior caste being mostly Mongol with elements of Shaolin, and the worker caste just representing the lower castes of Hindu belief. "—Quora
@paul1 not with the mysterious remaining ancient races. You barely learn anything about them in the series.
I always thought of the Minbari as the Japanese with their reverence for delicate and beautiful things, character, and ideas. Thankfully with the power to back that up. All too often cultures like that are plowed over by more vulgar ones. I really liked that they were one of the more powerful races.
It’s interesting how the Buddha lived in warlike times but seems to have maintained the travelling monkhood successfully in that environment, and how much it has to do with state of mind.
" 1. Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.
2. Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow."—Dhp
Or is it a sign of the tolerance of Indian culture?
