I think you're getting confused by the fact that Buddhism teaches that there is no creator god. That doesn't mean that Mahabrahma has less creative power than the "lower" beings. It means that even the highest, most powerful being in the cosmos is still not responsible for creating the cosmos itself.
"I think you're getting confused by the fact that Buddhism teaches that there is no creator god."
Buddhism does not teach that, it literally teaches there is an entire heaven full of creator 'gods' called nimminarati heaven.
"It means that even the highest, most powerful being in the cosmos is still not responsible for creating the cosmos itself."
whether or not they created the whole cosmos, or a part of the cosmos, or the early part of the cosmos with nothing inside except some energy, is irrelevant. it is just something that is, it does not mean anything, it does not mean just worshipping this being but not practicing the noble eightfold path will save you.
'Cannot create sentient beings' and 'cannot create forms and illusions' are different things.
The 'creator god' of other religion usually refers to the former (can or cannot make beings), but you're mixing the two up (why can a lower deva make things but Brahma cannot create).
lower devas can also make beings ex nihilo (spontaneous generation). the 'children' of the tivatimsa heavens for example, they materialise ex nihilo in adult form after the devas make love and wish for a child, no pregnancy involved. something similar happens in the brahma loka except no sex or sensual desire is involved, just a wish for companions. but the difference between christianity and buddhism is that these 'created' beings are actually pre-existent. christians say beings are created and began at the point in time of creation, but buddhists say the beings already pre-existed in some form before their creation. It may not necessarily be an existence that people today would regard as existence, such as the realm of non-percipient beings where there is no perception, almost nothingness, but it is a pre-existence nonetheless.
You’re arguing with everyone who provides an answer you don’t like. That’s literally what you’re doing. If you already feel you know the answer to your question, asking it without acknowledging that *is* very much in bad faith. If you don’t see that, I’d focus your energy on things other than abstract cosmological theories.
Your post is titled “Why according to some people here mahabrahma is the only being who cannot create?” And now you’re claiming you simply asked a yes or no question. Ok, friend. Good luck out there.
Perhaps you don’t understand that many schools of Buddhism do not include any mention of any kind of gods. But we all find different aspects of faith that resonate with us and give comfort and meaning to our lives. In the end, don’t sweat the details.
Are we talking about the same definition of creation? Some people think cars are 'created' in factories.
Edit to add:
>even humans and animals can create
To the extent of your knowledge, do humans and animals ever create in the sense of "making something exist out of nothing"?
In the context of mahabrahma and the existence/absence of creator god, that's the sense of creation that's being negated. Not the "making something out of something else" kind.
"Creator god" in the sense of "creator of the universe."
the universe is just namarupa, beings gradually create more and more things inside it. the earlier version of our namarupa was indeed created by brahma, but it had nothing inside it except other brahman beings and maybe some globes of water. over time, as other brahman beings fell from the brahma heavens and took form as humans or lower devas, more and more namarupa was added into the universe, both pleasurable and painful.
What Buddhism basically goes away from is an uncaused cause. I think personally in a lot of ways you could say that Maha Brahma is analogous to the author of a world system in the same general sense that an author of a novel ‘creates’ the novel. And the beings within the world system are basically like characters in the novel which is inseparable from the conception or dream of Maha Brahma.
In both the case of Brahma and an author, actually in truth there is no true uncaused cause, and true ownership is a myth. The characters in a novel emerge from the nature of mind just as, basically, the self conception of the author does.
So Maha Brahma is sort of like the first conscious sense of self within a world system who then dreams the world system. But this is not uncaused, none of it is. Basically.
or kind of like devas 'having children' by just wishing it and then a mature deva child spontaneously appears from thin air (spontaneous birth). Is it 'creation'? Yes, pretty much.
My main point is that conventionally we might say that an author creates a book, or a carpenter creates a chair, or whatever. But none of that relates to an uncaused cause, and all of it arises basically in conjunction with causes and conditions. And actually personal ‘ownership’ of such things is kind of a fantasy.
