Buddhist Cosmology Quotes

“Buddhism divides living beings into five types: gods (deva), human beings (manusya), animals (tiryañc), spirits of the dead (pert), and inhabitants of the hells (naraka). These states of existence, among which living beings transmigrate (are reborn) depending on their karma, are called the five or six paths (see figure 14).”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“All living beings within the "realm of desire" (kāma-dhātu). Human beings and animals live together on the surface of the Mount Sumeru realm. Spirits and demonic gods live 500 yojanas under the earth, and the inhabitants of the hells, even deeper. Gods of various types live in the upper places, in the realm of form (rūpa-dhātu) and beyond that, in the realm of formlessness (ārūpya-dhātu). The realm of desire, form, and formlessness are known collectiveness as the "three realms" (tri-dhātu), in other words, the three kinds of worlds in which living beings exist. Tri-dhātu is a synonym for the universe as a whole, or for all existence.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“Most religious cosmologies include the existence of hells somewhere in the universe, and Buddhism is no exception. "Hell" is a translation of the Indic word naraka (or niraya), "devoid of happiness." The hells are mentioned in a large number of Buddhist sūtras, either as a single entity, as in the Verses on the Law (Dhammapada, 4th-3d century B.C.E.), or as a system of individually named hells, as in the Abhidharma commentaries (very early Buddhist writings). They were certainly not systematized into an elaborate structure such as we see in the Abhidharmakośa for a very long time.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“It is a common pattern in Asian religions that hells below complement heavens above. In Buddhism, just as there are many hells, there are countless numbers of devas, and a multitude of heavens, summarized in figure 17.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“On the summit of Mount Sumeru is the heaven of the thirty-three gods (trays-triṃśāḥ), whose roles are also somewhat mysterious, except for Indra.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“So far we have seen a universe with inhabitants living on the earth, in hells, in the realm of the hungry spirits, and in heavens. It shares many elements with the cosmologies of other religions. Buddhism, though, is perhaps unique in positing an additional realm of dhyāna practitioners above the realm of gods. This consists of the "realm of form" (rūpa-dhātu) and the "realm of formlessness" (ārūpya-dhātu).

Form (rūpa) is that which has shape and is characterized by constant change and destruction. Rūpa-dhātu, therefore, is where those having form dwell. Of course the possession of form is a condition shared also by those who occupy the realm of desire (kāma-dhātu). Nevertheless when we speak of the realm of form we do not include the realm of desire, for those who dwell there have gained release from all desires, so that only their physical bodies remain. This is the realm of those who practice dhyāna ("meditation"), which includes the two practice softball "quieting the mind" and "observing the nature of things." Buddhist priests, and indeed we ourselves, may climb to a realm higher than that inhabited by the gods by pursuing the practice of meditation to its limits.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“When asked why the wind circle upholding the Sumeru realm did not disperse, Indian scholars said that it was held together by the force of karma ("action") of living beings. Indians believed that all action leaves behind results; good actions leave good results, and evil actions leave evil results. Therefore, action does not disappear as soon as it is completed. An unseen force remains, the consequence of both individual actions and the actions of all living beings taken together. Buddhism calls the entirety of action, including its results, combined karma or common karma. It is this combined karma that prevents the wind circle from dispersing.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“The idea of karma and transmigration are the foundation of Buddhist cosmology, whose purpose is to illuminate their nature and relationship to human existence. Unlike the modern scientific view of the cosmos, Buddhist cosmology is meaningless without the human element.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“Transmigration (saṃsāra) means the repeated cycle of birth and death in this realm of delusion. Literally "flowing together," saṃsāra is an expression of living beings buffeted by waves and at the mercy of water, perhaps a powerful river whose current carries us from place to place. As we have seen, rebirth has five or six destinations. The Abhidharmakośa gives five—the inhabitants of hells, hungry spirits, animals, human beings, and devas. This is the Sarvāstivādin point of view; other schools gave six, the above five plus the asuras. In Chinese and Japanese Buddhism, the version favoring six paths gained popularity, and th expression "transmigration among the six paths" is well known throughout East Asia.