As a Buddhist, he says, he believes that the universe had no beginning. Il n’y a pas de début. Nothingness—le néant—could never give way to being, he says, because it is defined in opposition to that which exists. A billion causes could not make a universe come into existence out of what does not exist. That is why, the monk says, the Buddhist doctrine of a beginning-less universe makes the most metaphysical sense. C’est encore plus simple.
