The next topic taken up will be the cosmological history of the universe: the origin, development and ending of the world-system. A basic idea to notice here is that in Buddhism there is no first moment of creation and no creator. We can trace from the texts the story of how this world-system originated, how it was populated and how it will come to its final destruction. But there were worlds before this one and there will be worlds after it as well. The cosmos as a whole has generally been seen by Buddhists as without a first beginning and without a final ending.2 No matter how far back you go in time, there will always be a yesterday and no matter how far you look into the future, there will always be a tomorrow. The scale of time involved even for the lifespan of a single world is immense when compared to the pre-modern European linear eschatological view and once more we find a greater resonance with modern ideas.
The third topic, which will take up the bulk of this book, is a survey of the various kinds of beings which inhabit the cosmos. Traditionally the very diverse array of beings is divided into five gati or “destinations of rebirth” (DN 33). From lowest to highest, these are:
The niraya beings which live in great misery, in a world of fire and cruelty,
The peta beings which exist as wretched shades,
The animals,
The humans, and
The devas, beings of splendid subtle forms who enjoy long lives of bliss (in this fivefold scheme this category is taken to include the brahmās as well).
We shall see that this simple scheme is inadequate for anything more than the roughest outline. In practice, there are great variations within each category and there are numerous individual beings and in fact whole classes of beings which are difficult or even impossible to pigeon hole within one of the five gati. This was already apparent in ancient times, and later schools of Buddhism expanded this scheme to include a sixth gati for the asuras, ferocious beings endlessly at war with the devas.
A more useful and inclusive method of analysis is provided by the Abhidhamma, which divides all reality into four planes (bhūmī): the sensual-desire plane (kāmābhūmi), the plane of form (rūpabhūmi), the plane of the formless (arupabhūmi) and the supramundane (lokuttara, lit. “beyond the world.”) The last is nibbāna, the unconditioned, and is not a part of the cosmos at all. The first three apply to levels of consciousness as well as realms of existence.
Kāmabhūmi is the realm of sense desire. The psyche of beings in this realm is dominated by the five physical senses and their motivation is normally to acquire pleasant sense experiences and avoid unpleasant ones. This is the most diverse and populous of the realms and includes beings in niraya, animals, petas, asuras, yakkhas, humans and all the various levels of devas below the brahmā world.
Rūpabhūmi is the realm of form. This is the abode of the various levels of brahmā beings. These beings have transcended sensuality; they have no gender and they take no coarse food, instead “feeding on bliss.” There are altogether sixteen levels within this realm including the Suddhāvāsa, the “Pure Abodes” where those who have reached the third stage of awakening are reborn.
Arūpabhūmi is the formless realm. This is the realm of beings that have no physical bodies but are pure mind. It cannot therefore be located in space, spatial location being a physical property. There are four levels within this realm.3
The range of beings can also be sub-divided into four bhūmi by sub-dividing the sense desire realm into the apāyabhūmi (“unfortunate ground”) and the kāmasugatibhūmi (“fortunate sensual ground.”) The former constitutes niraya, the animal realm, the petas and the asuras. The latter is the sphere of humans and devas.4
The entire range of beings is often presented in late sources as a list of 31 realms.5 See the table at the end of this section. There are also other ways, more or less inclusive, in that the various realms are categorized; the seven stations of consciousness (AN 7:44 & DN 33) and the nine abodes of beings (AN 9:24 and DN 33) for example. These simply divide the pie into different slices.
A quite different way of distinguishing beings is by their manner of birth. Buddhist theory recognizes four (DN 33) of those:
saṃsedajā yoni—Moisture born. Beings like maggots which are born in rotten food or other filth.
aṇḍajā yoni—Egg born. Beings that are born from eggs, like birds and snakes.
jalābujā yoni—Womb born. Beings that are born from the womb of their mother, as are mammals, including humans.
opapātikā yoni—Spontaneously born. These beings simply appear fully formed in their place of rebirth. This is the way devas, as well as beings in niraya, are born.
The terminology may be slightly confusing to some readers; in premodern western biology flies and other insects were thought to be “spontaneously born” but this mode is what the Buddhist literature would call “moisture born.”
0:6 HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The cosmology presented in this book represents a snapshot, albeit a somewhat blurry one because the subject refuses to sit still. The ancient Indian cosmology was always a work in progress. The picture of the universe presented here has deep roots in Vedic and even pre-Vedic times, and afterwards continued to flourish and become elaborated in later Theravāda works and even more so in Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna Buddhism. The focus in this book is on the system as it was presented in the Pali canon and commentaries. This represents, more or less, the way the universe was perceived by Buddhists living in the first millennium after the Buddha.
I have tried to stay strictly within that chronological limit. Looking backwards, I have occasionally taken notice of the pre-Buddhist roots of the myth, particularly in the section on Tāvatiṃsa. However, this has not been done in any systematic way and my knowledge of the Vedas and other pre-Buddhist texts is inadequate to treat this issue as it deserves. The working out of the historical development of the Buddhist cosmology and mythology is a vast topic that would reward further exploration; only the barest hints will be found here. Looking forward beyond the age of its initial formulation, the Buddhist cosmology continued to evolve. The focus of this book is, as stated, on the canonical and commentarial texts, but I found it impossible to entirely ignore later works such as the 14th century Thai Three Worlds According to King Ruang and the Burmese sources as collected in the modern The Great Chronicles of Buddhas. Likewise, the Pali sub-commentaries, which belong to a later period, have been used where they clarify or expand on a topic of interest. One non-Theravāda source proved indispensable, particularly in the sections on cosmic space and cosmic time; that is the Sarvāstivāda work the Abhidharmakośabhasya. The Mahāyāna developments have been completely ignored. These areas, too, merit further study.
