I don't understand how the yogacara container universe can be possible

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My wife and I share 80% of our realities because we live together. But 20% are still different because our minds are different and our backgrounds are different - so our perspectives are different.

My mom lives in a very different reality. Not only she lives in a different town, but her mind is very different - so she ends up living in a very different world.

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Let me try to answer your question in two parts. First, you mention Wm. Lane Craig's argument against the possibility of an infinite regress. But Paul Kabay, in his article An Infinite Temporal Regress Is Compatible with the "Doctrine of Creatio Originans" argues that:

the existence of an infinite temporal regress does not undermine the soundness of Craig's version of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. To this end I shall focus on a particular complication that Craig raises against one of his arguments in support of a finite temporal regress. I will show that this complication can be made innocuous by extending the notion of A-theoretic time, which is presupposed by Craig's argument, to include a notion of temporal becoming that is compatible with the existence of an infinite regress of temporal events. All this shows that God could have created an infinite temporal regress a finite time in the past without this entailing a contradiction.

Next, theoretical physicists, Niel Turok and Paul Steinhardt developed a cosmological model which entails cyclic universes. You can learn more in this video. The point I wish to make is that according both to logic (Kabay) and theoretical physics (Steinhardt and Turok), cyclical - if not infinitely regressing universes - are indeed plausible.

As for the Buddhist cosmology - well, there's not one, single view. Nor is there a strictly Yogacara cosmology. Reading your question, it seems you are somewhat referring to the cosmology of Sravakayana (versus that of the Bodhisattvayana, the Kalacakra, or the Dzog chen view). Jamgon Kongtrul provides detailed explanations of each of these cosmologies in Book One of the Treasury of Knowledge (Myriad Worlds).

There are two important aspects of the Mahayana cosmology that your question/ pondering doesn't take into account. the first is that worlds are brought into existence not just through the ripening of individual karma, but also through the compassion of the Buddhas; the vows of the Bodhisattvas; and the natural laws of the universe.

The second point is that worlds/ world systems don't manifest turnkey fashion for all beings. Rather, beings and the realms appear gradually. Kongtrul explains:

At the beginning of the formation of a [new] world, if the previous world has been destroyed by fire, a god of the second level of meditative concentration dies and takes birth in the empty celestial residence of Brahmā [that is, on the first level]. From that point onward, beings diffuse progressively [throughout the realms] in descending order, so that all realms of existence from Priests of Brahmā and Group of the Pure down to and including the hells [fill with life]. In the case of the previous world having been destroyed by water, [this process] begins by [a god] of the third level of contemplation being born at the level below, and so on.

I hope this is helpful.

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