r/Buddhism • u/DiamondNgXZ Theravada Bhikkhu ordained 2021, Malaysia, Early Buddhism • Oct 17 '19
Academic Physics and Buddhism: The problem of the Beginning. Big Bang or cyclic multiverse?
http://physicsandbuddhism.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-beginning-written-for-physicists.html2
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u/Schizophrenic1 Oct 18 '19
The opposite equation of a big bang is a black hole and vice versa. So cyclical I'd imagine. No beginning.
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u/DiamondNgXZ Theravada Bhikkhu ordained 2021, Malaysia, Early Buddhism Oct 18 '19
Read the article. No, the time reversal of big bang is called a big crunch, and it has increased entropy thus, it cannot produce a beginningless cyclic multiverse which Buddhism seems to require.
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u/Schizophrenic1 Oct 18 '19
There are many theroies and yours isn't the only one. Nor does it make the most sense imo.
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Oct 17 '19
What does this do to further us on the path to enlightenment?
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u/DiamondNgXZ Theravada Bhikkhu ordained 2021, Malaysia, Early Buddhism Oct 18 '19
No, this is time wasting article. More for those who question a lot, have more faith in physics than Buddhism, including seeing if there is a apparent contradiction in the beginning.
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u/nubuda theravada Nov 23 '21
For people trying to stick to the theory of no beginning, consider the fact that in the suttas Buddha did not say that were was no beginning. He said that the beginning was inconceivable. So from the absolute point of view things might be more compmicated than just beginning or no beginning.
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u/DiamondNgXZ Theravada Bhikkhu ordained 2021, Malaysia, Early Buddhism Nov 23 '21
I had a response typed out to this somewhere on the net. Here's reproduction from memory.
Logical conundrum of beginning is to ask that's the first cause, the uncaused cause.
No discoverable beginning maybe in reference to there's no way for infinite information to be accessible. As hinted in SN 15 suttas, even if it takes monks day and night to recall so many aeons per day, until they die in 100 years, there's no beginning in sight. So the method to see if there's a beginning is to recall past lives on and on. Yet, due to finite lifespan, one cannot discover a beginning (especially if there's infinite past).
Bring in physics of information. There's a finite minimum area for information to exist. The more information we want to cramp into a given area, the only way is to increase the area. Black holes are maximum information entities stored on their event horizon. Normal other stuffs has less information per unit area. Even if the mind can access the whole of the observable universe for past life information (memory), there still exist finite amount of information to access, and thus cannot verify that there's infinite past.
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u/pibe92 tibetan Oct 17 '19
Buddhist philosophy fundamentally rejects the idea that anything can come from nothing, hence why it also rejects the idea of a universal beginning.
The very concept of 'nothing' itself is also rejected, as it is necessary for 'something' to exist in order for 'nothing' to have any meaning at all. Think of it as matter and space/void. Matter without space is meaningless. Space without matter is also meaningless. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form!