Why is there ignorance in the first place?
I understand that ignorance is the root of all suffering and that the best way to overcome ignorance is to learn.
So I'm wondering, what caused ignorance?
Can we even know?
Well, there's no original cause to samsara.
I don't even think there's a sense that time is...
is entirely linear.
It seems like time somehow begins with the present moment and so we're creating the past as we go and the future is this also ethereal thing that we're somehow creating.
Or even more interestingly, it seems like just as the past can affect the present, the future can also affect the present.
You know how in quantum physics they somehow have seen that it seems like the future is creating the past.
Well, there is a sense that because it's possible to have a vision of the future, to see what's going to happen before it happens,
there's the sense that the future can actually affect the present by seeing the future or the future can come back and you can actually see it before it happens.
The Buddha was able to do this and it's possible through certain types of meditation that you're able to do that.
So anyway, not actually an answer to your question, but
if you're looking for a first cause of ignorance, or first cause of anything, there is no first cause.
There is no sense of that.
There is no sense that the universe is of that sort.
Linear, because it's actually illogical to think of, it's mind-boggling to think of an infinite timeline, but it's even more difficult, more illogical to think of a first beginning, because
then you have to think of something before that or something outside of time.
You have to try to understand what it could possibly mean for time to begin.
I guess there's an understanding among material scientists or natural scientists, modern scientists that
time began with the Big Bang.
So if the Big Bang was a singularity, then there was no time before that.
But that's really just time as a function of space, right?
As a part of the four-dimensional reality that we find ourselves in.
But again, that may be a hint of the fact that time is not exactly linear as we think it is.
Time is not quite the way we think, so the idea that there might be something at the beginning is a bit of a misunderstanding of reality.
We want to understand the proximate cause of ignorance.
The Buddha said it's the five hindrances.
And I was alerted to this.
I've answered this question before and I said, well, ignorance just is, right?
Ignorance, you can't cause someone to not know something, right?
If I'm thinking of a number between one and ten and I ask you, what number am I thinking of?
I didn't cause you to not know what number I'm thinking of.
You never knew what number I was thinking of.
It was something that was always there.
The lack of knowledge was there in the beginning.
So I'm not actually convinced by this person who called me out on that, saying, you're wrong, there is a cause for ignorance.
It's the five hindrances.
But you have to understand there are 24 different kinds of causality in the Buddhist teaching.
And so I was talking about something that created the ignorance, that actually caused the ignorance to spring into existence.
But the hindrances are a cause for ignorance, meaning
Because of the hindrances, we remain ignorant to the truth.
Because of our lack of clarity, we remain ignorant.
So it's like the fog is preventing us from seeing the road in front of us.
But it didn't create that lack of knowledge, right?
We never knew what the road in front of us looked like, but then we get to this point in the road,
we still can't see it because there's the fog.
So in that way the hindrances are what is obscuring us from seeing the truth.
But we didn't ever know, there wasn't a time or a point where we actually knew
the truth, the Four Noble Truths, for example.
That isn't something that was ever there.
The hindrances are just that which is in our way.
Once we go to try and, once we ask the question, what are the Four Noble Truths?
What is the truth of reality?
We're not able to see it because of the five hindrances.
That's all.
An actual beginning to ignorance is something, you know, it's reasonably speaking a
a misleading question, misguided question.
Because ignorance is something that was always there.
Ignorance means a lack of something.
It's like, why is there a lack of light?
What caused there to be a lack of light?
Or what caused there to be a lack of sound?
Nothing caused it.
A lack of something isn't really caused.
Though you can say there's a reason for it, maybe we're in a soundproof room, and that's why there's no sound.
But that's not really telling you why there's no sound.
The no sound is the default.
So, I think it's easy to understand this, and therefore, I think that's a proper answer to what is the cause of ignorance.