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I read your comment and notice your preoccupation with scientific reasoning to explain the teaching of Buddha. Frankly I feel this approach was not the intend of Buddha and therefore we have no reason to do so, I also believe we do not have the scientific capacity as yet to disprove his view of the 31(30) plane of existence or the existence of 1000 World system etc. We should then not confused the lay people and get them disinterested instead. We should just stay true to his teaching and what is this teaching? Buddha predicted that his true Dhamma will last for 500 years and false Dhamma will cause disbelieve in his teaching resulting in the disappearance of his Dhamma. I would then conclude that the true Dhamma are the 4 Nikayas in Theraveda Buddhism and I believe the Agama Suttas in Mahayana Buddhism. All other Suttas should then be read or understood with a fine comb for consistency with his teaching.

As to your claim that the Great Brahma created this world, please note this fact is not supported by his Suttas. On the contrary he disagree with the notion this world was the work of a creator or God’s creation – the Law of Nature.

As for the 7 suns and the end of this world, it was nothing as you put it. When Buddha attain Enlightenment, he obtain the 3 knowledge, one of which was the existence of only 6 Buddhas (in 91 world cycles) before him – not 5 Buddhas. He saw the working of Kamma as the cause of our rebirth and realize the escape or Path to Enlightenment. This Path exist within each and every one of us, no big bang concept here.

So I really don’t see why we need to repackage Buddhism, if we do then it is not Buddha’s teaching! Of course you can use science to explain but that is entirely your explanation and not that of Buddha. In which case we must be absolutely sure it is what the Enlightenment Buddha meant, otherwise we are making false (Buddha’s) teaching. Anything which is not consistent with Buddha’s teaching is not Buddha’s teaching! which lead us to one very serious consequence – negative Kamma.

We just need to repeat truly and as best as we can the true teaching of Buddha, this will be deem a great service in the name of Buddha.

I have only very recently been investigating Buddha’s teaching and find his teaching most profound and believe he teaches what he saw or was revealed to him while attaining Englightenment. I too initially thought his view of life cycle appears extremely too long and thought he was merely trying to emphasis the extreme duration rather then the actual length in time specifically. Anyway he says we human is quite stupid and cannot fathom his teaching, I would accept it at face value.

The main point he is making is that even though life span in the highest Desire Heaven is extremely long, so much so that even God believe they are eternal beings, he warn that beings in all the Desire Realms, including Heavenly Realm is still subject to rebirth. Therefore life in Heaven is still undesirable and the focus of his teaching the Path or Way to Enlightenment. The ultimate blissful state free of all sufferings.

As for the claim to 31 plane of existence, the original teaching of Buddha mainly refers to the Woeful plane as that of Hell, Animal & Ghost. Azuras was not mentioned and how did this get into his teaching?? We should therefore be more careful with our facts least we create more confusion. What I meant by the original teaching of the Buddha is what he taught and not what others after him taught. What he taught is in the 4 ‘original’ Nikayas. Take the Azuras Realm off and it is only 30 plane of existence taught by Buddha. A clear distinction should be made unless one can prove that this fact is contain in the 4 ‘original’ Nikayas. By original I meant the words as attributed to Buddha written down by his trusted disciples within 500 years after his entering Nibbana upon his demise.

I normally do not like to speculate on things that are uncertain, i.e. areas where science has not been able to confirm or contradict spirituality. I am quite happy to hold on to “tentative truth” until such time in the future when science can shed more light on the issues. However, you might be interested to learn of physicist David Bohm’s theory on the Implicate and Explicate Order. He proposed that the entire physical universe of ours (explicate order) is an unfolding from something intangible and unperceivable (implicate order). It seems to me that he was suggesting a scientific explanation for the existence of the physical universe out of “nothing” or as the ancient sages said, from spirit. In other words, there are 2 different orders – one for the physical world, which is subjected to the universal laws that science has studied, and another which is beyond these laws.

As for Nirvana, my own understanding is that it is a state where we are liberated from the slavery to our mind, the creator of our existence and reality. Once that is extinguished, there is no more desire to “come back” to this samsaric world in any of the 31 planes of existence. Meditation is an extremely useful tool to bring a constant, non-judgmental awareness to our thoughts, emotions and existence, and thus when well sharpened can shed some light to help us see through the illusion of this mind-created world which we perceived as solid and real.

Regarding the future of Buddhism, I believe that Buddhism will continue to serve the world well for many years to come. Whether it is propagated through the Sangha of monks, or through families practicing Buddhist values or through scientists and other formal institutions, I believe that Buddhism will continue to be the most practical path for spiritual seekers who are willing to challenge “religious” truths.

