Dear Buddha: Who created the universe?

Someone asked the Buddha, "Who created this universe?"

It's a question we (metaphysical thinkers, philosophers, and intellectuals) love. We would probably all want to know. That someone may have been the foolish monk Ven. Malunkyaputta. Here's how the Buddha answered to subdue his delusion, ignorant confusion, and pernicious wrong views.

Metaphysical questions

Malunkyaputta, do not trouble yourself with such Qs

Once when presented with a problem of metaphysics (questions that go "beyond physics") by the Buddhist monk Malunkyaputta, the Buddha calmly responded with the Parable of the Poisoned Arrow.

On that occasion, Ven. Malunkyaputta had been meditating when he got distracted and started pondering. The hindrance of skeptical doubts arose in his mind, realizing that he had never gotten the answer to all of the usual "spiritual" questions seekers were usually in search of. All of those unanswered (some might even say unanswerable, the imponderable questions that plague Homo sapiens or "thinking human").

• Is the physical world finite or infinite?
• Did the universe have an origin, and will it end?
• Who created this Universe?
• Is the soul the same as the body or different?
• What becomes of a fully enlightened person after death?
• And so on ad nauseum. There is really no end to possible metaphysical speculations.
• There is even a Buddhist text that summarizes all of the view prevalent at the time of the Buddha, which is called the Brahmajāla Sutta or "The Net of All-Embracing Views."
• "Views" (ditthi) generally refers to wrong views (miccha-ditthi) unless otherwise qualified with samma- ("right-") views. They are as dangerous as a thicket one will get caught up in; it is far better to set them aside, awaken, and with an enlightened mind try to recall what they were when they used to make sense because they will not make sense -- and will not arise -- to the awakened (enlightened) mind/heart.
• Ven. Malunkyaputta did not stop there. He threatened the Buddha that he would quit the monastic life and disrobe if he did not get answers to these things.
• The Buddha gave him a powerful parable, asked him if the Buddha had ever promised to answer such questions in exchange for him becoming a monastic disciple, and thereby encouraged him to pursue the Path to the end of all suffering at which time he could see for himself independent of any teacher or teaching. This was that parable:

When one is shot with an arrow smeared with poison, that wounded person's family may summon a doctor to have the poison removed and provide an antidote [9].

But what if the wounded person refuses to let a doctor do anything until such time as certain important questions are answered? What if the wounded person demands first to know:

• Who shot me with this arrow?
• What is that person's caste and job?
• WHY did that person shoot this arrow?
• What kind of feather was used in its tail?
• What kind of wood was used in its shaft?
• What kind of poison was smeared on its tip?
• What was the method the poison was procured?

One who demands first to have answers to all of that would surely die long before such questions were answered.

So, too, Malunkyaputta, a meditator will die long before getting such [fruitless metaphysical] questions answered.

It is no different for one who follows the Middle Way, which teaches only those things necessary to realize enlightenment (direct knowing-and-seeing for oneself).

Things not helpful and not necessary (but harmful and misleading), the Buddha (the Tathagata or Wayfarer, the Supremely Awakened One) does not teach.

It is because those types of questions are not helpful in one's quest for enlightenment that they have been left undeclared. More (Nontheistic religion)

More, more? Enough has been said, but for those persistent thinkers who question

I have more questions, Sir. - Ask them.

NOTE: It is not because they can't be answered. They can (but any answer will be misleading, confusing, entering a thicket of views). It is not because a Supremely Awakened Buddha does not know; such an extraordinary being does know. But it is precisely because those questions are not useful (but a detriment) that the great Teacher -- concerned with the welfare and wellbeing of students -- sets aside such things and leaves them undeclared.

A disciple, a student, also sets them aside and pursues this path-of-practice to its culmination: awakening in this very life. Then one may ask all such questions.

One will not ask them because they will not arise because they will not make sense once one understands and penetrates DEPENDENT ORIGINATION (paticca-samuppada).

One may even answer them for others on their quest who ask such loaded questions, but to do so will be a disservice to them which the Awakened One has avoided, set aside, and left undeclared.

