Suppose a person was to ṁake the whole earth into clay balls the size of jujube seeds. They’d lay theṁ down, saying: ‘This is ṁy father, this is ṁy grandfather.’ The whole earth would run out before that person’s fathers and grandfathers.
The radius of a jujube kernel reaches down to 5 mm = 5 × 10^(-3) m
A jujube kernel’s volume would be therefore 4/3 × π × 125 × 10^(-9) m^3
The Earth radius is about 6367 km = 6.37 × 10^6 m
The Earth volume is about 4/3 × π × 258 × 10^18 m^3
The ratio Earth volume / jujube kernel volume would tell us how many jujube kernels it takes to get the same volume as the Earth, and that would be about 258/125 × 10^27, more or less 2 × 10^27
Now the Earth is estimated at less than 5 billion years old, and life on it is therefore younger than that.
5 billion years is equal to 5 × 10^9 × 365.25 × 24 × 3600 seconds = 1.6 × 10^17 s
Which would mean 2 × 10^27 generations in the span of 1.6 × 10^17 s.
This translates to about 12 generations per nanosecond over the 5 billion years of existence of the Earth.
Clearly the math doesn’t add up here. So what should we make of that?
are not limited to this Earth or even this universe but stretch back into the past without begining, through multiple eras of expansion and contraction of the universe.
This interpretation indeed resolves the perceived contradiction. The wording led me to believe we were supposed to think of this in terms of lineage of fathers, but it does seem that similar suttas making the same point normally refer to relatives across multiple past lives and thus other planets and planes of existence, possibly other universes.
That it’s a metaphor whose purpose is to lend itself toward the learner’s development of disenchantment toward beginningless samsara. Forgive me for being blunt and abrasive, but taking it literally is missing the point. Most, if not all, of the metaphors in the Anamataggasamyutta (SN 15) are for this purpose, and reading/contemplating the whole samyutta straight through can be quite a powerful experience.
You don’t always have to focus on Siddhartha like this if something doesn’t add up. Most of the time it has to do with how the information was passed down, changed, and altered throughout history, so by the time it gets to our computer screen the miniscule wording and translations from other languages do not fully reflect exactly what the Sagastic and Fully Awakened Buddha initially said. But that does not mean we cannot learn from these words and realities. I just want to point out that the Buddha is beyond all that has been heard and said, in this ocean of language, Enlightenment can only be expressed so much, even for forever, until it is found within.
It seemed to me that the Buddha always meant to be taken literally. Otherwise, we would never know when something he said is factual or not and we would be confused.
He speaks sincerely what is factual, real and true
could you explain in more detail how you come to this conclusion?
This might be an important takeaway. The material that has arrived to us, as precious and eye-opening as it is, should always be taken with a little grain of salt, just in case there was a transmission error
Buddha always spoke the Truth in His sermons. He had a way of speaking Awakened knowledge, specifically meant for the Suttas we have today written down, in order for us to understand His words and foresight. I believe there is no more intelligent of a living being or person than Gautama Buddha. But I am saying if something doesn’t add up, it is possibly due to something lost in time, instead of a mishap on the Buddha’s part. Why attain Buddhahood if to be a Deva like Brahma grants greater knowledge? After all practicing the Brahmaviharas is easier than walking the full Noble Eightfold Path in Truth. But the Buddha chose Awakening, coming back as a Buddha, over a Deva. Not that Brahmas or other Devas can’t attain Buddhahood and still hold their post… They can. Namaste.
I agree that the Buddha taught what is factual. And the fact that the Buddha is teaching here is that samsara is without discoverable beginning. The metaphor is a teaching technique to help us learners understand better—it’s something to reflect on for the purpose of walking the Noble Eightfold Path.
Take this metaphor from MN 54 for example.
“Householder, suppose a dog weak with hunger was hanging around a butcher’s shop. A deft butcher or their apprentice would toss them a skeleton scraped clean of flesh and smeared in blood. What do you think, householder? Gnawing on such a fleshless skeleton, would that dog still get rid of its hunger?”