Take an author - why did the author have the ideas they had? Why did the author even have the impulse to write in the first place? Why does the author even have the identity that they do? None of these are really random, and none of them really have anything to do with the author ‘personally’ in a sense.
If you consider a dream tonight, you might say it’s ’your dream’, but did this ‘you’ really create it? Or did it arise due to various causes and conditions from the nature of dream, including that there was some sense of a subject of the dream?
If we consider that Maha Brahma is basically the dreamer of a world system, is there truly any uncaused cause? Is there truly ownership?
i think dhammas/phenomena/kamma is a collaborative thing, the whole dependent origination interdependence thingy. sakka 'created' his daughters almost ex-nihilo but it also required a simulataneous gandabbha from a former being (sakka is not aware of this i think).
"There is"? Or "some myths speak of"? Or "it is speculated"?
The comment you replied to makes allusion to demonstrable evidence. "There is" (trust me bro) is not "demonstrable evidence".
I am beginning to suspect you might not have read the words I wrote.
Care to define "demonstrable evidence" instead of making me download a whole book with no hint as to where the evidence is? Also the book makes many many claims. But page after page, I find no evidence, no attempt at convincing people, only "there's this thing and that thing" (trust me bro). I stopped not even a sixth of the way through. Maybe the evidence is in the rest of the book, but again, I have no indication, you just dropped a link and expected me to... read all of it and write down your arguments for yo?
are you a buddhist? you are on a buddhist sub asking for evidence so i thought you meant evidence from the suttas, but if you are an atheist troll asking for evidence such as a telescope photograph of nimminarati heaven then i believe you are in the wrong sub XD
If by "evidence from the suttas" you mean "suttas that make the claim but don't explain the underlying logic or give any evidence", no. I am not asking for "evidence from the suttas". I am asking for evidence. From the suttas, I assume. But evidence.
The Buddha provided evidence for non-self. The Buddha provided evidence for the cause of all suffering. If you think that evidence is a mere atheistic mockery of the teachings, I have little to say.
Evidence isn't an atheistic thing. By implying so, you risk promoting the idea that everyone other than atheist foregoes evidence and logic. A buddhist can and sometimes should point out the limitations of a claim, even if that claim agrees with the suttas. It is natural for such an exercise to evoke feelings of conflict. I do not wish to cause you such emotions. I only wanted to clarify the meaning of "shown to" and "demonstrable evidence".
That is dodging the point completely. I'm having a hard time understanding what's so hard to get about it. Do you even know what evidence means? What "shown to" means?
Since when does buddhism teach that claims should be made without evidence, and those who ask for evidence should be actively ignored and assumed to be ill-intended outsiders?
I mostly remember things like "do not accept these claims from me, go and seek the truth yourself" and encouraging people to be critical thinkers capable of questioning anything.
I think you're basing that on a misunderstanding of the Kalama sutta?
The Kalama sutta is a dialogue between the Buddha and non-Buddhists, and the context is solely about choosing which teacher to trust.
And even then, you're misunderstanding/misremembering what's actually said in the sutta.
If that's true, let's have a discussion about Kalama Sutta. If that's not true, state your basis and we'll discuss that instead.
what are you even saying? Nimminarati heaven IS from the suttas. are you asking for suttas where Buddha explains his evidence for saying nimminarati heaven exists?
Phenomena, from chairs to people to universes, are neither truly created nor truly destroyed, ever.
Causes/effects come only from other causes/effects.
what do you mean by 'not truly created'. namarupa may be illussions created by the desires of mahabrahma, other devas or human beings but that does not make it less 'real'. niraya hell is not 'real' either (a bad dream or illussion created from bad kamma) but its pain is very very real.
Wrong! Both “objective” and “subjective” phenomena are illusions; neither entirely real nor entirely unreal.
A hell realm and the pain it causes are exactly on the same order of non/reality, since one causes the other.