Today, I ‘d like to ask question about Nirvana.
Buddha said, we must seek up to reach into Nirvana where nama(spirit) and rupa are totally and completely come to an end without anymore suffering.
What would be the possible comparable explanation in science?. This is not because of I put science to First priority than Buddhism scriptures. But, just to let other observers, non Believers become taken into account about it. Please may I hear about it.
After reaching into Nirvana, all your above expression about 31 realms and their extremely long life spans are no longer applied all of sudden.
Its sounds like reverse of our expansion nature of universe, like shrinkage backwards from big bang back into non existence. Because, since after big bang, everything is continuously kept changing in order to form new matter or state of existence. It never stop until now and kept on going in enormous time scale level.
If you look at duration of how long our Buddha tried to become Buddha, there are many earth cycles and some periods of uncountable ones.
In compared to our universe current age, it has 13.7 billion years old, and earth is only 5.6 billion years old( along with our solar system), so our current universe only 3 times older than earth life cycles. Scientists predict that our earth may be survive for another 2 billions years.
In Arupa-loka, there may be 84,000 earth cycles, some Rupa-Lokas have very long life spans which mean, there gonna be well and truly out of equation of this current Universe space age if you imagine.
Einstein said matter and anti matter are equally oppose each other and behave in our universe to keep its current shape and and no one can create energy( of any kind and form) and make totally disappear such energy. Once you crush one form of energy to disappear, another form must be appeared in different other way or form.
So, to go into Nirvana, one must crush its ever lasting changing form of energy in Sansara ( you call it Nama and rupa) to a total point not to re-appear again. which means that you overcome all universal laws of physics that mentioned as all forms of energy in universe cannot be entirely destroyed.
Dose it mean that one human being who passing through towards Nirvana would be going against universal laws of Physics which means going out of this Universe?
Do we know where in universe has place there is no matter? Its every where!
Even in vast spacial region of universe, there is matter called “dark matter”, and there also has energy called dark energy which keep the current universe to expending continuously , scientists believe.
Our Buddha died ( how you call it) or went into Nirvana just over 2000 years ago. In whole Earth’s history of life span talking in a 24 hr clock, you(we) have just missed our Buddha in just 0.002 second ago.( earth is 5.6 billion years old)
As you may aware of that only very few (hundred of thousands of ) people thought to be passing through towards Nirvana during his life via his teachings.
My serious point here is why on earth the real meaning of truth in Universe is so much hard to follow and so difficult to match up with eligibilities such as you must be existing as human during Buddha time, able to be listening and accepted his teaching so and so in this very short duration of time frame compaired to whole Universe life span. You see. What is preventing us towards truth from vast majority of other “Fakes” in the Universe.
Buddha mentioned that there has been already 4 other Buddhas already appeared during this earth time.
According to scientists, if you take the the whole life span of the Planet earth to be as 24 hr clock, which is 5.6 billion years, our human’s existence has been in last 2 second of the clock. As far as they found, earliest human remains has been just over two millions years old.
But, above statement has been totally disagree with me in relations to existence of appearance previous Buddhas in this world. There must be some thing that science has to come up with new findings. may be it has not found earlier ancestors or any evidence. And, what about “crude oil” deep beneath earth, that used to be remains of died out life forms many billion years ago on earth they said.
Why does just controlling of ” mind” (energy), via meditation, and staying away from bad things, not being demanding anything etc actually leading towards Nirvana, which in terms, towards non existence of any changing lifeforms, spirit forms , in other way around towards total disappearance of matter and energy as mentioned unbreakable in universal laws?

Please May I mention about future out look about our religion expending growth.
In the world, Buddhism is now mainly used to be spreading its scope mainly upon explanations of finding true happiness, peace, and self sufficiency of life.(spiritual)
Most of the new believers turning into Buddhism is due to not being able to find true happiness and peace in their material world( western world) with unsatisfiable explanations with their own traditional religions.
I am delighted to know that many scientists have become believers in Buddhism.
But, where ever we seek, we see spreading of our Buddhist teachings through meditation which is main core of our basic practice.
In layman’s thinking, Buddha taught meditation to seek Nirvana as his basic principle and ultimate goal as a true follower of Buddhist.
It sounds like we have three categories in process of fill in/ replenish up our existent and spread of Buddhism towards future generations.
One is via Buddhist monk monasteries through traditional teaching for becoming a Buddhist monk who studies and practice Buddhist teachings to act as principal Driving force of our religion,
Other category is through traditional parental and community wise teaching, acceptance of racial heritage and ones become traditional Buddhist( like me , like many follower in your organization, and like majority of people of Thailand, Burma, Cambodia etc).
The last one is like those scientists, westerners who now believe in Buddhism through finding for the truth and real happiness.
The last category of spread of Buddhism is usually contributed from hearing and seeing teachings from Dalai Lama, like many other Internationally well known Buddhist Monks, and from many informational outlets from Buddhist organizations like SLBS.
I would like to see Buddha’s teaching and scriptures in side by side parallel correlation to those of science’s findings in order to attract more people into Buddhism who are seeking “The truth” in whole different other way.
Those new kind of people we seek out to spread of Buddhism are not necessarily “Sad” people, Not Unhappy people, but, ones who pretty much curious about what else may be better explanation of our Human’s existence by any reasonable scientific meaning.
You may probably notice that there are many Christian religious organizations named as Scientology of Christ or some thing whose followers are famous people like Tom Cruise, Elton John etc. It has showed the way of surviving, modernizing and rejuvenating same religion in the face of many arguments and protestants in its own.
In Buddha’s scriptures, although Buddhism is true one, it will be fading away gradually in future where human society’s sins are reached to a point where they no longer be able to seek true religions then, the religion itself has to be obliterated from the world.

