Buddhist Scriptures: the Sun will become a red giant

[Malintent]

It's in the Sermon of the Seven Suns, Anguttara Nikâya 7.62 in the Pali Canon. Here are some translations of it:

Buddhist Sutra - The Sermon Of The Seven Suns
The Sermon of the Seven Suns (Anguttara VII. 62)
The_Numerical_Discourses_of_the_Buddha,Anguttara_Nikaya,Bodhi,2012.pdf
(note: 1 yojana / league is 12 - 15 km / 7 - 9 mi)

This is what it says will happen:

• A long drought: all the land plants will die.
• A second sun: the streams and ponds will dry up.
• A third sun: the great rivers will dry up.
• A fourth sun: the lakes will dry up.
• A fifth sun: the oceans will dry up.
• A sixth sun: the Earth becomes very volcanically active and fiery.
• A seventh sun: the Earth melts and boils off.

We can interpret the extra suns allegorically and suppose that those extra suns are our Sun getting brighter and brighter. Which is indeed what the Sun is doing (The Once & Future Sun,  Future of Earth). As it does so, over the next few billion years, life will gradually be driven into extinction: first multicellular organisms, then one-celled eukaryotes, and finally prokaryotes, with hyperthermophiles being the last holdouts. The oceans will become hot enough to boil, and the Earth will become much like Venus.

When the Sun becomes a red giant, some 7 billion years from now, it will expand out to the Earth's orbit, and the Earth may not survive.


So should we convert to Buddhism because of this?

That is even more "unfair" than the "cloud watching" that is numerology. To take "many of a thing" and refer to it as "one larger thing" has no historical reference within any scripture... which is to say, this is uniquely imaginative... Like, for example, the claim that "woman coming from Adam's rib" is allegorical for "Eve was cloned from Adam's DNA during a cannibalistic backyard BBQ"... the "body part" was really a reference to the nature of the "festivities" and not a reference to the method.

 

[Sarpedon]

Given that Buddhism originated in India, I don't find it implausible that they might think the world would end due to a massive drought.

 

[LordKiran]

Given that Buddhism originated in India, I don't find it implausible that they might think the world would end due to a massive drought.

Well when water is universally regarded as the bringer of life or a symbol of life, what does its absence logically represent?

 

[Kharakov]

No.
We should interpret it as it stands: utter nonsens.

Ya, this is about the same level as saying that Christianity is real because the Bible says that the universe was created at some point and the Big Bang is the starting point of the universe, so therefore the Bible is scientifically accurate and therefore God. If you take one aspect of the text out of context and ignore everything around it, it sort of lines up with something real, but that's not actually what scientific accuracy means.

I, along with my other Nostradamean colleagues, find your views to be ignorant and offensive.

- - - Updated - - -

Given that Buddhism originated in India, I don't find it implausible that they might think the world would end due to a massive drought.

Well when water is universally regarded as the bringer of life or a symbol of life, what does its absence logically represent?

Toast that needs butter? Crackers? Pumice that floats?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Do we have to convert?
Can we be Buddhist atheists?

Don't see why not . There are atheist Jews.

No. No. No. Those are Jewish atheists.

And who needs Buddhist prophecies anyway when we have Chinese horoscopes?

 

[Learner]

couldn't you have just messaged me instead of posting in public?

 

[Sarpedon]

My point is that people tended to mythologize the sort of catastrophe that was common in their region. The people of Guatamala had a god called 'Hurricane,' the people of Mesopotamia imagined a world destroying flood, 'fire and brimstone' catastrophes might come from a volcanic root, etc. So given that catastrophic droughts are, and apparently always have been common in India, that is a more plausible explanation than the iron age people can somehow predict the future.

 

[Philos]

Folks,

The sun is a burning orb. It would be unrealistic to imagine this phenomenon as precisely stable for all time.

IMHO the Buddhist's prognosis is as good a guess as any.

A.

 

[abaddon]

The point of that sutra isn't the sun. The sun only serves as an example of impermanence. To get what the writer is saying, instead of wondering "Did he get his physics right?", look at the repeated refrains: "constituent things are impermanent, unstable, non-eternal: so much so, that this alone is enough to weary and disgust one therewith and emancipate therefrom."

The significance of impermanence for Buddhism generally is this: A person will feel perpetually frustrated in how his wants always result in disappointment if he won't attain an emotional distance from apparent reality and re-align his sense of self with something else than it.