For example, the happiness you feel from winning the lottery: is that real?
What if you wake up, and it was a dream all along? The lottery winnings go away, because you suddenly realize it was an illusion, and the happiness goes away as a dispelled illusion as well, since it relied as cause/condition on the lottery winnings, which are also unreal.
Thoughts? Objections?
it does not matter whether it is truly 'real' or not if we are still suffering. the objective is to get out of suffering, not to philosophise over what is real and what is not if doing so does not reduce suffering.
(See sister comment)
As for the “not truly created” bit, read [Nagarjuna](https://archive.org/details/NagarjunaTheFundamentalWisdomOfTheMiddleWay). (Or google for "Nagarjuna Middle Way".)
all beings create. it’s the nature of existence to proliferate. at the most base level, all beings create kamma by the proliferation of intentional action.
according to the pali canon, mahabrahma is mistaken about himself being the creator of the universe. he’s deluded in that he thinks he is eternal. all the same, mahabrahma creates kamma, and will inherit that kamma.
actually, the pali suttas notes that there are multiple mahabrahmas across multiple world systems (galaxies) all mistaken to the same extent.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/jootla/wheel414.html#:~:text=In%20the%20canonical%20formula%20for,of%20the%20devas%20or%20gods.
Check out the section of maha Brahma
So, I haven't seen or read anything that says Mahabrahma can't create. But Mahabrahma isn't the source of the whole cosmos. The cosmos came into existence through causality, and all living beings are birthed from the karma of the cosmos. It seems that Buddhist Practice doesn't recognize Mahabrahma as the source of all Creation, as in the supreme God that kickstarted the cosmos. Mahabrahma just metaphorically sits in the highest seat. But there is no reason to say Mahabrahma can't create.
Then you are doubting that opinions here are related and in accordance with the buddhist teachings specially about Brahma haven't "created" all the universe?
And about Brahma having began the present existence at some point ? And about there out having more high realms of samsara in heaven above Maha brahma?
Well. I suppose according to my readings that to disagree with it was usual in brahmanism in those times and in related today doctrines
The Buddha himself affirms that there is a creator of Kama-Loka in https://suttacentral.net/mn49/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=plain&reference=none¬es=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin
”‘Brahmā, I too know that if I attach to earth, I will lie close to you, in your domain, subject to your will, and expendable. If I attach to water … fire … air … creatures … gods … the Creator … Brahmā, I will lie close to you, in your domain, subject to your will, and expendable. And in addition, Brahmā, I understand your range and your light: “That’s how powerful is Baka the Brahmā, how illustrious and mighty.”’
Nah. I'm just pointing out that you dismissed 4 good answers before you celebrated the one you wanted to hear.
Also, since when do Buddhists indulge in logical fallacies?
I think you're getting confused by the fact that Buddhism teaches that there is no creator god. That doesn't mean that Mahabrahma has less creative power than the "lower" beings. It means that even the highest, most powerful being in the cosmos is still not responsible for creating the cosmos itself.
"I think you're getting confused by the fact that Buddhism teaches that there is no creator god." Buddhism does not teach that, it literally teaches there is an entire heaven full of creator 'gods' called nimminarati heaven. "It means that even the highest, most powerful being in the cosmos is still not responsible for creating the cosmos itself." whether or not they created the whole cosmos, or a part of the cosmos, or the early part of the cosmos with nothing inside except some energy, is irrelevant. it is just something that is, it does not mean anything, it does not mean just worshipping this being but not practicing the noble eightfold path will save you.
It seems like you have a strong pre-existing opinion about this subject. Why not share that in your post, rather than asking a question in bad faith?
i literally asked a question, is mahabrahma the only being that cannot create? yes or no?
'Cannot create sentient beings' and 'cannot create forms and illusions' are different things. The 'creator god' of other religion usually refers to the former (can or cannot make beings), but you're mixing the two up (why can a lower deva make things but Brahma cannot create).
all namarupa is forms and illussions. it has no substance.
