At least in imagination we might conceive of a being who throughout his wandering in saṃsāra simply never acquired merit of the kind that would be a cause for his encountering a buddhasāsanā. Is there really any principle of Dhamma that would logically rule out the possibility of such a being? I don’t myself see one.
Perhaps in the Ājīvaka system saṃsāra wasn’t considered to be beginningless. At least that’s the only way I can see that followers of Makkhali might escape the charge that their teacher’s doctrine is falsified by the fact that dukkha isn’t yet universally extinguished.
I recall undergoing for a long time the likable, desirable, and agreeable results of good deeds performed over a long time. I developed a mind of love for seven years. As a result, for seven eons of the cosmos contracting and expanding I didn’t return to this world again. As the cosmos contracted I went to the realm of streaming radiance. As it expanded I was reborn in an empty mansion of Brahmā.
2There I was Brahmā, the Great Brahmā, the undefeated, the champion, the universal seer, the wielder of power. I was Sakka, lord of gods, thirty-six times. Many hundreds of times I was a king, a wheel-turning monarch, a just and principled king. My dominion extended to all four sides, I achieved stability in the country, and I possessed the seven treasures. These were my seven treasures: the wheel, the elephant, the horse, the jewel, the woman, the treasurer, and the counselor as the seventh treasure. I had over a thousand sons who were valiant and heroic, crushing the armies of my enemies. After conquering this land girt by sea, I reigned by principle, without rod or sword.
I don’t think the meaning is really recoverable now. Though luckily the part Amatabhani refers to is a summary of Makkahali Gosāla’s dhamma, not the Buddha’s.
Transmigration has no (known) beginning
Therefore, there is a possibility of infinite number of buddhas.
If there are infinite number of beings, no matter how many buddhasasanas appear time to time all of them would not achieve Nibbāna.
If the number of beings are finite in a transmigration which has no beginning, they would eventually reduce in number. So they should have met Buddhas in the past and achieved Nibbāna. Why are we still here.
Only way this could happen is having infinite number of beings in the universe.
This is no Makkahali Gosāla’s dhamma but just an argument.
I do not say that beings would eventually achieve Nibbāna doing nothing. They should practice eight fold path to achieve Nibbāna.
However, finite number of beings in a beginningless transmigration is not possible. That is what I was trying to say.
As I understand them, the sutta statements that saṃsāra is without conceivable beginning, and that there is no first point to avijjā , mean that all beings that exist have always been transmigrating. We didn’t start doing so at some particular point in the past. I don’t see how any conclusion could be drawn from this as to whether the transmigrating beings are limited or unlimited in number.
The way to see that infinite beings is needed (at least for initially) if there’s no beginning is as follows:
We assume:
There’s no way to create new sentient beings.
There’s no such thing as a first ever Buddha in samsara.
No first Buddha can be implied from Theravada Bodhisatta story where the Bodhisatta needs to find a living Buddha to make a prediction for them to become a Buddha in the future. If all Buddhas needs this, there’s no logical way to have a first Buddha.
These plus no beginning to samsara is enough to imply infinite sentient beings. There’s no need to speculate about beings no working towards nibbana or fatalism.
Note that the infinity applied to sentient beings here are countable infinities.
Since samsara has no beginning, and there’s no first Buddha, it implies that there had been infinite number of Buddhas in the past. Even if we don’t assume that each Buddhas enlightened some finite amount of arahants, the no. of enlightened beings is already considered to be infinite.
Since there’s no way to create new sentient beings, we must minus off this infinite being who got out of samsara from the “initial” number of beings in samsara to get whatever’s left in samsara.
Observation: we still have at least a finite amount of sentient beings in samsara. Implication: the “initial” no. of sentient beings in samsara must be infinite in number.
Since the mathematics of infinity minus infinity can be anything, finite or infinite, we cannot conclude if there’s still an infinite no. of beings left or a finite one. Or if samsara will one day end for all sentient beings or not. What we can conclude is that once (infinite time ago), there must be enough space for infinite no. of unenlightened sentient beings in samsara.
Thus this might imply infinite multiverse is in play, or may still be in play.
Sorry it took me a while to see where you were coming from with this. I now understand your position as being that enlightenment is not a random event, and thus is not appropriate to model statistically as I implicitly did.
However, I still think the number of beings in saṃsāra is infinite, as the Buddha also said “there is no decrease [in the number of beings] in saṃsāra” no matter how many beings attain nibbāna. I read that as a fairly straightforward statement of the infinity of beings. Do you have an alternate understanding of that passage, Venerable?
Not at all. I ought to have made it clearer, but in my earlier post it was the soundness of your argument that I was challenging, not the factualness of your conclusion.
If we’re having an EBT-only discussion, then the second of your two assumptions cannot be inferred from the supposed necessity for each Bodhisatta to encounter a Buddha and receive a prediction from him. The EBTs say nothing about such a necessity and in fact leave us quite in the dark as to how it is that certain persons become Buddhas.
Because then you would have a sentient being for whom a beginning point to wandering in samsāra is evident. But the suttas in the SN’s Anamataggavagga say that there isn’t one.
In its primary sense (i.e., that which is derived directly from the verb saṃsarati) saṃsāra denotes a living being’s continuance in birth, death and rebirth.
Then there are various secondary and more figurative applications, such as when saṃsāra comes to be applied to the totality of transmigrating beings or when it’s spoken of as if it were a place, as in saṃsāra-sāgara, “ocean of transmigration.”
In early texts these figurative uses of the word are rare. Later, however, this primacy gets reversed, with the result that in the popular Theravada and in the Mahayana (both popular and official) the literal sense tends to get completely swamped by one or another of the figurative ones.
