Buddhist Cosmology

So there is something lasting? Continuing, perhaps? Almost immortal…

with metta

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I think so, in some ways; i recognize truths in / through the memory, in this life… And of course, that person who did this activity repeatedly alluded to benefit.

:slight_smile:

lol oh no lol i see now your meaning. You rascal ty, reexamining. d’oh! lol with … nothing.

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… Donation is a verb? There are no nouns. And all verbs as anything rise, therefore cease.

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Not sure if this was mentioned, Astronomers now believe virtually every star has planets and that they outnumber stars. Here is a short 5 minute video showing that other stars frequently come near our solar system, fortunately they don’t usually come close enough to destroy us directly. YouTube

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Yeah, that was my prediction years ago too. While dark matter and energy are still slightly open questions in terms of what they are, it seems that recent observations have determined the shape of the universe to be flat, implying that the ultimate fate of the universe is to keep expanding forever. This has now been shown sufficiently to be considered a settled matter in contemporary cosmology: there will be no Big Crunch.

Were you aware of this recent development when you made this prediction? Are you predicting that this consensus will be overturned some day by new theory and evidence? Or was your prediction (like mine) made back when this was more of an open question?

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As I see it, there are too many uncertainties and unexplained phenomena in modern cosmology. You may be right that this is “considered a settled matter”, yet many of these “settled matters” are often no more than a temporary consensus, to be revised, sometimes radically, once further observations come in. The field is too immature, it seems to me, for anyone to reach a final verdict. Here is an interesting article on some of the complexities involved.

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Wow! Four days ago, published in Nature… :thinking: Ok… Guess we’ll wait and see! :crossed_fingers:

Also: 5.7 Hydrogen atoms per cubic meter :flushed: Dang space! You empty! :mailbox_with_no_mail:

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I have faith in the Buddha and that what’s found in EBTs on this matter traces back to him.
I have been reading on the topic and every now and then the scientific method itself pushes scientists to get less certain about either hypothesis.
Also , the scale of things as soon as we move away from immediate orbit gets so massive that it is pretty hard to imagine us ever being able to move beyond Jupiter if we ever get there as astronauts… And that is so irrelevant to the scale in which timespace takes form that any hypothesis will only remain as such.
Maybe, as a byproduct of the path we may attain ourselves to the sort of insight into these things the Buddha did himself? :man_shrugging:

:anjal:

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The universe is no longer considered flat. It is now thought to be curved. Nor is expansion constant in all parts of the universe. This is current thought from this year. Here is a video. YouTube

I’ve always thought it funny that science can’t even explain the mind/body duality and how it arises and functions when we have every known example to study right here on Earth, yet they claim to understand the workings of a universe so expansive that the human mind cannot grasp the scale and complexity. Even repeatable experiments are fallible and result in a best guess scenario, in my opinion. When it comes down to living in the moment, such knowledge is a distraction at best, and the pursuit of such knowledge is a waste of time, ultimately. Every time some new “achievement” or “breakthrough” has been made, instead of inspiring humility at just how microscopic we are compared to the universe, this knowledge inspires hubris at our brilliant ability to perform complex mathematical equations and conjure up grand theories based on biased observation and conjecture. Don’t be fooled. However “science” paints the world’s around us, it will ALWAYS be different in ultimate reality.

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I think this video may be relevant to this discussion.

https://youtu.be/72cM_E6bsOs

:anjal:

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Fantastic! Thanks @Gabriel_L :smiley: Great channel too.
Hasn’t this presenter, Matt O’Dowd, developed and ‘smoothed’ his approach. I used to watch all the newly establishing science Youtube groups. Amazing to see how they (the enthusiastic young scientists have evolved, and how the science has evolved with them - And the language!! LOL I must be (becoming) an Old Fart! saying, and even thinking, things like this :rofl: :joy: :sweat_smile: Wheee the joy of Anicca :dancer:

Oh BTW, the idea that the incongruence between the H constant and the two other measures, highlighting that a third ‘thing’ (the hypothesised sterile neutrino) must exist, is just wonderful… Almost worth getting excited about :wink:

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I found a book that is seemingly the most comprehensive book about the Buddhist Cosmology so far, I thought I’d like to share, and I’ve removed all the Thai script section of the book, so it’s much lighter and much easier to read, here it is:

Bhante @Khemarato.bhikkhu, I just thought perhaps this book could sit well in your Buddhist eLibrary?

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Thanks for filtering out the Thai and for making and sharing the PDF!

For the Early Buddhist Cosmology, I think Bhante Punnadhammo’s book is preferable, no?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RdJt6dEzcKKHNRZrwuPMYYJg0JKOvx1Y/view?usp=drivesdk

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Yeah, I think so, and thank you too for sharing Bhante. But this book has almost no picture :joy:. And as the saying goes, one picture worths a thousand words, so I think it would be nice for books of this sort to have more pictures. (Especially hell is preferable!). Made me remember back to the story of the pilgrim monk Faxian, he said there was an Indian Arahant who possesed psychic powers, he then took an artist to the Tavahimsa Heaven, made him look at the Metteyya Bodhisattva, and then took the artist back and told him to sculpt the Bodhisattva’s image. Piti that most images of the other realms we have today are just the imagination of the human minds.

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Could you point to that article please, Ajahn? I tried to find it in Wikipedia, but no luck.

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I got curious and went looking, not sure if this is the correct Wikipedia article, but the Solar Evolution section has some interesting information:

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Yeah, I think this might be the one. Thanks for doing the research!

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Thanks to both of you! :+1:

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