Buddhism and the conservation of mass

[Anonymous No.19723423]

If all things are conditioned and subject to cause and effect, how is energy uncreated and without a cause?

Thanks,
Retarded anon

[Anonymous No.19723481]

Samsara is a beginningless circle.

[Anonymous No.19723488]

>>19723423
Lol not a single astrophysicist on earth even knows if that true, though some are certain about the hypothesis. Take dark energy. There is no evidence for its existence other than that it must exist to account for conservation of energy in an expanding universe. That priestly class just creates their own metaphysical spirits when it suits them, but hey they're 45 year old soibois with degrees from almost any university that awards them (most literally unheard of by the average person), so their magic is better than the magic of thousand year old religions.

[Anonymous No.19723534]

>>19723481
This makes sense. So you would say that energy is conditioned by an infinite casual chain?

[Anonymous No.19723549]

>>19723423
this question will not bring you closer to enlightenment

[Anonymous No.19723613]

Start with the jeets. If you only know energy through its conditioned forms anyway it doesn't sound like you're going to be able to exempt it from what applies to all phenomena without discrimination

[Anonymous No.19723660]

>>19723613
I’ve read Nagarjuna and have a pretty good grasp on the tetralemma and ultimate/conventional truth. I tried moving on to the Avatamsaka Sutra but it didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Probably going to read the Heart Sutra until things start to click.

[Anonymous No.19723668]

>>19723423
We don't know, nobody does.

[Anonymous No.19723893]

>>19723423
Mathematical existence implies physical existence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdDNfTREQJU

[Anonymous No.19724165]

Because all things are uncreated, they just change, and mass is just one way of being. "Energy" is a fiction that we humans invented to allow for the quantivization of change.

[Anonymous No.19724226]

>>19724165
I’m confused as to whether a thing retains its previous identity once it changes. If everything is constantly changing, couldn’t you say that everything is being destroyed and created in every moment?

[Anonymous No.19724282]

>>19724226
You could, and a number of Buddhists (particularly in China) make that point. But the Buddha himself is using a technical vocabulary where these things have VERY explicit meanings, so you can't take the Pali Canon and WELL ACHTYKCTHYTHYUALLY there. There IS a Buddhist doctrine of Momentariness which most Buddhist schools reject which explicitly holds this as the case.

Anyways, no, it doesn't retain its identity. This is a big part of Anatman aka Sunyata, which is an ADJECTIVE that DESCRIBES THINGS, it's not a thing in itself. You can't find an atman because the world is constant change. In the Golden Rafter Sutra, Fazan makes the argument that a thing's identity is given by it's precise arrangement to literally everything else in the universe at any given time. Precisely stating something requires thus describing the total universal arrangement. Because this is impossible, language is thus flawed and relies on at least a partial "you know what I mean". This is the Two Truths Doctrine in a nutshell: Yes, there is some objectively true 100% right Universal Truth, but it's really hard to actually state this in any meaningful sense even when they're small, so you have to use the Conventional Truth which is "true" subject to an enormous basket of constraints and conditions (like the speaker and listener both knowing the same language, or being within speaking distance).

[Anonymous No.19724424]

>>19724282
My understanding of emptiness is that once things are realized to lack selfhood, concepts like permanency, finitude and change all become conventional ways of describing the world but not actual. They are useful conventions but shouldn’t be taken as absolute truths. I’ve also heard people argue that the absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth or that there are only conventional truths, but I’m not sure if that is correct.

[Anonymous No.19724963]

>>19723481
>>19724282

dudes thanks for those answers, give me a lot of insight into some hard parts of buddhist cosmology
buddhist ontology is so difficult but fascinating