The suttas in the Anamataggavagga commence ambiguously:
Bhikkhus, this saṃsāra is without discoverable beginning.
Though the commentary takes saṃsāra here as being used in its primary sense:
Saṃsāra is the uninterruptedly occurring succession of the aggregates, etc. (khandhādīnaṃ avicchinnappavattā paṭipāṭi).”
(From Bhikkhu Bodhi’s endnote).
The ambiguity then continues for one more sentence:
A first point is not discerned of beings roaming and wandering on hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving.
Which leaves it unclear whether what is not discerned is a first point to the totality of transmigrating beings or a first point to each of the beings considered severally.
But in what comes next – a concrete instantiation of the principle – the ambiguity is removed:
Suppose, bhikkhus, a man would cut up whatever grass, sticks, branches, and foliage there are in this Jambudı̄pa and collect them together into a single heap. Having done so, he would put them down, saying for each one: ‘This is my mother, this my mother’s mother.’ The sequence of that man’s mothers and grandmothers would not come to an end, yet the grass, wood, branches, and foliage in this Jambudı̄pa would be used up and exhausted. For what reason? Because, bhikkhus, this saṃsāra is without discoverable beginning.
How would you explain it? Why would the nibbāna element grow or shrink as people become enlightened for it to be amazing that it doesn’t?
If we take this literally, then we reify nibbāna as a substance and lean into monism and externalism, no? Why would the Buddha even accept the framing of nibbāna as a dhātu (even to reject its increase or decrease)?
There’s no self which flows into nibbana. Because there’s no self in the first place. Having no self who attains to nibbana, nibbana cannot be said to increase or decrease.
From the suttas which implies each of us have infinite past lives, any such process of new sentient beings then would mean a split copy of a sentient being, complete with their infinite set of infinite past lives, so they share the same past, but have different futures.
Amazingly, some physics and AI related speculative stuffs have some such processes in mind.
Physics:
Quantum many worlds, with each quantum event splitting the whole universe into more parts. So in the past, there’s less worlds, in the future, there’s more worlds. Sentient beings themselves split with the same past, but different futures.
AI:
If some form of nondestructive uploading is possible, and the uploaded person is deemed and verified (by mind reading super power) to be sentient, with the recollection of past lives to be exactly the same as the original, we have created 2 sentient beings with the same past lives, but can have different futures.
Such processes enables the notion of finite sentient beings without beginning for samsara. However, it does makes it a despairing job for the Bodhisattvas if they wish to liberate all beings, as it’s more likely to have more sentient beings being produced, than sentient beings who attains to nibbana. Especially despairing is if the quantum many worlds (which involves splitting of universes) is true.
Well, it wouldn’t. The point might just be that in the world a place can be defined by the number of beings that enter it, whereas nibbāna cannot, which makes it weird and marvellous. The sutta in question is spoken to Pahārāda, lord of the asuras, who probably only had a superficial understanding of the Dhamma.
The word dhātu is used broadly in the suttas, for instance in nirodha-dhātu, “the element of cessation”. In fact, as in the case of nirodha-dhātu, “element” is often not a very suitable translation. I have tended to prefer “property”, at least in some contexts. You then get “the property of cessation” for nirodha-dhātu and “the property of extinguishment” for nibbāna-dhātu, both of which are more intelligible than the alternative.
Just fyi, in Mahavastu, a semi-EBT Sanskrit work attributed as a section of Mahasanghika Lokottaravadin’s Vinaya, it explained that the infinite number of Buddhas can liberate the infinite number of beings, but still there are numerous beings to be liberated by the Buddhas:
When this had been said, the venerable Mahā-Kāśyapa asked the venerable Mahā-Kātyāyana, “O son of the Conqueror, if there are so many Buddhas, and each one of them leads an infinite number of beings to entire release, then in no long a time they will have enabled all beings to win it. Thus this world will become absolutely empty, completely denuded of beings.”
The venerable Mahā-Kātyāyana replied to the venerable Mahā-Kāśyapa in verse:—
Suppose empty space everywhere become full without a gap, suppose space that is without foundation and support be inhabited in all its extent.
Numerous though these worlds might be, still more numerous would be the average worldlings therein to be taught by Him who has insight into the highest good.
Whence, then, can there be a limit to the countless beings who listen to the teaching of the Supreme of men? Thus has the great Seer proclaimed the truth.
I guess, if such was the case, there would be quantum world copying of the Bodhisattvas as well, so I guess the probability of one arising in any individual world would not really change!
On the general question of this thread, it would be hard to square infinite time with finite beings. If there is only a vanishingly minsicule, but still non-zero, probably of each being achieving enlightenment, then over infinite time, there really shouldn’t be any beings left (assuming a finite pool). Having an infinite pool solves that (Hibert’s Hotel and all that ).
It’s also interesting that the Buddha said (at least from the translation) “without discoverable beginning” rather than the more emphatic “without beginning”. It’s hard to prove something empirically. Even if one could go back a vast number of aeons, that’s still only a drop in infinity. Maybe that’s why there is some apparent hedging there.
Another thought that comes to mind is that every life-form on earth has a parent (or at least cell it has split from). If that always holds then it would form a chain that would go back forever. However, obviously, for life on earth (though there has been a vast number of past generations), this is not the case. Some billions of years back, somewhere in the intermediate area between life and non-life, some kind of replicating process got going and eventually passed some kind of threshold to be self-sustaining (even if still very simple). Maybe, similarly, somewhere in the grey area between being and non-being, a kind of DO process can very occasionally get going?
