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If we consider for a moment the simplest of questions we will see immediately the absurdity of our thought. Consider the question of whether the universe is bounded or unbounded in time and in space. If we presume that the universe is unbounded based on the notion that the universe is that which is infinite, then we come to the conclusion that it had no beginning in time and is thus infinite in both space and time (since space is a measure of time). Yet, if it is indeed infinite in both space and time, it could not have had a precise point of creation, and thus could not exist, because something that was never created cannot be said to exist. So it appears that if the universe exists, then it must have a specific time and place of creation, and therefore is not infinite.

However, if it had a specific time and place of creation, there must have been cause of that creation, and that cause must have done something to create the universe at a specific place and time and thus that cause must have itself existed at a specific place and time. Of course, the cause of the cause also must have existed at a specific place and time, and likewise the cause of the cause of the cause, and also the cause of the cause of the cause of the cause, and so forth and so on. So in fact it looks like the sum of all these causes of causes of causes, which might conveniently be called “the universe” has no specific beginning point in space and time, and so in fact the universe is infinite.

If we take a moment to step back and wonder what the hell is going on here, we will see quite quickly that there is something wrong with how we are asking these questions. The contradictions outlined above are probably as old as the history of human language, and philosophers have been banging their heads against them for millennia. The problem is that we are asking fundamental questions about the nature of existence. The question comes down to one of “how can existence exist?” or “how can existence get going in the first place if we believe that to exist it must have been created by something else, but that something else cannot be said to exist, because then it would already be a part of existence and could not be the cause of existence?” One solution to the problem is offered by a model which posits the existence of a being which can be its own self creation, i.e. “God.” Another solution lies in an understanding of the very nature of the brain which puzzles over ideas like this.

The 19th century philosopher and mathematician Henri Bergson proposed that our brains are predisposed to think about the world of experience in terms of “duration.” Duration was his term for our internal sense of the passage of this abstract thing called “time,” which until Einstein came along people actually believed was constant and unchanging. Duration for Bergson came in two flavors: the sense that moments in time are similar (our quantitative sense) and the sense that moments in time are distinct (our qualitative sense). The former gives us our ability to count objects in any arbitrarily defined set, and the latter our ability to sense changes like emotion. The problems in thought about the infinite character of the universe come about because we fail to see that our quantitative sense is in fact just an illusion, though admittedly a very useful one (numbers are very useful “tools”). In fact, if you think about it, no two moments are actually the same, and so it really does not make sense to count them, because to count implies the notion that things can be in some idealized sense, if not themselves identical, then at least representative of somethings that are, ideally, identical. Counting consists in mapping objects which may or may not appear identical, onto hypothetical idealized objects which are ideally identical, thus allowing their enumeration.

Plato proposed this model as the theory of forms 2500 years ago, and he thought it had major problems even as he proposed it. However the history of the west is the history, at least until recently, of swallowing such theories hook, line and sinker, and so we ran with it. The problem as Bergson sees it is that by inventing this idea of similarity (quantitative sets) and using it to try to account for difference (qualitative sets) we have built a contradiction into our model which creates the very problems we are grappling with. Let’s return to the question of the universe and see how Berson’s model handles the problem. The problem according to Bergson is one of using our concept of similarity to count backwards through each moment in time to discover the moment at which a qualitative difference emerged. That is, we hypothetically try to think our way backwards through a series of identical time moments in an effort to hypothesize whether there was a single moment in which something that didn’t exist transformed its character into something that did exist and became the universe we know and love. The problem is that we hope to move from an assumption of similarity to a discovery of difference. How absurd is that?

The solution of course is to understand that if we build a model based on similarity, it is probably going to be difficult to discover difference, and so if we want a model that accounts for difference, it is going to have to be a model based on difference.

What would such a model look like? Well the Buddhists have just such a model, in which the difference of each moment is one of the basic assumptions. This is the idea of impermanence, or “anicca.” In such a model the universe has no beginning and no end, existence has no beginning and no end. Equally well one could say that the universe is beginning and ending all the time, since all that we experience are causes and conditions of other causes and conditions and we suffer precisely because we fail to see the nature of this reality and instead cling to some false sense of permanence, constancy, similarity, or “countability.” Delusion for a Buddhist is the belief that there is constancy, and thus the attempt to discuss the beginning of everything is based in delusion. The solution is to change models, to see that in fact the universe lives and dies in each moment and our that past and future are illusory creations of our minds. To be sure, they are useful illusions if one is trying to accomplish certain tasks like coordinating market days, baby feeding times, class room meetings or work schedules. However, if one is trying to understand other issues like suffering and the end of suffering, this notion of past and future seems to simply perpetuate more of the same. Letting go of notions of past and future, the Buddhists do their best to live in the ever present and unarticulated now. Why do they do this? Because it works!