Lessons In Practical Buddhism - Sirimangalo.Org

eons and 100,000 great eons to become fully enlightened.
A great eon is the time it takes from the big bang until the
end of the universe – the big crunch or whatever the end of
the universe is. 100,000 great eons is the small part of the
time it takes. The large part is the four uncountables. It is
theoretically possible to count the time from the big bang to
the big crunch but an uncountable eon is, by definition,
uncountable; it took the Buddha more than four uncountable
eons to become enlightened.
So here we are, in the time of the Buddha. We missed the
Buddha himself; who knows what we were doing when he
was teaching. Maybe we were drinking or gambling, maybe
we weren’t even humans. Somehow we missed the chance.
All that is left for us now is the Dhamma. This is why we
protect and revere the dhamma as well, because it’s all that
we have left after the Buddha passed away – the dhamma
and the sangha who has passed it on.
The sangha refers those people we ordinarily think of as our
teachers, but actually they are only responsible for passing
on the Buddha’s teachings and to be an example to us in our
practice. They can never replace the Buddha as a teacher,
so it might be easy to become discouraged in this day and
age, thinking we have no teacher. The Buddha, foreseeing
this, taught that the dhamma itself would be our teacher
after he passed away:
“siyā kho panānanda, tumhākaṃ evamassa —
‘atītasatthukaṃ pāvacanaṃ, natthi no satthā’ti. na kho
panetaṃ, ānanda, evaṃ daṭṭhabbaṃ. yo vo, ānanda,
mayā dhammo ca vinayo ca desito paññatto, so vo
mamaccayena satthā.
“It may be, Ananda, that you will think, ‘the teaching has
passed away with the teacher; there is no teacher for us.’
You should not see it thus, Ananda. Whatever dhamma
and discipline (vinaya) has been taught and laid out to
you, that will be your teacher after my passing away.”
– DN 16
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