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“The gods, too, are inhabitants of the realm of delusion. They may have received the most pleasant existence of the six paths, but they are still subject to the three poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance, so they may eventually fall into the realms of the hells or the hungry spirits.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“The idea of rebirth is also reflected in biographies of the Buddha. The Buddha experiences a variety of previous births, during which he practices his religious discipline and appears as a perfected being. The Jātakas, tales of the Buddha's former lives, relate how he amasses great numbers of virtues. In some of them, he is shown as having been born previously as a monkey or a deer.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“Of equal importance to the idea of transmigration is the concept of karma. Karma (also karman) means "action," and it consists of both action and its power of influence. "Action" does not refer just to bodily movements, but also includes the actions of speech and mind. An action's power of influence is not confined to this life but extends to future lives as well.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“Karma affects the destiny of the entire natural realm, not only that of the individual. For example, when the universe is about to come into being, a subtle wind begins to stir, and what causes it to quicken is "the indirect force of the karma of the various living beings." The water that eventually develops is prevented from dispersing because "it is maintained by the force of the karma of all living beings." This force also creates the hells and the heavens. In Buddhism, this combined karmic force is called common karma.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“Karma functions automatically, without the need of some kind of godlike arbitrator. Meritorious acts give rise to good results, and evil causes adverse results. This is a law analogous to natural law. Each person receives upon him- or herself that retribution or rewards for his or her own acts. That is why Buddhist texts do not say "to be punished" or "to be thrown into hell," as though a god were the agent, but rather "to receive retribution" and "to fall into hell.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“To understand the worldview of Buddhism, it is necessary to comprehend the concept of the thousand-cubed great-thousand-world, or trichiliocosm. We begin by examining what a "single world" consists of. The Chinese translation of the Abhidharmakośa describes its horizontal limits in the expression, "The Iron Mountains [Cakravāḍa] encircle a single world." A single world thus includes Mount Sumeru, its surrounding mountain ranges and seas, and four landmasses. The vertical boundaries are not as clear, but appear to extend from the circle of wind to Brahmā's world, the First Dhyāna heavens of the realm of form. The heaven of the greatest of all the gods is therefore the upper limit of a single world (see figure 21). The higher dhyāna practitioners in the realms of form and formlessness, and the buddhas, are beyond this world, but all the other five (or six) types of beings dwell in the single world. The world also includes one sun, one moon, and the stars. In modern terms, a single world may equal the solar system.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“A thousand single worlds are called a "small-thousand-world." (Small thousand means "one thousand.") In modern terms, this would be a galaxy. One thousand small-thousand-worlds make a medium-thousand world. "Medium-thousand" is dvi-sāhasra (literally, "2,000"), a term used to mean 1,000 [to the second power], that is, a million worlds. One thousand medium-thousand-worlds make a great-thousand world. "Great-thousand" (try-sāhasra, literally, "3,000") denotes 1,000 [to the third power], that is, one billion worlds. A great-thousand-world is also called a "thousand-cubed- great-thousand-world" (try-sāhasra-mahāsāhasro loka-dhātuḥ), or trichiliocosm. These worlds all experience the Buddhist cycle of existence and disappearance together, so they can be called a single unit in term so destiny.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“The concept of the trichiliocosm is closely linked with Buddhist theories about time and human destiny. Buddhist thought is generally clouded with pessimism, and this is nowhere more obvious than in its concept of time. The notion of an eternal round of birth and death is an intolerable thought.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“In the Abhidharmakośa, time units finish with "year" (saṃvatsara). There is, however, another enormous unit of time that we could add, the kalpa, which is so long that it cannot be calculated in years. (The Chinese transliterated kalpa as kiap and translated it as "great time." In the Japanese game of Go there is a rule known as kō [Japanese for kiap] to prevent stalemates through constant repetition. Without it, the game could continue indefinitely.)”