Saṃyutta Nikāya
II. Nidāna Vagga
15. Anamat'agga-Saṃyuttaṃ
I. Paṭhama Vagga
The Book of the Kindred Sayings
II. The Book Called the Nidāna-Vagga
Containing Kindred sayings on Cause
and Other Subjects
15. Kindred Sayings on the Incalculable Beginning
1. [Untitled]
Sutta 7
Sāvakā Suttaṃ
Disciples
Translated by Mrs. Rhys Davids
Assisted by F. L. Woodward
Originally Published by
The Pali Text Society
Public Domain
[1] Thus have I heard:
The Exalted One was once staying near Sāvatthī
at the Jeta Grove in Anāthapiṇḍika's Park.
Now many brethren came to the Exalted One,
saluted him
and took seats at one side.
So seated they said to him:
"How many aeons, lord, have passed and gone by?"
[123] "Many, brethren, are the aeons passed and gone by.
Them it is not easy to count up:
so many aeons,
so many hundreds,
so many thousands,
so many hundred thousand aeons."
"Can it be done, lord, by a parable?"
"It can, brethren," said the Exalted One.
"Suppose that there were four disciples
who went on living here for a century,
and they were to recollect each day
a hundred thousand aeons.[1]
The aeons should be just recalled by them.
And at the lapse of the century
they were to die.
Even so many aeons, brethren,
have passed and gone by.
Them it is not easy to count up:
so many aeons,
so many hundreds,
so many thousands,
so many hundred thousand aeons."
Why is this?
Incalculable is the beginning, brethren, of this faring on.
The earliest point is not revealed
of the faring on, running on,
of beings cloaked in ignorance,
tied to craving.
Thus many a day, brethren,
have ye been suffering ill,
have ye been suffering pain,
have ye been suffering disaster,
have the charnel-fields been growing.
Thus far enough is there, brethren,
for you to be repelled
by all the things of this world,
enough to lose all passion for them,
enough to be delivered therefrom."
[1] Making a sum of 400,000 a day.
[ed]: 4 X 365 X 100,000 X 100 + (25 leap-days X 100000 X 4 = 10,000,000) = 14,610,000,000 aeons. Fourteen-billion-six-hundred-and-ten-million aeons.
Modern science (2019) estimates the age of the universe to be between 13.772 billion and 13.82 billion years old.