So the only apt metaphysical or scientific quibble here would be with the Buddhist idea of anicca, impermanence. (And the necessarily connected concept, anatta ... "no self", "no thingness"). They're trying to describe reality as well as they can but it's more a "how then shall we live?" line of questioning, that the physical sciences tend to ignore.

 

[steve_bank]

The ancient Greeks covived of a snakk ibdivuisible unit of matter having the properties of macro sokid matter. Not too far off atoms. A greek postulated all life came out of the sea.

The sun can burn from exposure leads to imaging the sun as fire leading to a fear it will one day burn the Earth, nothing particularly extraordinary as historical human imagination goes.

The theists conflate the ideas with religion. The rare religious scriptural hit is emphasized and all the nonsense is down played.

Is the Dali Lama really a reincarnation? I an waiting for a monk to levitate on youtube.

 

[humbleman]

It's in the Sermon of the Seven Suns, Anguttara Nikâya 7.62 in the Pali Canon. Here are some translations of it:

Buddhist Sutra - The Sermon Of The Seven Suns
The Sermon of the Seven Suns (Anguttara VII. 62)
The_Numerical_Discourses_of_the_Buddha,Anguttara_Nikaya,Bodhi,2012.pdf
(note: 1 yojana / league is 12 - 15 km / 7 - 9 mi)

This is what it says will happen:

• A long drought: all the land plants will die.
• A second sun: the streams and ponds will dry up.
• A third sun: the great rivers will dry up.
• A fourth sun: the lakes will dry up.
• A fifth sun: the oceans will dry up.
• A sixth sun: the Earth becomes very volcanically active and fiery.
• A seventh sun: the Earth melts and boils off.

We can interpret the extra suns allegorically and suppose that those extra suns are our Sun getting brighter and brighter. Which is indeed what the Sun is doing (The Once & Future Sun,  Future of Earth). As it does so, over the next few billion years, life will gradually be driven into extinction: first multicellular organisms, then one-celled eukaryotes, and finally prokaryotes, with hyperthermophiles being the last holdouts. The oceans will become hot enough to boil, and the Earth will become much like Venus.

When the Sun becomes a red giant, some 7 billion years from now, it will expand out to the Earth's orbit, and the Earth may not survive.


So should we convert to Buddhism because of this?

In ancient times, when the solar system was getting in order, those civilizations witnessed planets passing close to earth, several changes caused people to take those celestial bodies as gods and made human sacrifices to calm "their fury".

In many old writings, it is mentioned the appearance of "another sun in the sky", this is to say, it was seen at day time and at night time if that was the case. They didn't call it a "star" because its brilliant light and size was well over the stars. They do call "stars" to meteorites, like "falling stars".

Probably a planet reflecting the sun light and being strong shinning fwas considered "another sun" by ancient men.

What the Buddhist story is telling you is that other bodies similar to the sun will appear and will cause disastrous effects on earth, same as they did in the past.

For you to have an idea of how close were the planets to earth in the past, check on Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mars.

Looking at them with your naked eye those are just brilliant small points in the sky similar to far away stars. There is no reason to consider them "gods", no reason to built temples and altars in order to worship those planets as gods... unless those planets were so close that caused straggles on earth, people were afraid and consider them gods, as immense superior powers capable to destroy life on earth, causing earthquakes, and more.

Those stories were passed generation thru generation, until the Buddhist just "predicted" a future when those "suns" will cause the same problems they caused in the past.

When you read Legends of the Jews, there is a part where it says that Moses saw planets Venus and Mars of the same size of planet earth. Definitively the causes of those "plagues" of Egypt happened all around the world. Many legends refer the same catastrophes in several places of the world. The bible itself has a psalm where it says that mountains of the world shaking, the Jordan river retreated, and more. It was a worldwide event. The manna of the Israelite was called Ambrosia by the Greeks, who considered that food coming from the sky as "food of the gods". Probably Venus or Mars caused those famous plagues of Egypt.

And please, before you argue against the narrations of those ancient people in reference of planets close to earth in those eras, I will tell you that no calculation from any scientific source can state with certainty that our solar system has been the same for millions of years. Not a single evidence is found contradicting those narrations saying that the solar system was different in those years. The mention of the planets is found in ancient writings, their close encounter with earth is also mentioned.

Only current science affirms that our solar system has not change thru millions of years based on "theories" not so in facts.

We don't have any technology to prove that our solar system has been the same for millions of years. We only have calculations in paper and lots of computer simulations, but those are not "evidence".

Seven suns might mean seven different celestial bodies.

 

[lpetrich]

(on multiple suns and the Earth drying up...)