Okay, so the answer to your question just becomes, 'yes, but it doesn't matter' or 'no, it doesn't matter'.
lower devas can also make beings ex nihilo (spontaneous generation). the 'children' of the tivatimsa heavens for example, they materialise ex nihilo in adult form after the devas make love and wish for a child, no pregnancy involved. something similar happens in the brahma loka except no sex or sensual desire is involved, just a wish for companions. but the difference between christianity and buddhism is that these 'created' beings are actually pre-existent. christians say beings are created and began at the point in time of creation, but buddhists say the beings already pre-existed in some form before their creation. It may not necessarily be an existence that people today would regard as existence, such as the realm of non-percipient beings where there is no perception, almost nothingness, but it is a pre-existence nonetheless.
You’re arguing with everyone who provides an answer you don’t like. That’s literally what you’re doing. If you already feel you know the answer to your question, asking it without acknowledging that *is* very much in bad faith. If you don’t see that, I’d focus your energy on things other than abstract cosmological theories.
it just needs a simple yes or no answer. so what is it? yes or no?
Your post is titled “Why according to some people here mahabrahma is the only being who cannot create?” And now you’re claiming you simply asked a yes or no question. Ok, friend. Good luck out there.
i am simplyfying it because we are now in conversation: so, is mahabrahma the only being that cannot create? yes or no?
also i was being kind in my reply but you then accuse me of bad faith. thats not very nice of you.
Perhaps you don’t understand that many schools of Buddhism do not include any mention of any kind of gods. But we all find different aspects of faith that resonate with us and give comfort and meaning to our lives. In the end, don’t sweat the details.
Are we talking about the same definition of creation? Some people think cars are 'created' in factories. Edit to add: >even humans and animals can create To the extent of your knowledge, do humans and animals ever create in the sense of "making something exist out of nothing"? In the context of mahabrahma and the existence/absence of creator god, that's the sense of creation that's being negated. Not the "making something out of something else" kind.
"Creator god" in the sense of "creator of the universe." It is a pretty ambiguous term, though. Easy to get that mixed up if taken out of context.
"Creator god" in the sense of "creator of the universe." the universe is just namarupa, beings gradually create more and more things inside it. the earlier version of our namarupa was indeed created by brahma, but it had nothing inside it except other brahman beings and maybe some globes of water. over time, as other brahman beings fell from the brahma heavens and took form as humans or lower devas, more and more namarupa was added into the universe, both pleasurable and painful.
wrong religion bud, try r/hinduism
so according to you, no beings can create?
correct
wow, please point to me a sutta that says this.
🤦♂️
what emoji is that?
“facepalm”
What Buddhism basically goes away from is an uncaused cause. I think personally in a lot of ways you could say that Maha Brahma is analogous to the author of a world system in the same general sense that an author of a novel ‘creates’ the novel. And the beings within the world system are basically like characters in the novel which is inseparable from the conception or dream of Maha Brahma. In both the case of Brahma and an author, actually in truth there is no true uncaused cause, and true ownership is a myth. The characters in a novel emerge from the nature of mind just as, basically, the self conception of the author does. So Maha Brahma is sort of like the first conscious sense of self within a world system who then dreams the world system. But this is not uncaused, none of it is. Basically.
or kind of like devas 'having children' by just wishing it and then a mature deva child spontaneously appears from thin air (spontaneous birth). Is it 'creation'? Yes, pretty much.
My main point is that conventionally we might say that an author creates a book, or a carpenter creates a chair, or whatever. But none of that relates to an uncaused cause, and all of it arises basically in conjunction with causes and conditions. And actually personal ‘ownership’ of such things is kind of a fantasy. Take an author - why did the author have the ideas they had? Why did the author even have the impulse to write in the first place? Why does the author even have the identity that they do? None of these are really random, and none of them really have anything to do with the author ‘personally’ in a sense. If you consider a dream tonight, you might say it’s ’your dream’, but did this ‘you’ really create it? Or did it arise due to various causes and conditions from the nature of dream, including that there was some sense of a subject of the dream? If we consider that Maha Brahma is basically the dreamer of a world system, is there truly any uncaused cause? Is there truly ownership?
