I think you are conflating two things. You are talking about chains of lives of beings: dependent origination (DO) processes. These are taking place in the context of some overall universe. And there's cause and effect in that universe which may not be tied up specifically with these DO processes (in the suttas not everything is the result of kamma; there can be causes to misfortunate other than kamma). It's possible such DO chains may just spontaneously spring into existence from existing conditions in the universe. There could be such DO processes continually arising and ceasing. I think you simply making an assertion above (might be true or might be false). DO process may not necessarily go back infinitely (even if we assume the surrounding universe is infinite).Germann wrote: ↑Sat Mar 09, 2019 2:51 pmIn addition to such a dhamma as Nibbana, each dhamma has a cause — a different dhamma. The entire path, from beginning to end, would have already been printed by the infinite "monkeys" - past lives.
Even for the infinite case, another problem with your logic can be shown by appealing to the Hilbert Hotel example again. By your logic, the hotel has to be empty (since surely, every single guest should have checked out sometime in the infinite past). However, the Hilbert example shows that in an infinity, there are always enough guests (who have spent all of infinity up to that point without checking out) to keep the hotel constantly full. Your probabilistic argument doesn't really make sense when are dealing with infinities and their weird properties!