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“The universe, with its multiple worlds and variety of living beings, eternally repeats a cycle of fourfold change (see figure 23). Each of the four periods lasts twenty intermediate kalpas, so one complete cycle takes eighty intermediate kalpas. The cycle includes the Kalpa of Dissolution (Saṃvartakalpa); the Kalpa of Nothingness (Saṃvartasthāyi-kalpa), during which the world remains dissolved; the Kalpa of Creation (Vivartakalpa); and the Kalpa of Duration of the created world (Vivartasthāyikalpa). That the cycle starts with dissolution is a very Indian way of thinking, as is the custom of calculating the month from the full moon.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“The Kalpa of Dissolution begins when beings are no longer reborn in the hells. When all living beings disappear from the hells, the hells themselves vanish. The process is repeated in the abode of hungry spirits and animals. As for human beings, when one person is reborn in a First Dhyāna heavens, when one of their number is reborn in a Second Dhyāna heaven and experiences the joy resulting form samādhi, all the others receive an impetus to enter samādhi and be reborn there. When the karma of living beings that created the world is finally exhausted (because there are no more living beings in the world), seven suns appear and burn up the wind circle, water circle, golden earth layer, Mount Sumeru, the four landmasses, and the Brahmā palace at the highest point of the First Dhyāna heavens. Being who escaped, so to speak, to the Second Dhyāna can evade this catastrophe.

When the hells and the abodes of the hungry spirits and animals finally disappear, evil ones living in the human world might clap their hands in glee, saying, "Now I can do anything I want to. There is now no longer any place below the human realm to which I can fall." Similarly, those who entered the hells just before their final dissolution would no doubt rejoice that their period of torment would be very short. Their joy would be premature, however. The Abhidharmakośa says that the inhabitants of hells who have not yet received their full measure of punishment would be transferred by the force of their karma to a hell in another universe.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“The Kalpa of Creation begins when a tiny wind begins to blow "through the indirect force of the karma of living beings" (who and where these living beings are is not clear). The wind circle forms, then the water circle, the golden earth layer, the soil, the four landmasses, and Mount Sumeru. The palaces and abodes reappear exactly as they were before, peopled by the rebirth in lower realms of those who had escaped to the Second Dhyāna heavens at the time of the period of dissolution. Some beings are born in the Brahmā palaces in the highest First Dhyāna heaven, some in the lower Para-nirmita-vaśavartin and Nirmāṇarati heavens and other heavens of the realm of desire, some in the Pūrvavideha, Jambudvīpa, Aparagodānīya, or Uttarakuru, and some in the lower realms—those of animals or hungry spirits, or hell. When the universe has been thus filled from top to bottom with living beings, the Kalpa of Creation ends. During this time, the human life span is "infinite.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“In this way the universe follows the cycle of dissolution, nothingness, creation, and duration of what is created. The length of one such cycle (eighty intermediate kalpas) is called a "great kalpa" (mahākalpa).”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“Much of Buddhist cosmology seems fantastical. The physical layout of the cosmos has a logic mostly unrelated to what we know of the universe, and the mathematical calculations consist of apparently arbitrary numbers which, however, are strangely precise. Naturally, ideas such as the centrality of the Indian experience to the cosmology and the existence of hells inside the earth do not hold true today. All the same, we do not necessarily gain by interpreting Buddhist cosmology purely in terms of geography and revealing all its deficiencies, for to a certain extent it was constructed as a symbolic representation. For example, we may infer that the authors of the cosmology depicted it symbolically from the first, given the overly schematic description of the universe and the too-artificial numbers of the worlds' dimensions. Of course those authors did not come out and say that their cosmology was symbolic. Because of the boldness of expression though, both speakers and hearers must have understood it as being so. If we comprehend it in this way, we can appreciate the sophistication of ancient Buddhist cosmology. It explained graphically, in a way that is easy to memorize, the entire picture of the world and the universe. In this sense it is of little import the the individual numbers and configurations do not match reality.