Space: Buddhist world-systems (cakkavālas)

When you're flown off planet through the local scenery of our solar system, its real layout of 42 or more inhabited places may become clear to you, according to John Lear.

Shape of Mt. Meru with 31 planes in cosmos

Cakkavāla is the name given to a whole world-system, and according to Buddhist cosmology there are countless such systems.

Each world-system (roughly a galaxy or solar system in modern terms) is twelve hundred and three thousand, four hundred and fifty yojanas (an ancient measurement of five or seven miles or the distance one can plow a yoked oxen before having to unyoke it and rest it) in extent.

And it consists of an earth, two hundred and four thousand nahutas (10²⁸) of yojanas in volume, surrounded by a region of water four hundred and eight thousand nahutas of yojanas in volume.

• Surrounded by water: The Judeo-Christian Bible states that the firmament separates the waters, one ocean on earth and another in the heaven (singular). Above the bubble of a contoured but largely flat, immovable earth is an ocean.
• Mount Meru is Mt. Sumeru (Buddhism)

Korean world map centered on Mt. Sumeru in Central Asia (saudiaramcoworld.com)

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Agartha, our Hollow Inner Earth

This rests on air, the thickness of which is nine hundred and sixty thousand nahutas of yojanas. In the center of the world-system is Mount Sumeru [which is too big to be a physical mountain but could be magnetic lines of force in a gravitational energy field, according to Wisdom Quarterly], 168 yojanas in height, half (approximately 588 miles) of which is immersed in ocean.

• [A yojana being about 7 miles in length, half submerged would make it 588 miles in height above sea level. How deep, then, are the oceans of this plane? We might imagine that "ocean" refers only to what we see above the crust, but science now knows it goes much deeper, with "oceans" beneath the ocean or bodies of water below the body of seas we call the world's ocean. What if there's ocean even 588 miles down? This is NOT to say that any part of the "ocean" is 588 miles deep. It is only to say that if there can be water below the ocean, then can there be water even beneath that? Are there layers of water below as above? Where does the base of Mt. Sumeru start, and is that base the same as we see at the surface of the plane? Where were the Asuras cast down, to the surface of earth or 588 miles beneath that? Fortunately, brilliant researcher and co-author of The Ark of Millions of Years: Volume Two: 2012 and the Harvest of the Endtimes Dr. Brooks Agnew, understood our world to be hollow. The crust curves, as the ocean curves with it under the crust, at the polar entrance so that one sun disappears and another rises. That other sun is shining at the center of the Hollow Earth. See Hollow Earth Map above. How thick is our crust? Could it be 588 miles to the hollow center? Dr. Agnew does not imagine our world to be flat, but he suspects it is hollow and would have proved it except the government stymied his research expedition as he attempted to book passage on a boat capable of navigating to the pole to find the entrance.]

Around Mt. Sumeru (Meru, Sineru) are seven mountain ranges: Yugandhara, Isadhara, Karavīka, Sudassana, Nemindhara, Vinataka, and Assakanna [these may in fact be mountains ringing the plane that is the planet, which would be largely flat or an oblate spheroid, or they may be islands surrounded by rivers that encircle the polar openings to Agartha, the Inner Earth, or they may be high snow-covered ranges at the Arctic and Antarctic regions].

The mountains are inhabited by the Regent Devas (Catu-Mahārājas, the "Four Great Sky-Kings subordinate to Sakka, King of the Devas of that plane and the plane immediately above it, which is called the "World of the Thirty-Three" or Tāvatimsa] and their subjects, the ogres called yakkhas [highly intelligent Yeti/Sasquatch/Chewbacca-type creatures with psychic powers].

There really are space vehicles (vimana) that can travel through space, like the vril-drive.

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Within the world-system is the Himavā (Himalayan) mountain, one hundred leagues high, with eighty-four thousand peaks (here 84,000 should be read not as literal but rather as "a tremendous number").

Surrounding the whole world-system or cakkavāla is the cakkavālasilā.

