In the Beginning....

by Ven. Thubten Gyatso

To present the Buddhist world view I have to first draw an outline and then fill in the details. An ambitious project for a short article, but let us see how it evolves.
The Buddhist contribution to the eternal debate about how the universe began is simple: there was no beginning. Before this world there was life on other worlds, before this universe there was life in other universes. Life itself has two forms: sentient beings, those who possess mind and therefore feelings, such as humans and animals, and non-sentient life, the plant world.

We human sentient beings have bodies and minds. Our bodies, dependent upon our genes and the food we eat, are temporary appearances that will soon be reduced to their component parts. The atoms of our bodies, however, are continuums of ever-changing energy states that cannot arise from nothing, therefore matter is beginningless.

Our minds also are temporary appearances that depend upon our nervous systems, sense organs, and the objects of our experience. Mind itself is the continuum of awareness - our ever-changing states of consciousness with their associated feelings of happiness and unhappiness and emotions of love, hate, patience, anger, greed, generosity, and so on. There cannot be a first moment of mind arising from nothing, the present moment of mind necessarily arises from a prior moment of mind, therefore it is beginningless. Importantly, although mind depends upon matter, it cannot be created by matter because mind and matter are different entities. And, even more importantly, although mind cannot create matter, the organisation of matter into our environment is dependent upon our minds.

One stream of consciousness cannot divide into two separate streams, nor can two streams of consciousness merge into one. Therefore, every sentient being possesses a unique stream of consciousness that has been flowing since beginningless time and will continue endlessly into the future.
Although a Buddha is a being with mind, a Buddha is not a sentient being because the term is reserved for those who are trapped within the wheel of life or those who have escaped but still have impairment to perfect awareness of all things, omniscience. A vast number of beings have attained Buddhahood and every one of them was once a sentient being caught in the wheel of life until, following the guidance of a Buddha, they divested themselves of all impairments to perfect wisdom and, through compassion, completed the accumulation of causes to attain the physical qualities of a person who works effortlessly and forever to guide other beings out of the suffering wheel of life and into the state of perfect bliss. To maintain our presentation of beginninglessness, there was never a first Buddha.

Although there was no original creator, life must still have a cause, so what is the cause of the world? A famous Buddhist text begins one chapter with the statement, "This multifarious world of sentient beings and their environment arose from the karma of sentient beings."

The literal meaning of karma is action, specifically, it refers to the intention or purpose behind our actions. For everything we do, say, and think, we have an intention and, apart from the direct external effect of our behaviour, there is also an internal effect - the creation of a seed in our mind that has the potential to connect our mindstream in the future with a similar experience to the intended action we have just performed. Unlike the body, the mindstream survives death and passes through a dream-like intermediate state into a future birth, carrying with it the enormous collection of unripened karmic seeds from many previous lives. Actions motivated by harmful attitudes create seeds that ripen as harmful experiences for oneself, and actions motivated by benevolent attitudes create seeds that ripen as pleasant experiences.

Driven by desire for pleasure and aversion to pain, but ignorant of the actual causes of pleasure and pain, sentient beings are born again and again into six realms of existence that reflect their own minds. The three worst rebirths are in the hells, as a hungry spirit, or as an animal. The three better ones are as a human, a demi-god, or a divine being, but all six are pervaded by dissatisfaction or complete frustration in the pursuit of pleasure and they inevitably end in death and rebirth somewhere else.

The reflection of a Buddha's mind is a Pure Land. Sentient beings can be born there in a paradise where, with guidance from the Buddhas, they complete their own paths to Buddhahood. For those without the cause to be born in a Pure Land, Buddhas, such as the historic Buddha Shakyamuni, appear on earth to teach the path.

In my future articles I shall expand upon this brief presentation of the Buddhist world view.

Gyatso

This teaching is by the Venerable Thubten Gyatso (previously Dr Adrian Feldmann), an Australian monk and old friend now working in Mongolia. One of the senior students of Lama Yeshe, Lama Zopa Rinpoche (and also Geshe Roach) he is currently teaching at the FPMT centre in Ulaan Baatar. These teachings originally appeared in his local English language newspaper in Ulaan Baatar and arereproduced with his permission.

Thanks to Diane Olander (pelmo@got.net), these teachings first appeared on the Internet on the website (www.gepeling.org) of
The Jangchub Gepel Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies,
6960 Highway 9, Felton, CA 95018, Tel: 01 (831) 335 1217
where you can find many more teachings and other interesting material.