• It would be like asking the question, "Have you stopped beating your wife? Yes or no!" What is the right answer? There isn't one. There's an explanation but not an answer.
• A more ancient example that still makes sense is the question, "When this fire goes out, which way does it go: up, down, sideways?" It doesn't "go" somewhere, for it ceases when its causes-and-conditions cease because, really, it never had an independent existence (an existence independent of those very causes and condition: fuel, wick, heat, oxygen, and process-of-combustion...
• In exactly the same way, when we ask about the "soul" (the "self," atta, atman, ego, personality, being, consciousness), "Where does it go after death? To annihilation? To eternal life? Which is it?!" The question is wrong, so any answer will be misleading and mistaken. But there is an answer:
• The Buddha formulated that answer in accordance with ultimate truth: Dependent Origination. "When this is, that comes to be; when this is not [present], that does not come to be." Or it may also be phrased more poetically as, "Not having been, they come to be; once having been, they cease." What? Those things. Which things? All composite things (nirvana being the only compact, a.k.a. non-composite, thing and so not a "thing," no-thing yet not "nothing") but most importantly the Five Aggregates clung to as self.
• That is why the Heart Sutra says, "Form (the first aggregate or heap) is emptiness, and emptiness is form." A better modern translation would be to say, "Form is impersonal [not self], and the impersonal is form." Then the exact same thing is then said of the remaining four aggregates: feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness(es), the khandha or skandhas in Sanskrit.
• The Buddha also went into greater detail when he answered, "What things?" with "the ALL that is burning."

How could this possibly be true? There are many who have followed the Middle Way, who have avoided four foolish (and detrimental) questions and pursued four wise (and beneficial) questions. What are they?

1. Was I in the past?
2. What was I in the past?
3. Will I be in the future?
4. What will I be in the future?

The fool ponders such thing fruitlessly, full of wrong view, caught in a thicket of views. However, the wise pursue four other questions which the Buddha has suggested, commended, and advocated:

1. What is dukkha (disappointment, suffering, pain)?
2. What is its cause?
3. What is its solution?
4. What is the way to its solution?

These, indeed, are of great benefit. They are known as the Catu-Ariya-Sacca, the Four Ennobling (Enlightening) Truths, the fourth being this very Ennobling Eightfold Path declared by the Buddha.

• Video; explained by Dhr. Seven and Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation) (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit

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)

.

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.

.

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

Science: Before Big Bang, the universe existed

Family Guy; BeeyondIdeas, 11/2/23; Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Hubble did it first even if it didn't do it better. Now Webb is wowing public. Crab Nebula above

"This universe existed before the Big Bang" ft. Roger Penrose

(BeeyondIdeas) Let's unravel the mysteries surrounding (our) Big Bang. Was it truly the beginning of everything?

31 Planes/Zones of Existence

[No, obviously not. In Buddhist cosmology, the universe (multiverse) is aeons (kalpas) old, ordinary aeons and great aeons, of incalculable lengths as the universe arises, expands, disintegrates, goes into a state of chaos, and arises again, cyclically, repeatedly, endlessly.

It is unclear what constitutes a universe, the everything, because there are world systems (cakkavalas), and each world system is similar to the countless others, like bubbles in space. If each constitutes a universe, a self-contained system of planets and stars and a diverse population of creatures, then we live in a multiverse with such universes extending out in 10,000 directions.

There are 31 Planes of Existence, divided into three spheres, our Sensual Sphere, the more subtle Fine Material Sphere above us, and the Immaterial Sphere, which is formless, above that. These 31 Planes are general categories with countless individual worlds and inhabitants. Space is big, very big, and multidimensional, so it's even bigger than we can imagine.

Could order ever emerge from chaos, Bill Nye?

Keplers supernova remnant is a (wiki)

So from a Buddhist cosmological point of view, if a "Big Bang" is the initial point of an expanding universe, this is just a phase after a lengthy period of contraction. After expanding, it dissipates into chaos for a lengthy period. But after a time, it again establishes order and regularity, and this is a new beginning, a Golden Age or Satya Yuga, an Age of Truth. We are currently in a Kali Yuga, but it is hard to say because within these massive cycles there are subcycles, mini periods of revolution, of dark and bright, cycles within cycles.