“No, sir. Why not? Because that skeleton is scraped clean of flesh and smeared in blood. That dog will eventually get weary and frustrated.”
“In the same way, a noble disciple reflects: ‘With the simile of a skeleton the Buddha said that sensual pleasures give little gratification and much suffering and distress, and they are all the more full of drawbacks.’ Having truly seen this with right understanding, they reject equanimity based on diversity and develop only the equanimity based on unity, where all kinds of grasping to the worldly pleasures of the flesh cease without anything left over.
The fact here is that sensual pleasures give little gratification and have much suffering, distress, and drawbacks. The metaphor is the simile of a dog gnawing on a fleshless skeleton smeared with blood. The purpose of the metaphor is to give us a reflective aid we can use to help us abandon sensual desire.
ayam me pitā (Sanskrit: ayam me pitā) = This person is my dad
tassa me pitu ayaṁ pitā (Sanskrit: tasya me pitur ayaṁ pitā’) = of my father, this is the (his) father
'ti (Sanskrit: iti) = in this way
apariyādinnāva (Sanskrit: aparyāttā eva) = verily unending/unlimited
bhikkhave, tassa purisassa pitupitaro assu (Sanskrit: bhikṣavas tasya puruṣasya pitṛpitaraḥ syuḥ) = mendicants, that person’s (list of) fathers of fathers would be.
pitupitaro (Skt. pitṛpitaraḥ) is a plural of the compound pitṛ+pitā (father’s father). It is called a ṣaṣṭhī-tatpuruṣa compound, where the members of the compound are related using the genitive case between them.
The whole earth would run out before that person’s fathers and grandfathers
Does the fact that there is a metaphor involved actually mean that the whole earth may not run out before that person’s fathers and grandfathers? This kind of language is also used in science to describe verifiable facts. We could for example speak in similar language about Galileo’s Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment. For example, if someone were to drop two unequal masses from the top of the tower, they would hit the ground at the same time.
I am wondering how this would negate Bhante’s interpretation
If someone you meet on the street is a Buddhist Monk but an eon ago on another Earth-like planet they were your grandfather, you may still use the respectable term of ‘grandfather’ in your mind to think about them, if you had realized this, in order to also respect the truth of rebirth in this world.
Most certainly the Buddha was not talking about including any fathers from pre-earthian times or from outer space being our ancestors, nor was he speaking about it in a Darwinian understanding of evolution. His view of the world and the evolution of species most certainly was not in accordance with present-day scientific consensus. What any bhante assumes or how they rationalize it, is however upto them.
In the Buddha’s understanding, there were always humans and there were always ancestors of those humans stretching back to unlimited aeons. This understanding sits squarely in accordance with the vedic worldview of cyclical time (which is what the word ‘saṃsāra’ itself denotes). Being in saṃsāra would mean being in the cycle of births and deaths without end (except for the Buddha and his followers who are promised a no-birth & no-death outcome as an alternative possibility)
One way to test it would be to see if the audience already know something else to be true. Like yeshe.tenley mentions in sn22.136 above, where the skandhas are called kukkula (Skt. kukūla, meaning “husk” i.e. worthless; or a fire produced from husk, i.e. a fire that gets quickly extinguished). There he is not stating that the skandhas are literally husk (because the listener would know that they are not that literally). There we must take it in its idiomatic meaning.
But here in sn15.2 the listener does not know as a matter of fact whether saṃsāra is infinite, there a listener would take a claim that it is infinite as the Buddha’s opinion, as a literal fact known to (or believed by) the Buddha.
How do you know this? srkris, you often speak of knowing what the Buddha thought outside of what is said in the Pali suttas - or any suttas for that matter. I wonder how you come by such certain knowledge? What is it based on?
Have you verified for yourself with direct experience what the Teacher was talking about? Have you somehow seen inside the Teacher’s mind and verified that he did not know of times before the current earth was formed? Or rebirth in other systems in the universe? Or of different expansions/contractions of the universe where reborn again and again?