In ancient times, when the solar system was getting in order, those civilizations witnessed planets passing close to earth, several changes caused people to take those celestial bodies as gods and made human sacrifices to calm "their fury".

Horseshit. There is zero evidence of such close encounters of the interplanetary kind over humanity's written history, and in fact, over the history of our species in general.

Here is some indirect evidence: Milankovitch astronomical cycles. Not only does the Earth's spin axis precess, its orbit also precesses, though in quasi-periodic fashion with several periods. The Earth's perihelion direction precesses forward, and its orbit north pole precesses backward. All these effects combine to make variations in how much sunlight each spot receives over each year, and that in turn causes climate variations.

The comings and goings of the Pleistocene continental glaciers fit well with Milankovitch cycles, and these cycles have been used to fix dates for the last 20 million years. There is an abundance of evidence for them older than that, all though the Phanerozoic and even a bit before.

The main perturbers of our planet's orbit are Venus and Jupiter, and the approximate constancy of Milankovitch periods over geological time shows that they have been where they are now over all this time.

 

[Underseer]

It's in the Sermon of the Seven Suns, Anguttara Nikâya 7.62 in the Pali Canon. Here are some translations of it:

Buddhist Sutra - The Sermon Of The Seven Suns
The Sermon of the Seven Suns (Anguttara VII. 62)
The_Numerical_Discourses_of_the_Buddha,Anguttara_Nikaya,Bodhi,2012.pdf
(note: 1 yojana / league is 12 - 15 km / 7 - 9 mi)

This is what it says will happen:

• A long drought: all the land plants will die.
• A second sun: the streams and ponds will dry up.
• A third sun: the great rivers will dry up.
• A fourth sun: the lakes will dry up.
• A fifth sun: the oceans will dry up.
• A sixth sun: the Earth becomes very volcanically active and fiery.
• A seventh sun: the Earth melts and boils off.

We can interpret the extra suns allegorically and suppose that those extra suns are our Sun getting brighter and brighter. Which is indeed what the Sun is doing (The Once & Future Sun,  Future of Earth). As it does so, over the next few billion years, life will gradually be driven into extinction: first multicellular organisms, then one-celled eukaryotes, and finally prokaryotes, with hyperthermophiles being the last holdouts. The oceans will become hot enough to boil, and the Earth will become much like Venus.

When the Sun becomes a red giant, some 7 billion years from now, it will expand out to the Earth's orbit, and the Earth may not survive.


So should we convert to Buddhism because of this?

In ancient times, when the solar system was getting in order, those civilizations witnessed planets passing close to earth, several changes caused people to take those celestial bodies as gods and made human sacrifices to calm "their fury".

[...]

Holy crap, where are you getting your information from? Not science, I can tell you that.

Let's start with something simple: what makes you think this is true? What evidence do you have that the planetary orbits were still unstable at the same time human beings were around? I'm pretty sure the planetary orbits had to be stable before life as we know it evolved.

 

[steve_bank]

I think I'll stick with conventional divination.

Nostradamus, goat entrails, tea leaves, and the I Ching.

The proven methods.

- - - Updated - - -

It's in the Sermon of the Seven Suns, Anguttara Nikâya 7.62 in the Pali Canon. Here are some translations of it:

Buddhist Sutra - The Sermon Of The Seven Suns
The Sermon of the Seven Suns (Anguttara VII. 62)
The_Numerical_Discourses_of_the_Buddha,Anguttara_Nikaya,Bodhi,2012.pdf
(note: 1 yojana / league is 12 - 15 km / 7 - 9 mi)

This is what it says will happen:

• A long drought: all the land plants will die.
• A second sun: the streams and ponds will dry up.
• A third sun: the great rivers will dry up.
• A fourth sun: the lakes will dry up.
• A fifth sun: the oceans will dry up.
• A sixth sun: the Earth becomes very volcanically active and fiery.
• A seventh sun: the Earth melts and boils off.

We can interpret the extra suns allegorically and suppose that those extra suns are our Sun getting brighter and brighter. Which is indeed what the Sun is doing (The Once & Future Sun,  Future of Earth). As it does so, over the next few billion years, life will gradually be driven into extinction: first multicellular organisms, then one-celled eukaryotes, and finally prokaryotes, with hyperthermophiles being the last holdouts. The oceans will become hot enough to boil, and the Earth will become much like Venus.

When the Sun becomes a red giant, some 7 billion years from now, it will expand out to the Earth's orbit, and the Earth may not survive.


So should we convert to Buddhism because of this?