And it just goes on this way without end and, therefore, without a discernible beginning, which is not to say there was not one, only that it cannot now be found. And we cannot reason our way there. It is one of the Four Imponderables.

One would sooner become deranged, a "mad scientist," before settling on a satisfactory answer. And, in any case, it would not actually be satisfactory, like The God Idea as the cause of all things, with Maha Brahma (the "Great Supremo") as the cause of all things, which the Buddha declared a wrong view.

• Gods and the Universe in Buddhist Perspective (Francis Story, BPS.lk)
• TB Joshua: Christian megachurch leader raped and tortured Christian worshippers, BBC finds

God creates the universe with his friend Chugs.

A creator god is as good as any explanation only because it stops all further searching. It is said that science is ridiculous in positing a Big Bang as a first cause because in doing so it is saying, "Everything is rational, mechanical, explicable, and understandable IF you just give us this one bit of irrational, supernatural, inexplicable, and nonsense Big Bang magic as the cause and origin of everything.]

• Buddhism and the God-Idea (Wheel 47, BPS.lk)

🔍 Want to support production? Feel free to join our membership at BeeyondIdeas... Special thanks to beloved YouTube members this month: Poca Mine, Powlin Manuel, Gregory Stone, Lord, Saïd Kadi, and Brad Clemmer. 🚀 Experts featured in this video include Roger Penrose and Paul Steinhardt. #BigBang #Infinity #CyclicUniverse

Sumerian Adam and Eve, Buddhist cosmology

Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit

Could I play the part of Eve in Asia?

This is a continuation of a discussion of the Tree & Serpent exhibition coming soon to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The "serpent" (royal naga) in the Buddhist story is not related to the tree under which the wandering ascetic Siddhartha awoke. But the famous tree of knowledge and talking serpent in the Bible has brought The Met to this tantalizing topic. This got us to thinking about "creation" (the origins of human life on earth, which are told in the Agganna Sutra) and Buddhist cosmology or the shape of things on this plane and in local space.

We were white? - No, Sumerian.

There's an ancient "creation narrative" (human origin story) stolen by the ancient Hebrews, Semites, Jews: Gilgamesh is the older story, but in the first book of the Jewish Bible called Genesis, Adam and Eve are that bible's first man and first woman [9, 10].

Adam's name appears first in Genesis 1 with a collective sense, as "humankind." Subsequently in Genesis 2–3 it carries the definite article ha, equivalent to English "the," indicating that this is "the man" [9] or "the human."

• [It is this iteration, this generation, this version of a genetically modified earthling human, this time around in the greater cyclical reiteration of life in this small slice of the cosmos, our universe, this part of the multiverse, because there are many world-systems or cakkhavalas, round/spiraling worlds (galaxies?) The human plane is far bigger than this plane or planet, solar system, or galaxy.]

God in the brain (rationality?) is kicking us out

In these chapters God fashions "the human" (ha adam) from earth (adamah) [or dust or ground], breathes life [prana, holy spirit, invisible animating force] into its nostrils, and makes it a caretaker over creation [9].

God [who is ALWAYS plural in the Bible] next creates for the human an ezer kenegdo, a "helper corresponding to him," from his side or rib [10].

The word "rib" is a pun in Sumerian -- because this is a Sumerian tale appropriated by later Jewish  peoples, as if these things happened to them -- as the word ti means both "rib" and "life" [11, 12].

