Niggi Hardare 🏳️⚧️ on Nostr: If the world is timeless, and all beings have the potential to escape Samsara, it ...
If the world is timeless, and all beings have the potential to escape Samsara, it raises questions about the current state of the world. Given that the possibility of escape has always existed, it logically follows that all sentient beings would have already transcended Samsara from eternity past because there is no earliest point at which the bodhisattvas would have developed the plan to end all suffering long ago in eternity, therefore they also would have completed the plan long ago in eternity, therefore the world as we know it would no longer exist, and never would have, because the bodhisattvas always would have liberated everyone.
By the same line of logic, there must be an infinite number of sentient beings. If there were a finite number of beings, a "leak" would have occurred forever ago in eternity, therefore everyone would already have transcended in eternity, therefore the bodhisattva vow fails.
This paradox is present for any permanent categorical change in an eternal universe, because in that system, for a category to undergo any permanent change, the conditions for that change always had to have been present, and then it will already have either happened or not happened because the full length of time necessary will already have passed in eternity. Particular instantiations of a form might be able to undergo permanent change, but the totality form itself cannot, or it already would have, and the prior state couldn't have existed at all. It's a logical impossibility.
God creating a teleological world within a fixed set of time has a different paradox. If God transcends time, he cannot influence events within time. To do so implies a will that changes within time, otherwise everything would reach its telos instantly with intervention. If God is subject to time, then in a cosmos of theistic origin, there has to be another God above this Demiurge, one who eternally generates time. At that level there can be a few solutions, ultimately you have to pose a cyclical model again that the linear model is contained within, but you're already outside the realm of surviving worldviews at this point, so there's no point now, although in the ancient world this would have been a position worth exploring.
By the same line of logic, there must be an infinite number of sentient beings. If there were a finite number of beings, a "leak" would have occurred forever ago in eternity, therefore everyone would already have transcended in eternity, therefore the bodhisattva vow fails.
This paradox is present for any permanent categorical change in an eternal universe, because in that system, for a category to undergo any permanent change, the conditions for that change always had to have been present, and then it will already have either happened or not happened because the full length of time necessary will already have passed in eternity. Particular instantiations of a form might be able to undergo permanent change, but the totality form itself cannot, or it already would have, and the prior state couldn't have existed at all. It's a logical impossibility.
God creating a teleological world within a fixed set of time has a different paradox. If God transcends time, he cannot influence events within time. To do so implies a will that changes within time, otherwise everything would reach its telos instantly with intervention. If God is subject to time, then in a cosmos of theistic origin, there has to be another God above this Demiurge, one who eternally generates time. At that level there can be a few solutions, ultimately you have to pose a cyclical model again that the linear model is contained within, but you're already outside the realm of surviving worldviews at this point, so there's no point now, although in the ancient world this would have been a position worth exploring.