Thank you Bhante.Dhammanando wrote:There are said to be several stages in the disappearance of the Saddhamma, with two different schemes describing this: one a five-stage one and the other a three-stage one. In both schemes the disappearance of ariyan attainments (adhigama-antaradhāna) is only the first stage.User156079 wrote:We can also know that the next Buddha will be born when the Path is lost so to speak and monks are no longer getting attainments.
Then, according to the five-stage scheme...
After the first disappearance there is still practice but it's a practice that's incapable of yielding the highest fruits in the present life. But after some time people give up practising. This is the second disappearance, called paṭipatti-antaradhāna.
Even though practice has disappeared, the scriptures still exist and are still studied. But after some time even study comes to be neglected and disappears. This is pariyatti-antaradhāna.
Nevertheless a remnant of the monastic saṅgha still exists, albeit scarcely more than a token saṅgha, knowing nothing of the Dhamma and hardly observing any Vinaya. But even this eventually disappears. This is called liṅga-antaradhāna. I think liṅga here means something like an outward visible sign of something.
Then, some time after the saṅgha has disappeared the Buddha's bodily relics disappear. This is called disappearance of the elements dhātu-antaradhāna. Only then is the dark age in between Sammāsambuddhas said to begin.
In the three-stage scheme the last two stages are omitted.
If we had educated guesses of the whole community we could make estimations based on shared knowledge which is alot better than what we have atm, educated for controlling for wild guesses, giving diffrent opinions diffrent weight will make sure expertise is factored in. In this way educated guesses can be very useful fwiw imho.santa100 wrote:Sorry to break it to you but those educated guesses aren't really that useful.