• [By calling her Eve (yin or moon or night), does it not imply that Adam is the masculine (yang or sun or day) as in the ancient yogic word hatha,* which literally means "sun-moon," and is the same linguistic particle ha.
• *The meaning of Hatha Yoga (and no, it's not “sun & moon”)

She is called ishsha, "woman," because, the text says, she is formed from ish, "man" [10]. The man receives her with joy, and the reader is told that from this moment a man will leave his parents to "cling" to a woman, the two becoming one [sticky] flesh [10]. More

Our world-system (cakkhavala)

Old flat map, original in Louvre, Paris

This is the world or plane of humans and human-like beings. They live on the surface of the earth [as distinct from the planes within the earth where other, long-lived humanoid beings live]. Rebirth in this plane results from giving (sharing, letting go, being generous) and moral discipline (observing the Five Precepts) of middling quality.

This is the realm of moral choice where future destiny can be guided. The Khana Sutta mentions that this plane is a unique balance of pleasure and pain. It facilitates the development of virtue (e.g., compassion) and wisdom to liberate oneself from the entire cycle or rebirths.

For this reason, rebirth as a human being is considered precious and extremely rare according to the Chiggala Sutta.

The mountain-rings [or ice walls] that engird the axis mundi Mt. Sumeru [Sumer? su-meru = "Good Meru"] are surrounded by a vast ocean [likely a reference to space within this solar system, with this "continent" (dipa, lit. "island") referring to earth, our ring girded by mountains, or planet].

The ocean is in turn surrounded by a circular mountain wall called Cakravāḍa चक्रवाड (Pāli Cakkavāḷa चक्कवाळ, Thai จักรวาล or จกฺกวาฬ), which marks the horizontal limit of the world.

In this "ocean" there are four continents (dipas, islands, other planets, platforms, or places in local space) which are, relatively speaking, small islands in it.

Because of the immensity of the ocean, they cannot be reached from each other by ordinary vessels.

But in the past, when the "world monarchs" (cakravartins) ruled, communication between our world and the other local worlds was possible by means of a treasure called the cakraratna (Pāli cakkaratana, a sort of "flying saucer").

A world monarch and retinue could use such a craft [vimana] to fly through the air between the worlds or rings of this flat plain divided by immense mountain ranges. These four islands are:

1. Jambudvīpa (Pali Jambudīpa) is located in the south and is the dwelling of ordinary human beings like us. It is said to be shaped "like a cart" or rather a blunt-nosed triangle with the point facing south. (This description may echo the shape of the coastline of Southern India). It is 10,000 yojanas [1 yojana = 7 miles] in extent (Vibhajyavāda tradition) or has a perimeter of 6,000 yojanas (Sarvāstivāda tradition) to which can be added the southern coast of a length of only 3.5 yojanas. The landmass takes its name from a giant roseapple or jambu tree (Syzygium cumini), 100 yojanas [~700 miles] tall, which grows in the middle. Every continent has one of these giant trees. All buddhas are said to appear on this island or lamp [light, beacon, object shining in space] of Jambu-dvīpa. The people here are five to six feet tall, and their length of life varies between 10 and about [80,000] years (Asankya Aayu). More

How we learned to map the planet (video)

What is our world? Buddhist cosmology (1)

Ajahn Punnadhammo (Birken Forest, 4/19/18); Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly

Buddhist Cosmology (1): Space, Time, and Being

The Buddhist Cosmos (Ajahn)

This is Part 1 in a continuing series on ancient Buddhist cosmology, the shape and inhabitants of our environment on the surface of the earth -- our planet or island Jambudvipa (the "Rose apple Land") and around it. It is a dialogue between two long-time Western monks from the Theravada Thai forest tradition, Ajahn Punnadhammo and interviewer Ajahn Sona. Ven Sona is from Birken Forest Monastery in British Columbia, Canada, which is affiliated with Pacific Monastery in Washington, USA. For a free download on Buddhist cosmology, go to arrowriver.ca/book/cosmoBook.php.

• Ajahn Sona podcast: anchor.fm/ajahn-sona
• This episode: anchor.fm/ajahn-sona/episodes...

Eclipse: Rahu and Ketu sighted? (video)

7th Day Truth Seeker; aplanetruth.info; Seth Auberon, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly

(May 26, 2017) August Eclipse Balloon Launch: Rahu and Ketu in Sight? GLOBEBUSTERS source file

(aplanetruth.info) The Rahu eclipse! Proof positive with a P900 camera
 

(8/23/17) Rahu is the third celestial body besides the sun and the moon. Here is proof positive (video), thesevenminds. The Black [Hole Sun] Rahu Solar Eclipse video.