Belonging to each world-system is a moon, forty-nine leagues in diameter, a sun of fifty leagues, the Tāvatimsa-bhavana [the World of the Thirty-Three ruling devas], the Asura-bhavana [the world of Titans], the Avīci-mahā-niraya [the "Waveless Deep" Great Downfall perdition], and the four mahā dīpas [Great Islands, Lights, or Continents]: Jambudīpa (India or Earth), Aparagoyāna, Pubbavideha, and Uttarakuru, each mahā dīpa surrounded by 500 [again not literal but to be read "a great number" of] minor dīpas [islands].

Between world-systems (cakkavalas) exist the Lokantarika-Niraya (SA.ii.442f.; DhsA.297f), a most pitiful kind of downfall/hell realm. World-systems are bubbles, and these places are the "interstitial hells" in Buddhist cosmography.

• [EDITORIAL NOTE: They are referred to, for example, in the dhamma-niyama assertion that when a supremely awakened Buddha arises, a limitless light radiates throughout the universe, multiverse, or omniverse (depending on what term one uses to define the everything). Between ball-shaped universes (world-systems), there are small spaces where beings are reborn in what one can say is the worst form of hell (worse in a sense than the torments of Avici or the "Waveless," because here rather than fire and brimstone torture, one is isolated in a dark and lonely place excommunicated from everyone else), and for the first time, these beings or hellions see that others also exist in such interstitial spaces.]

Within each world-system are Four Regent Devas (Cattāro Mahārājās) (AA.i.439).

A sun can illuminate only one world-system, whereas the rays of light from the Buddha's body [on rare, specified occasions] can illuminate all of the world-systems (AA.i.440).

• Could Mt. Sumeru be Tibet's Mt. Kailash? (Ven. Dhammika)
  

COMMENT: (Gustav

Tibet's Mount Kailash (Dhamma Musings)

) I think Mount Kailash is not the Mt. Meru (Mt. Sumeru) that lies in the center of the Indian Buddhist map, which has become well known in recent decades. The map in question must be very old, more than 5,000 years old. In it, Sun and Moon circle around Mt. Sumeru.

Therefore, I propose that Antarctica is Mt. Meru, which lies in the center of our world. The Sun goes above the equator and makes a perfect circle around Antarctica-Meru.

The "continents" around Mt. Meru would be: India, Africa, Australia, and South-America (corresponding to Jambudvipa, Videha, Godaniya, and Kuru). The map predates the invention of the magnetic compass, so the compass directions of the continents are not valid here. According to the compass, the four continents are north from Meru-Antarctica! The North Pole's ice sheet would be the surrounding [ice wall described as the] mountain range Cakravada.

[This makes more literal, physical sense and is in line with Flatlantis author Eric Dubay because he proves the earth is a flat. He further explains that the earth is a round magnet (as we all know), and its two poles are like those of a loudspeaker. One pole set directly in the CENTER, and the other around it, causing movement up and down.]

What do Buddhist and Vedic numbers mean?

Vedic time units

Ancient proto-Indians from the time of the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) 5,000-10,000 years ago, during the time of the Vedas ("Knowledge Books"), had a passion for high numbers, which is intimately related to Indian spiritual, religious, and scientific thought.

For example, in texts belonging to IVC Vedic literature, there are individual Sanskrit names for each of the powers of 10 up to a trillion and even 10⁶². Even today, the words lakh and crore -- referring to 100,000 and 10,000,000, respectively -- are in common use in English-speaking India.

One of these Vedic knowledge books, the Yajur Veda, even discusses the concept of numeric infinity (purna "fullness"), stating that if we subtract purna from purna, we are still left with purna.

 

The Mahayana Buddhist Lalitavistara Sutra recounts a contest including writing, arithmetic, wrestling, and archery, in which the Buddha is pitted against the great mathematician Arjuna and shows off his numerical skills by citing the names of the powers of 10 up to 1 tallakshana, which equals 10⁵³.

But then it goes on to explain that this is just one of a series of counting systems that can be expanded geometrically. The last number at which he arrived after going through nine successive counting systems was 10⁴²¹, that is, a 1 followed by 421 zeros. More

• G.P. Malalasekera (palikanon.com) edited by Dhr. Seven and Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly, June 7, 2016