Evidence that Kasyapa knew the Sun would die eventually

Discussion
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Perhaps the Early Buddhists had more knowledge of science than we think. While reading a sutra where Kasyapa argues for the afterlife, I deduced that he believed the Sun would die in a few billion years. Here’s how:

dn23

In this sutta the Arahant and one of Buddha’s chief disciples Kasyapa:

  1. States that the Sun is a god
  2. States a god will for instance live 1 day in 100 human years (but gods in the Buddhist view were thought to eventually die)
  3. 100 * 365 *100 * 365 (if a Lifespan is let’s say, 100 years) =1.3 billion years
  4. Gods vary by orders or magnitude how long they live based on how high of gods they are
  5. He was pretty close.
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Yes, the principle of impermanence led to a basically correct view of the universe, even if the details are a little outlandish at times. There’s a lengthy discussion of the sun and moon in DA 30, which says the sun god lives for five hundred heavenly years. And the descriptions of the sun and the moon’s phases are a bit off the wall, but people at the time were just thinking up rationalizations for what they saw with the naked eye back then.

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