Moon and Sun are in our atmosphere (video)

A Plane Truth, March 18, 2018; Pat Macpherson, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

(Aplanetruth.info) We've been lied to about so many things. Some say about everything. Is it too much to ask that we rely on our senses and our own scientific (logical, testable, replicable) experiments? This short clip, with video evidence, purports to prove that our moon and sun are only miles up in the sky, in line with ancient Buddhist view (concentric worlds around a central "mountain" each with their own sun and moon, of the same size, chasing each other around a plate not distant objects spinning around a ball) in line with the older Vedic view. Credit to RFB Enslaved by no media FE Photographer.

Where is the center of the world? Mt. Sumeru

Cho (Chotography on Facebook); Seven Dharmachari, Wisdom Quarterly

Buddhist cosmology: Mt. Sumerus run through the center of "world-systems" or galaxies like our own and are surrounded by "continents" or planetary clusters (Wisdom Quarterly).

 

QUESTION: Where is Mount Sumeru? (Great Meru)

ANSWER: Sumeru is the name of the galactic center in Buddhist cosmology. So it is in the center of the Milky Way as seen from outside of it, a sight attainable through meditative development.
  

Cosmology in a sand mandala (Wonderlane) 

As the insert suggests, it is analogous to the main tower (1).  
  
Mandalas such as those used as the foundation for Buddhist temples, such as Angkor Wat in Cambodia or Boudanath in Nepal, are laid out in a pattern reflecting the Buddhist conception of our world in the multiverse.
  

Boudanath Mandala/Pagoda, Nepal (Gulmuhor)

Known categories and worlds (general spheres and particular planes) are depicted as concentric circles and levels, with pagodas (elaborate reliquaries or stupas) emulating the central pole, the world tree or world axis (Axis Mundi), which is Sumeru. 
  
Mt. Sumeru could never refer to a mountain on this planet, which may have its own mini Meru in the invisible lines of magnetic force emanating from the poles of this living Bhumi (Gaia). 
  
Of course, all of this is speculative and remains unsettled.

 
The first problem is determining the meaning of a popular ancient Indian measure of distance, the yojana. The most sensible meaning is the distance a draught ox can travel before needing to be un-yoked. This is or was roughly seven miles in agrarian Greater India (Bharat). Even then it was a colloquial generalization, never an exact measure.
   

Space with innumerable inhabited worlds in all 10,000 directions (wallpapervortex.com)

 

But it is what the Buddha and others used as a well understood convention. Exact measures are given of the height of Sumeru and the distance to other mountain ranges extending out with "oceans," certainly bodies of space rather than briny terrestrial waters, between them. 
 
Likewise the "continents," as also shown in the insert (2-5), are habitable worlds (lokas, worlds) on this "human" plane, with its ill-born, ghosts, titans, animals of all kinds, humans, devas, and brahmas.

• ANOTHER VIEW: Mt. Sumeru as North Pole
  Thank you to Cho, who recently responded to Wisdom Quarterly's 2008 speculative article on Sumeru as the North Pole, with further information and a graphic illustrating the likelihood that Mt. Sumerus in fact refer to galactic cores.

Buddhism: Life on Other Planets (II)

Wisdom Quarterly (UPDATED from original Sept. 9, 2011 posting); Mr. Terran (Neothailand)

Diagram in Thai script showing extrasolar planets and our sun (alien-ufos.com).

In the Tipitaka, "The Buddha's Teachings in Three Divisions" (Vol. 11, p. 61 and Vol. 23, sutanta pidok 25 of the Thai edition), the Buddha talks about life on other planets.
  
He refers to life on three planets in particular: (1) Amornrakoyan, (2) Buppaviteha, and (3) Auttrarakuru.