You would noticed that there are more and more people turning into atheism. No wonder there are people knows more materialism, experiencing less reasonably explainable acceptable answers about religions.

For those forms of exotic truth seeking people, I think, Knowing about Buddhism through existing explainable channels such as science may be a possible way to thrive our religion further.
Htun

Thank you for your comments. It is indeed true that many of the Buddha’s teachings are finding verifications in science, which may explain why many western scientists today are turning to Buddhism and are interested in its teachings. Your take on Einstein’s theory and that of the black hole are both interesting and possible. I have wondered the same myself, including the possibility of a parallel universe on the other side of the black hole. It is interesting also to note your suggestion that stars and suns may possibly represent a higher form of life in the rupaloka. In fact, in the scriptures, it is said that the brahmas in the rupaloka are light-beings, extremely brilliant and only have the seeing and hearing senses. Perhaps they can choose to manifest in human forms whenever they wish to and that is why they are often described as such. We should not forget that ancient civilizations used to worship the suns and stars as Gods. Perhaps that should make us take a second look at their beliefs before ridiculing them for their practice. I believe only our human arrogance about our own superior knowledge and form has led us to believe that other life forms must somehow look human or humanoid in nature. Perhaps we are also influenced by the make-believe characters in science fiction movies and stories. Our mind should be more open to other possibilities.

I am a true believer of traditional Buddhism through my ancestors/ parents and have greatest interest in cosmology.
You know, now they ( science) have realized that the Universe is true vast, after seeing through Hubble’s deep field views or something (which has been mentioned by Buddha long time ago already).

In regards to your table of rupa-lokas, Arupa-lokas and associated amazing life spans of those beings, I am just wondering that Einstein’s theories are reflecting and supporting true( possible) existence of above realms.

It( theory) said, “time” is determined by mass(matter), speed and gravitation power of the near by object.

For example, it has been approved and confirmed by comparing between two clocks, the one carried in a space craft lunched by a rocket into the earth’s orbit is ticking slower than one left on the surface of the earth. It is said to be due to influence of gravitational forces in (space) universe is much(billion times) higher than that of our earth. ( in Universe as a whole). It does not mean you feel weight loss just from going away from surface of the earth.

You would also note that life span of stars, black holes, galaxies are running into billions of years. And, Buddha said other creatures in different realms are different forms and types from human’s.

The problem with the Buddha’s scriptures is that the Brahmas and supreme beings are always mentioned in the form of Human alike body shape and structure which you may probably seen on drawings. In fact, no body really can confirmed it, could they.

So, my point is, it may be possible that those matters which we can see through telescopes may be regarded as rupa-lokas or arupa-lokas that pretty much match with the life span( time frame) time line. If you think those are kind of life forms or beings which has creating point and ending points which are again transforming in to totally new forms such as happening in event of “Supernova” Star explosion creating many other stars in galaxy. To me, it does reflect to the way of karma in Sansara which is Buddhism way of continuously keep happening and changing different life form from one to another due to action towards reaction, reason to benefit.

The other issue is end of the world prophesy by Buddhism, mentioning that after fifth Buddha appeared in the world, the earth will be ended it’s life by experiencing 7 suns shining around the earth. It reminds me that science (Astronomers) also predicts that “Andromeda” galaxy will be colliding with our Milkiway galaxy in next two billion years time. Or may be due to end of life span of our sun, bigger and bigger in size killing all planets near by.

Apart from the clause that “Great Brahma created the Universe”, which is way too far beyond the feasible explanation and practical findings from science our Buddhism scriptures are pretty much correlated to science.

Another thinking point is this, if Brahma created the universe even Buddha has to be born in it, there may be possible that parallel universes representing all other Arupa-loka, Rupa-Lokas may exist. The science, is now predicting that so call parallel universe may co-exist each other like soap bubbles.

Currently, we only know our space started from “Big Bang” which is scientifically well and truly agreed in all aspect. But, we do not know what was before big bang that point. (why had to start big bang?)

The interesting fact is, If Great Brahma created our universe, and if he is not a man alike but different being (like I imagine before) like black hole or something like astrophysical being with enormous long life span, it could be explainable.

Because, science predicts that no one knows what is beyond black holes( after fallen into event horizon) but, it is sure that black holes suck in all material in space near by and may be spits out on other side as new parallel universes or just as behave as entrance of new parallel universe.

May be our whole universe was formed by a huge black hole as its back exit products, because, after big band, 13.7 billion years later, space (our Universe) is still expending and even faster and faster.

Sounds strange, but, I started to stop thinking about other realms and supreme beings as humanoids.

Htun