The biggest question we all have is, “Where did it begin, where did I begin, when did the universe begin, when did the world begin? When did suffering begin, when did my anger begin?”
We want to find the first moment – this is something utterly primordial. But for the Buddha it’s a non-question: it implies a total mistake: this grasping at things as not having causes – we don’t realize we think of it that way – and grasping at things as permanent, not meaning long-lasting but set in stone, kind of stuck, not caused, permanent, unchanging.
I know the Catholics have very extensive teachings about how there can be a First Cause. That’s a major point for them, which is their proof of there being a creator, who necessarily doesn’t have a cause, who is permanent, who is unchanging, and is perfect.
The perfect part is fine – Buddha agrees with that. The Buddha agrees with infinite wisdom, infinite compassion, infinite power: that’s a buddha. The radical difference is that Buddha says everybody has that potential, and, crucially, that we become a buddha through the process of cause and effect.
I gave a talk years ago at the Catholic University in Melbourne. Some girl I’d been to school with – I mean, woman, we’re all old now: the alumnae of our Catholic convent used to called ourselves “old girls”! – she was part of this university, and they had a conference, and she knew I was a Buddhist nun, and so they invited me to give a talk. I’ve told this story many times.
Twenty-minute slot in this conference, and I didn’t know what to talk about – I had no idea what I was going to talk about – and when I got there I looked up in the dictionary the definition of God. It said three qualities: omniscience – we love to use our Greek words – knowing everything, infinite wisdom; infinite compassion; and infinite power – omnipotence.
I thought, isn’t that interesting: they are exactly the qualities the Mahayana view would say a person called a “buddha” has. The radical difference is that for the Buddha those qualities are the potential of every being, whereas for a Catholic they are the qualities of one person who is the boss of everybody else, and who creates the universe, and who himself – himself – didn’t have a cause.
So my talk was “The similarities between the concept of God and Buddha” – not sure they liked what I said!
Anyway, for the Buddha, each thing that exists at this moment is necessarily the effect of a previous cause. They also therefore have the characteristic of being impermanent: they’re dynamic, changing millisecond by millisecond.
This flower has a cause – you can go back and track it in a very second-by-second way: you go back to the previous second of the flower, the second before that; all the conditions that came together to produce that flower of yesterday, then the day before, the day before: there’s this evolution, each moment the result of the previous moment, getting eventually back to the seed: well, that came from a previous flower, and that came from a previous flower, and so on and so forth.
We keep wanting to go back, as we all say, to find the Big Bang, the first cause of this universe. As His Holiness said one time, I remember reading, talking to the scientists, you know, “Big bang?” he said. “No problem, just not the first big bang that’s all!” It was wonderful!
So the Buddha’s view, his viewpoint – he didn’t make it up, he didn’t have a vision of it, he didn’t see it in a dream; no, it’s his own direct observation – is that all things that exist, matter and minds, are beginningless.
Matter and minds: that’s it, that’s all that exists. Minds are necessarily not physical and matter is made of the four elements – we used to talk that way ages ago in our culture, and that’s still the view in Buddhism, certainly in the Vajrayana system.
As far as the Buddha’s view is concerned, they are literally – literally – beginningless.
It’s the nuttiest thing we’ve ever heard! It’s laughable! We can’t conceptualize that, you know – it just seems too utterly absurd. “But there must be a beginning!” We say it: “But what do you mean? There must be a beginning.”
We’ve got to look at why we think that. We have no rational reason. The Buddha says it’s irrational, it’s illogical, and it’s quite the opposite of dependent arising and emptiness, the opposite of impermanence. But still it’s deep in our bones: “But there must be a first moment!” we say.
But if you posit cause and effect, right there, as a simple idea, you cannot find a first cause; you will never get back to an effect that itself didn’t have a cause – it’s not viable.
And it’s really hard to get our head around the idea that our mind is beginningless. Cause and effect is absolutely in the center of that: the mind is a beginningless continuity of mental moments; it’s a dynamic thing, changing moment by moment.
The great thing, of course, is that we can take control of the natural function of the mind to change moment by moment: we can proactively change our mind moment by moment by lessening delusions and growing the virtues, until eventually we manifest finally in our true nature of a buddha.