1. The first has a continent (dipa, literally "island" or light/lamp) and an ocean (apparently a "sea" of space). The dominant life form there is human-like. But the beings there have faces that look like the moon. They are [on average] 10 feet (300 cm) tall, and their lifespan is 500 years. [But 500 may simply mean "many."]

2. The second has a continent [major planet] and about 400 smaller continents or isles [or habitable satellites or asteroids]. The beings there are human-like, but their faces look like cups. They are 15 feet (450 cm) tall and their lifespan is 700 years.

3. The third are flatlands with human-like life forms with faces that look more cubical. They are 21 feet (650 cm) tall, and their lifespan is 1,000 years.

• PHOTO: Thai Earth Goddess (Phra Mae Thorani) surrounded by "demon" (ogre) guardians or yakkhas, characters from the Ramakian รามเกียรติ์

Commentary

Wisdom Quarterly

This information comes from Mr. Terran. He is a Buddhist studying the Tipitaka, the generic name for the Buddha's Teachings divided into: conventional discourses (sutras), disciplinary codes (vinaya), and "higher teachings" (Abhidharma).
   
Modern readers may not be able to believe this ancient cosmography and cosmology. Who can say what is real without meditating and developing the faculties to see for oneself?

  

Science as Modern Religion

Empirical science is falsely comforting; it is still based on faith. We don't see or understand the studies. Instead, white lab coat clad "priests" and "priestesses" do their inscrutable rituals and mind boggling calculations (little better than casting horoscopes) then pretend that they are certain about what is real and what is not. 

  

They argue based on authority, referring again and again to a semi-human divinity known as "Einstein." Or the new Quantum sect speaks in awe of ineffable "quanta," coming closer to fulfilling their ideal of quantifying everything. They sometimes fight with the Strings. Others laugh and endlessly debate a false dichotomy between waves and particles as if the two concepts and categories were diametrically opposed and irreconcilable.

• Science: How mosquitoes avoid drowning in the rain

Who can say whether or not the Buddha really said this much about three distant planets or that much about extraterrestrial life forms? It may simply have been attributed to him. What is certain is that he constantly spoke of otherworldly beings -- unseen beings from space and Earth, subterranean and associated with the seas, waterways, trees, and other abodes.

   

They are called devas (light beings) of various kinds, space faring (akasha) as well as earthbound (bhumi). There are titanic, dwarfed, mammalian, avian, reptilian, ghostly, superior, and angelic beings all forming what many now simply regard as an inherited Indian pantheon of mythological creatures: asuras, kumbandhas, yakkhas, garudas, nagas, petas, brahmas, and gandhabbas.

  

One can ask Buddhist monastics, scholars, and practitioners about what is recorded in the ancient texts. The oldest existing Buddhist tradition is based largely in Southeast Asia. It is the Theravada ("Teaching of the Elders," the "elders" being the enlightened disciples of the Buddha's time) school.

  

The dominant school in China, Japan, Korea, Central Asia, and Tibet is called Mahayana ("Great Vehicle") -- which, not coincidentally, is very Christian and somewhat messianic. It is the Buddhism that melded with Vedic Brahmanism. These later developments make it a lot like post-Brahminical Hinduism prevalent in India today. But the "gods" (devas and brahmas) are now bodhisattvas and buddhas.

Response
Alien-ufos.com

Oceanrider likes this [Mr. Terran's original post] and would like to know more. What I know about Buddhism is Buddhists like to use metaphors to explain things. When I went to a Buddhist temple, the teacher was very confidently explaining spirituality using the metaphor of computer equipment accessing a network. Briefly, the Tipitaka contains three divisions: ethics (vinaya), conventional teachings (sutras or "discourses"), and higher teachings (knowledge books).

• Moon: a reflection of self (ethics).
• Cup: the self as a vessel of knowledge (discourses).
• Cube: a physical record or knowledge (knowledge books).

That is how my crazy head works anyway. If it is not straight out fact, although I think it might well be, it may also be explaining metaphysical realms not unlike the Bardos. Thanks for the post, Mr. Terran. I will be checking that one out and reading about it.