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“Mahāyāna thought posits not just one buddha, but many buddhas throughout the universe. . . . They possess their own lands, apart from the Sahā world, in which they teach. These are called buddha-lands, buddha-realms, or pure lands. Best known are the Realm of Profound Joy or Akṣobhya Buddha, the Pure Lapis-lazuli World of Bhaiṣajya-guru Buddha, and the Pure Land of Sukhāvati of Amida (Amitābha/Amitāyus). Resembling buddha-lands, though not strictly identical, is the Tuṣita heaven, one of the six heavens of the realm of desire and the dwelling place of bodhisattvas prior to their appearance on earth as buddhas. Śākyamuni descended to Jambudvīpa from there, and at present Maitreya, the future buddha, lives there. Another place resembling buddha-lands is Mount Potalaka, said to be located in the sea south of India, where Avalokitśvara Bodhisattva dwells. The Sahā world might seem to be the buddha-land of Śākyamuni; it is not, however, a "pure land," but rather a defiled realm, and thus is quite distinct from the buddha-lands. Śākyamuni, moreover, is a historical person and other buddhas are mythological or metaphysical beings.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“In the pre-Mahāyāna Abhidharmakośa, the Buddha is described as gaining liberation from the three realms of desire, form, and formlessness and returning to nothingness. Such a return to complete nothingness (termed nirupadhiśeṣa-nirvāṇa, "nirvāṇa without residue") was the goal of pre-Mahāyāna Buddhists. They had no concept of a buddha that retains form and is active in a buddha-land. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, though, the buddhas resolve to train themselves to build their own buddha-lands and work eternally to bring to those lands all the living beings now lost in delusion. We of Sahā can be reborn virtually only in Sukhāvatī, because Amitābha is the only buddha who offers us an effective means for rebirth there (i.e., nembutsu, calling upon Amitābha). Though Śākyamuni and Amitābha have completely different origins, the Pure Land sūtras depict Śākyamuni as expounding Amitābha's teachings.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“There are two theories concerning the location of Amitābha Buddha's pure Land of Sukhāvastī. One places it within the three realms, and the other places it outside them. The reason for this division of opinion lies in the fact that classical cosmology did not speak of buddha-lands. All agree, however, that Sukhāvatī is "ten myriads of a hundred millions of buddha-lands to the west of Sahā," an expression found in the Chinese translations of the Smaller and Larger Sukhāvatī-vyūha sūtras.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“As people gradually stopped thinking of suffering as a threat, Buddhist cosmology, which had been constructed on the terror of suffering, steadily lost its connection to everyday reality. What had originally been a living belief turned into myth.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“Here we seem to have arrived at the terminus of Buddhist cosmology as a practical philosophy. It is a point all ancient views of the universe have finally reached. As knowledge is disseminated in ever-greater amounts, people have sought out the rational and overturned old dogmas.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“Buddhist cosmology is a spiritual legacy of the past, yet it remains a force capable of stirring the imagination of people today. Like old ceremonial garments no longer worn, it retains an attraction for us and can transport our minds to the spiritual world of ancient and medieval people, in the same way that the Greek myths, though they have lost their significance as a religion, continue to maintain their hold on our imagination.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins

“Can new inspiration spring from Buddhist cosmology's ashes? Let us look first at the idea of transmigration. Many modern people view it as outmoded, but I believe that it has many points relevant to the world today. The body of a dead worm returns to the earth, and its constituents change and become grass. This grass is eaten and becomes part of a cow, and eventually people eat the cow. Then they, too, return to the earth and become worms. If we pursued a single atom of nitrogen, we would probably find that it circulated among Gosāla's 1,406,600 kinds of living beings. People are born, and people die. They experience a variety of emotions such as anger, love, and hate, and die with their minds unsettled. They are followed, in turn, by others beginning their lives of anger, love, and hate. Human life is thus full of delusions, which actually have no absolute existence. Transmigration is the intuitive expression of this meaningless round of birth and death.”
― Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins