When you’ve seen 100’000 worlds (is that the number in the Suttas?) coming and going, the Aztecs or dinosaurs are probably not that exciting an event.
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Simultaneously is the key there (a Mahayana view). That’s different to saying he can know anything he puts his mind too.
From Ven. Dhammanando in an earlier thread:
Had the Buddha been omniscient, the obvious place for him to say so would be in the various “lion’s roar” suttas. As it is, however, the boldest assertion of cognitive prowess in these suttas seems to be the claimed possession of the ten Tathāgata powers. As highly impressive as these are, they don’t amount to omniscience. (They would more than suffice, however, to make possible those things that you say Ven. Anālayo hasn’t accounted for).
Also see:
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He goes on to say he is critiquing the view that the Buddha could know everything about the future. Sujato mentions omniscience in a “strong sense”. The Theravādin view is that the Buddha could know anything knowable (yaṅkiñci neyyaṃ) that he put his mind too, but not all at once.
I can understand “anything knowable” which is different than omniscience.
True, but this (MN4)
I recollected many kinds of past lives. That is: one, two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand rebirths; many eons of the world contracting, many eons of the world expanding, many eons of the world contracting and expanding. I remembered: ‘There, I was named this […] And so I recollected my many kinds of past lives, with features and details. Empowered by the fourth jhāna, memory breaks through the veil of birth and death, revealing the vast expanse of time […]
goes far enough, and it is a stock passage. There is no way around this for EBT-Onlyism.
Literal interpretation can only be avoided by an allegorical reading or from a historical-critical perspective.
To me personally, it makes sense that the Buddha’s Jhana experiences would have been embellished over time in a scholastic evolution of the Canon.
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Hi,
Thanks.
I’m understanding “omniscience” here in the sense that everything is/was known to the Buddha – for which there is no such evidence in the suttas.
In either case, whether this was true our not, it’s not a prerequisite to practicing and awakening. 
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A galaxy extends a thousand times as far as the moon and sun revolve and the shining ones light up the quarters. In that galaxy there are a thousand moons, a thousand suns, a thousand Sinerus king of mountains, a thousand Black Plum Tree Lands, a thousand Western Continents, a thousand Northern Continents, a thousand Eastern Continents, four thousand oceans, four thousand great kings, a thousand realms of the gods of the four great kings, a thousand realms of the gods of the thirty-three, of the gods of Yama, of the joyful gods, of the gods who love to imagine, of the gods who control what is imagined by others, and a thousand realms of divinity. As far as the galaxy extends, the Great Divinity is said to be the foremost. But even the Great Divinity decays and perishes.
Seeing this, a learned noble disciple grows disillusioned with it. Their desire fades away even for the foremost, let alone the inferior.
AN10.29
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“The realm of the sun and moon, [that is to say,] wherever their light shines, all the region in which their light shines, is called the thousandfold world-system.” MA 215
I’m not sure this is a cosmology we recognise today.
This statement is probably better viewed in context within the sutta. In Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation:
Bhikkhus, as far as sun and moon revolve and light up the quarters with their brightness, so far the thousandfold world system extends. In that thousandfold world system there are a thousand moons, a thousand suns, a thousand Sinerus king of mountains, a thousand …
The sutta does not say that the Sun and the Moon are the only sun and moon within the radius that their light reaches. What is your interpretation of it?
A sort of flat earth cosmology. The Sun and the Moon were also deities in ancient India.
Maybe they would be able to identify with their past lives as animals, at least in the case of a monkey. Ven. Isidasi had its genital castrated when it was a monkey in Thig15.1
That is a peculiar sutta. I heard of the term twice born recently, but can’t remember from where (early onset dementia?). But when I searched for it. I found that sutta. My wild assumption of that term is that of noble birth for ariyan instead of Brahmin because I associate it with Angulimala’s protective verse:
Ever since I was born in the noble birth, sister, I don’t recall having intentionally taken the life of a living creature. By this truth, may both you and your baby be safe.
Anyway, that’s tangential to the discussion.