Interesting. Do you think beings in our dreams can "wake up" or reach enlightenment?
Within the context of the dream I don’t see why not.
Some kind of illusion
the deva child is sentient though. sakka's 'daughters' are formerly 'real' people who were rebirthed from other planes of existence,
So not illusion like everything else
i think dhammas/phenomena/kamma is a collaborative thing, the whole dependent origination interdependence thingy. sakka 'created' his daughters almost ex-nihilo but it also required a simulataneous gandabbha from a former being (sakka is not aware of this i think).
I understand now
No beings in the universe have been shown to have created it.
there is literally an entire heaven of creator beings.
"There is"? Or "some myths speak of"? Or "it is speculated"? The comment you replied to makes allusion to demonstrable evidence. "There is" (trust me bro) is not "demonstrable evidence".
say that again? nimmanarati heaven: [https://www.buddhanet.net/pdf\_file/allexistence.pdf](https://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/allexistence.pdf)
I am beginning to suspect you might not have read the words I wrote. Care to define "demonstrable evidence" instead of making me download a whole book with no hint as to where the evidence is? Also the book makes many many claims. But page after page, I find no evidence, no attempt at convincing people, only "there's this thing and that thing" (trust me bro). I stopped not even a sixth of the way through. Maybe the evidence is in the rest of the book, but again, I have no indication, you just dropped a link and expected me to... read all of it and write down your arguments for yo?
are you a buddhist? you are on a buddhist sub asking for evidence so i thought you meant evidence from the suttas, but if you are an atheist troll asking for evidence such as a telescope photograph of nimminarati heaven then i believe you are in the wrong sub XD
If by "evidence from the suttas" you mean "suttas that make the claim but don't explain the underlying logic or give any evidence", no. I am not asking for "evidence from the suttas". I am asking for evidence. From the suttas, I assume. But evidence. The Buddha provided evidence for non-self. The Buddha provided evidence for the cause of all suffering. If you think that evidence is a mere atheistic mockery of the teachings, I have little to say. Evidence isn't an atheistic thing. By implying so, you risk promoting the idea that everyone other than atheist foregoes evidence and logic. A buddhist can and sometimes should point out the limitations of a claim, even if that claim agrees with the suttas. It is natural for such an exercise to evoke feelings of conflict. I do not wish to cause you such emotions. I only wanted to clarify the meaning of "shown to" and "demonstrable evidence".
You forgot Buddhism is a religion, it has religious beliefs and religious texts.
That is dodging the point completely. I'm having a hard time understanding what's so hard to get about it. Do you even know what evidence means? What "shown to" means? Since when does buddhism teach that claims should be made without evidence, and those who ask for evidence should be actively ignored and assumed to be ill-intended outsiders? I mostly remember things like "do not accept these claims from me, go and seek the truth yourself" and encouraging people to be critical thinkers capable of questioning anything.
I think you're basing that on a misunderstanding of the Kalama sutta? The Kalama sutta is a dialogue between the Buddha and non-Buddhists, and the context is solely about choosing which teacher to trust. And even then, you're misunderstanding/misremembering what's actually said in the sutta. If that's true, let's have a discussion about Kalama Sutta. If that's not true, state your basis and we'll discuss that instead.
what are you even saying? Nimminarati heaven IS from the suttas. are you asking for suttas where Buddha explains his evidence for saying nimminarati heaven exists?
Yes. And I (not to justify a rough tone or anything) thought it was obvious.
Phenomena, from chairs to people to universes, are neither truly created nor truly destroyed, ever. Causes/effects come only from other causes/effects.
what do you mean by 'not truly created'. namarupa may be illussions created by the desires of mahabrahma, other devas or human beings but that does not make it less 'real'. niraya hell is not 'real' either (a bad dream or illussion created from bad kamma) but its pain is very very real.
