When did it begin?
The Big Bang is the standard answer. A moment, a point, a singularity — before which there was nothing, after which there was everything. A beginning located in time.
But the more carefully you look at beginnings, the stranger they become.
The cell that divides does not begin. It continues — splitting into two continuations. The river does not begin at the source; the source is fed by rain, the rain by evaporation, the evaporation by the river. Pull on any beginning and it unravels into something that was already in motion.
Katakamuna Verse 10 closes with HA SHI MA RI — the beginning. But read through the sonic elements, it describes something different from a moment in time.
HA: spreading into the field. SHI: continuously showing itself. MA: within spacetime. RI: as independent, differentiated presences.
The beginning, in this reading, is not an event. It is a structural condition — the continuous arising of distinct, independent presences within the field of spacetime. Not something that happened once. Something that is happening now.
The question is not when it began. The question is what beginning actually is.
Related Notes