The Second Moment of Creation (PBS)

The beginning of stories is not the real first point

The curious mistaken assumption about "creation" as understood in the West and in the Abrahamic faiths is that it is treated as absolute when it is no such thing. Any creation is The Creation, when it is just a story, a myth meant to explain current things. These narratives do not reveal existential questions. For example, say the God "created" Adam and Eve. They were not the first. They are just the current generation, the latest Adama (a group, not an individual). Eve was not the first woman in that story; Lilith was, but she's erased and divorced and sent away. What happened to the God's wife, Asherah? She was widely venerated as the Queen of Heaven in the past, but then all her temples were wiped out and her votive totem pole statues were smashed. They are found all the time, so widespread was devotion to her. That God, the God of the Bible, had a wife? He/It sure did.

Even if one could show that the Elohim, the gods, created humankind in their image, as is written, it was not the first creation of those means, merely this earthly vehicle, this generation of body (or bodies, koshas), not a "first creation" at all. It may be those gods think they did create something out of nothing, or bodies out of dust, and that may be. They are/were very advanced extraterrestrials/extradimensionals.  But the us we imagine existing now existed before. There was karma in the past, and those old deeds have more to do with what happens to us now, what we experience seemingly by chance or fate.

Ven. Dr. Suwanda H. J. Sugunasiri, Ph.D.

The Buddha told a creation myth, not of a "first creation" but of humanoid life on earth. That "Genesis" is called the Agganna Sutta, the Discourse on Beginnings. The tale is wrapped in the power of karma because the Buddha, rather than being Buddhist, was a Karmavadin, a "Teacher of the Efficacy of Karma" or action. (One monk even reads into this tale an allegory about energy, photonic light, and its impact on matter here; see Dhamma Aboard Evolution, putting Buddhism right in line with science. Buddhism should not be put in line with mere materialistic science because it is metaphysical. That is, it goes beyond materialism to explain things).

The Agganna Sutta perhaps does not actually qualify as a creation myth because it does not say, "There was nothing and then there was this." Rather, no first point is asserted, discerned, or claimed. The Buddha may have seen one, but he did not state that. What he did state was that this plane was in such a way, and beings alighted on it. They came as they were, having (pre)existed elsewhere, and they began to devolve here. Surely there is evolution in Buddhism, but it is cyclical, bound up with devolution.

Having eaten, it's time to start making art.

So as for the "second moment" of creation, after they arrived, this happened. Then this happened. And on account of this, things became like that. Things were dependently originated. The cause, ultimately, was karma (deeds). Things devolved. Later, they will evolve again. And after that, they will devolve. This goes on and on. It is as if there were a garden called Earth, a great and beautiful place. Who made it? Did anyone make it? Others might have, or it might have just been.

Being can terraform platforms and places, bring life and set it a'rolling. Things might even originate on their own when circumstances permit -- such as when stardust, full of amino acids, crashes on suitable ground for organic things to arise. Or space traveling beings may have set up countless worlds.

Whatever the case, those organic "beings" who come to be are not beginning out of nothing. They have been, and they will be again, cyclically. Thiis is samsara, the endless round of rebirth. It is not the same being being reborn, but it is not quite right to say it is another as that does violence to the language. Ultimately, they are not the same. But conventionally, one having given rise to the other, they may be said to be the same string, the same line, the reappearing of the former version.

Then, having arrived, having devolved, beings became humanoid earthlings, and in the second moment, they did stuff -- art, civilization, farming, survival...karma, giving us what we have now. What we do matters. It will give future earthlings what they will have.

Proto-India: Indus Valley Civilization (IVC)

Reality is strange, much different than what it seems. We are seeing a tiny fraction and attempting to form whole theories. It is like looking through a pinhole into a mostly dark room and spinning an entire narrative from that fragment of data. It is like looking through a glass darkly.

It would be far better to first purify the mind/heart, see things with the third eye (pineal gland), and understand things in context. And most of that context extends long before this slice of life and goes on long after. In this way, undertaking "science" with a cleansed instrument of understanding, we will not be misled by our six senses or jump to conclusions or favor certain answers. And when we see things as they really are, we can be set free. The delusion entraps one, whereas the Truth sets one free.

• Life on Earth, life in the proto-USA: A geologist discovered artifacts in Maryland dating back 22,000 years ago, suggesting humans arrived in America 7,000 years earlier than previously thought

The Second Moment of Creation | Civilizations | Episode 1 | PBS

(PBS) PBS is an American public broadcast service. Aug. 2, 2024: Watch more of this series with PBS Passport. Examine the formative role of art and the creative imagination in the forging of humanity itself.

Images and artifacts found in South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Australia testify to the urge to develop civilizations. Liev Schreiber narrates. (Originally aired in 2018).

This program is made possible by viewers. Support local PBS station: pbs.org/donate. Subscribe to the PBS channel for more clips: pbs. Enjoy full episodes of favorite PBS shows anytime, anywhere with the free PBS App.

FOLLOW: Facebook: pbs. X: pbs. Instagram: pbs. TikTok: pbs. Shop: shop.pbs.org.

Civilizations: Survey the history of art from antiquity to the present on a global scale. Civilizations reveals the role art and creative imagination have played in forging humanity and introduces viewers to works of beauty, ingenuity, and illumination across cultures. Download. #ancienthistory #worldhistory #anthropology #CivilizationsPBS

• Woman Follows Bear into the Forest After It Unexpectedly Approaches Her at Bus Stop | Happy in Shape
• 40-mile Cave System Shocks Scientists and Leaves them Confused
• Incredible Find: Miners in Far East Russia Unearth Carcass of 10,000-Year-Old ‘Perfectly Preserved’ Woolly Rhinoceros
• Algerian Olympic Women's boxer Imane Khelif is not a transgender athlete but a kind of high testosterone biological female, allegedly | indy100
• Life in ‘Devil’s Paradise’: Experiencing the Highest and ‘Most Horrific’ Town on Earth (pastchronicle.com)