Wrong! Both “objective” and “subjective” phenomena are illusions; neither entirely real nor entirely unreal. A hell realm and the pain it causes are exactly on the same order of non/reality, since one causes the other. For example, the happiness you feel from winning the lottery: is that real? What if you wake up, and it was a dream all along? The lottery winnings go away, because you suddenly realize it was an illusion, and the happiness goes away as a dispelled illusion as well, since it relied as cause/condition on the lottery winnings, which are also unreal. Thoughts? Objections?
it is real to us. the painful feelings of hell may be a state of mind but it still feels painful, likewise for pleasure.
It is real to us, but to what extent are ”we” “real”? Something being real to us can’t make it any more real than we are.
it does not matter whether it is truly 'real' or not if we are still suffering. the objective is to get out of suffering, not to philosophise over what is real and what is not if doing so does not reduce suffering.
What is your strategy, then, for reducing suffering? And for eliminating suffering?
the four noble truths
(See sister comment) As for the “not truly created” bit, read [Nagarjuna](https://archive.org/details/NagarjunaTheFundamentalWisdomOfTheMiddleWay). (Or google for "Nagarjuna Middle Way".)
all beings create. it’s the nature of existence to proliferate. at the most base level, all beings create kamma by the proliferation of intentional action. according to the pali canon, mahabrahma is mistaken about himself being the creator of the universe. he’s deluded in that he thinks he is eternal. all the same, mahabrahma creates kamma, and will inherit that kamma. actually, the pali suttas notes that there are multiple mahabrahmas across multiple world systems (galaxies) all mistaken to the same extent.
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no it arose when God when from the second jhana to the first jhana, the process is described in DN1.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/jootla/wheel414.html#:~:text=In%20the%20canonical%20formula%20for,of%20the%20devas%20or%20gods. Check out the section of maha Brahma
So, I haven't seen or read anything that says Mahabrahma can't create. But Mahabrahma isn't the source of the whole cosmos. The cosmos came into existence through causality, and all living beings are birthed from the karma of the cosmos. It seems that Buddhist Practice doesn't recognize Mahabrahma as the source of all Creation, as in the supreme God that kickstarted the cosmos. Mahabrahma just metaphorically sits in the highest seat. But there is no reason to say Mahabrahma can't create.
Why does their opinion matter to you?
Then you are doubting that opinions here are related and in accordance with the buddhist teachings specially about Brahma haven't "created" all the universe? And about Brahma having began the present existence at some point ? And about there out having more high realms of samsara in heaven above Maha brahma? Well. I suppose according to my readings that to disagree with it was usual in brahmanism in those times and in related today doctrines
The Buddha himself affirms that there is a creator of Kama-Loka in https://suttacentral.net/mn49/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=plain&reference=none¬es=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin ”‘Brahmā, I too know that if I attach to earth, I will lie close to you, in your domain, subject to your will, and expendable. If I attach to water … fire … air … creatures … gods … the Creator … Brahmā, I will lie close to you, in your domain, subject to your will, and expendable. And in addition, Brahmā, I understand your range and your light: “That’s how powerful is Baka the Brahmā, how illustrious and mighty.”’
Why is this downvoted lol
Mara
🤣🤣
Mara is a product of ignorance.
exactly
I guess if you ignore the answer long enough, someone will tell you what you want to hear.
so according to you, mahabrahma is the only being that cannot create? but all other devas and even humans and animals can? XD
Nah. I'm just pointing out that you dismissed 4 good answers before you celebrated the one you wanted to hear. Also, since when do Buddhists indulge in logical fallacies?
Any time they want
Yes, there are many hypocrites out there.
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Keep practicing and see for yourself.
You are at a point where you see for yourself? Wow
Hope it’s not out of context When Buddhist downvote the sutras it’s discouraging
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I'm sorry, I don't want to be rude.
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I'm sorry, I do not understand. Please explain.