In ancient times, when the solar system was getting in order, those civilizations witnessed planets passing close to earth, several changes caused people to take those celestial bodies as gods and made human sacrifices to calm "their fury".

[...]

Holy crap, where are you getting your information from? Not science, I can tell you that.

Let's start with something simple: what makes you think this is true? What evidence do you have that the planetary orbits were still unstable at the same time human beings were around? I'm pretty sure the planetary orbits had to be stable before life as we know it evolved.

He is either not of sound mind, or he is playing us.

 

[4321lynx]

Originally Posted by humbleman
In ancient times, when the solar system was getting in order, those civilizations witnessed planets passing close to earth, several changes caused people to take those celestial bodies as gods and made human sacrifices to calm "their fury".

Ah yes, I well remember those times:

In ancient times when knights were bold
And women weren't invented,
Men bored holes
In telegraph poles
And went away contented.

 

[humbleman]

(on multiple suns and the Earth drying up...)

In ancient times, when the solar system was getting in order, those civilizations witnessed planets passing close to earth, several changes caused people to take those celestial bodies as gods and made human sacrifices to calm "their fury".

Horseshit. There is zero evidence of such close encounters of the interplanetary kind over humanity's written history, and in fact, over the history of our species in general.

Here is some indirect evidence: Milankovitch astronomical cycles. Not only does the Earth's spin axis precess, its orbit also precesses, though in quasi-periodic fashion with several periods. The Earth's perihelion direction precesses forward, and its orbit north pole precesses backward. All these effects combine to make variations in how much sunlight each spot receives over each year, and that in turn causes climate variations.

The comings and goings of the Pleistocene continental glaciers fit well with Milankovitch cycles, and these cycles have been used to fix dates for the last 20 million years. There is an abundance of evidence for them older than that, all though the Phanerozoic and even a bit before.

The main perturbers of our planet's orbit are Venus and Jupiter, and the approximate constancy of Milankovitch periods over geological time shows that they have been where they are now over all this time.

Lets see your hero Milankovitch:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

Milankovitch cycles describe the collective effects of changes in the Earth's movements on its climate over thousands of years. The term is named after Serbian geophysicist and astronomer Milutin Milanković. In the 1920s, he hypothesized that variations in eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth's orbit resulted in cyclical variation in the solar radiation reaching the Earth, and that this orbital forcing strongly influenced climatic patterns on Earth.

Similar astronomical hypotheses had been advanced in the 19th century by Joseph Adhemar, James Croll and others, but verification was difficult because there was no reliably dated evidence, and because it was unclear which periods were important.

Now, materials on Earth that have been unchanged for millennia are being studied to indicate the history of Earth's climate. Though they are consistent with the Milankovitch hypothesis, there are still several observations that the hypothesis does not explain.

Mere hypothesis.

Next?

 

[humbleman]

Holy crap, where are you getting your information from? Not science, I can tell you that.

Let's start with something simple: what makes you think this is true? What evidence do you have that the planetary orbits were still unstable at the same time human beings were around? I'm pretty sure the planetary orbits had to be stable before life as we know it evolved.

What is the base foundation for you to establish that planets had to be in the current orbits for humans to exist on earth?

 

[humbleman]

Originally Posted by humbleman
In ancient times, when the solar system was getting in order, those civilizations witnessed planets passing close to earth, several changes caused people to take those celestial bodies as gods and made human sacrifices to calm "their fury".

Ah yes, I well remember those times:

In ancient times when knights were bold
And women weren't invented,
Men bored holes
In telegraph poles
And went away contented.

That was a nice poem
running words into a sink
from a broken faucet Moen
into a drainer that stink
and I wonder...

 

[steve_bank]

nunbleman

Long term sun activity and orbital variations and wobble are long known to effect climate. That does not infer seeing planets whiz by. Such an event would be catastrophic. That pesky Newtonian gravity you are so fond of.

There was a long standing puzzle on how early humans got from south to north in Africa. The desert would have been uncrossible. Fairly recently caves were discovered with drawings showing animals, water, and vegetation. It is beloved the desert has been periodically wet due to orbital variations and wobble.

 

[lpetrich]

...

... Now, materials on Earth that have been unchanged for millennia are being studied to indicate the history of Earth's climate. Though they are consistent with the Milankovitch hypothesis, there are still several observations that the hypothesis does not explain.

Mere hypothesis.

Next?

So what if it doesn't explain everything? It explains enough to be considered well-established by the mainstream of the scientific community.

Cyclostratigraphy and the Astronomical Time Scale by Linda Hinnov and James Ogg (2007) -- a rather technical introduction to this subject.