Some readers may be especially interested in determining how much is from the canon, and what was added by the commentaries. This should become clear if one pays attention to the references. In summary, the greater part of the structure of the cosmology presented here is found in the canonical texts. This includes the basic map of the world-system; Mt Sineru and the four island-continents.6 The various realms of beings and their inhabitants are almost all found in the canon: the nerayika, the devas and brahmās, the nagās and supaṇṇas and yakkhas were all spoken of by the Buddha. What was added by the commentaries? A great mass of detail; most of the narratives which add colour and depth to the picture are from the commentaries, although a few quite detailed accounts can be found in the suttas themselves. The commentaries have also provided a greater orderliness to the mass of sometimes confusing and even contradictory details in the suttas, and sometimes this has been done by taking liberties with the plain meaning of the original text.
0:7 THE LANGUAGE
I have left many Pali words untranslated, which may be appreciated by some readers and deplored by others. My reasoning, to paraphrase something another translator once said, “It is better to not understand a word than to misunderstand it.” So, in this book, I have resisted the easy temptation of calling the lowest realm “hell” and con
sistently referred to it as niraya. Likewise, I have not referred to “gods” living in various “heavens” but to devas living in various saggas. This is important because using names borrowed from other doctrinal systems based on completely different principles inevitably carries a baggage of false connotations. My hope is that reading this work the reader can place herself in the imaginative space of ancient India unbiased by concepts picked up elsewhere. The burden on the reader has, I hope, been lessened by the footnotes and by inclusion of a glossary. The entries in the glossary are intended not as full definitions, which can be found in the text itself, but as very simple and minimal reminders.
I have also made the decision to anglicize the plurals of Pali terms used in the text, hence devas rather than the strictly correct devā. This is mostly for ease of comprehension but also avoids the complication of Pali being an inflected language which English is not.
The quoted passages are my own translations unless credited otherwise in the notes. Any translation is inherently an approximation and the chief problem facing the translator is deciding between literalness and clarity. I have mostly tried to take a middle path between the two. Most of the longer narrative passages are condensed, leaving out many details that are not germane to the point trying to be made. However, whenever a passage is expressing something important about the nature of a kind of being or a realm of existence, I have leaned on the side of literalness in the hope of giving the reader a close approximation of the original rather than imposing my own ideas. I have been fairly liberal in including the original Pali phrases in brackets whenever other interpretations than my own are possible, or where I supposed that a reader with some knowledge of Pali might be curious about the original wording. Feel free to ignore these if they are of no interest to you.
0:8 BUDDHIST TEACHINGS
This book is not intended as a general survey of Buddhist teachings. Some of the general concepts of Buddhism which have a bearing on the cosmology are briefly explained in the necessary places. For those readers without a background in Buddhism, what follows is a very cursory outline of some of the principal ideas.
The Four Noble Truths
The Buddha’s first discourse outlined the scheme of his teaching in the Four Noble Truths. These are the Truth of Suffering, the Truth of the Origin of Suffering, the Truth of the Cessation of Suffering and the Truth of the Path Leading to the Cessation of Suffering. The first Truth, that of suffering (dukkha) is, in an important sense, the theme of this book. It is the nature of this conditioned world and everything in it to be imperfect, unsatisfactory and incomplete. The second truth states that the origin of this suffering is found in craving (taṇhā). When craving is eradicated, the person can realize the unconditioned state which is the cessation of suffering. As a guide to accomplishing this, the aspirant must follow the Noble Eightfold Path laid out in the fourth truth; Right View, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration.
The Conditioned and the Unconditioned
This world is described as “conditioned” (saṅkhata). This means that no phenomena or entity within it is self-contained but is derivation of other phenomena and processes. All things, and all beings, arise and pass away according to causes and conditions. This is one aspect of dukkha (“suffering”). This is the nature of things in all realms of existence from the lowest to the highest. Nowhere is there any stability or permanence. Beings are born into this or that state of existence, live for shorter or longer lifespans, die and are reborn somewhere according to their kamma (lit. “actions”, Skt. karma). This process of continual wandering is saṃsāra. The goal of Buddhism is to stop this process, to end the futile wandering through conditioned existence and to realize the “unconditioned” (asaṅkhata), which is nibbāna (Skt. nirvāṇa). When this is fully realized the person is an arahant or accomplished one for whom the process of rebirth and manifestation ceases.
Kamma and Rebirth
Beings existing in saṃsāra perform actions with body, speech and mind. This is kamma (Skt. karma) and such actions always have a later effect (vipāka). If the actions are skilful (kusala) they lead to pleasant results, if they are unskilful (akusala) they lead to painful results. Note that this terminology is preferred to the use of “good” and “evil” because kamma is not a divine judgement, but a natural law. At the moment of death, when the body ceases to provide a substrate for consciousness, the next moment of consciousness will arise in a new body determined by the kamma made by that individual.7 This may be in any of the realms of being and may be either upward or downward depending on that person’s kamma. This process of repeated rebirth is both beginningless and endless unless that person achieves full awakening and makes an end of it. There is no ultimate purpose served within the process of rebirth itself, and seeing into the futility of saṃsāra is an important aspect of waking up.
Not-Self
One of the most characteristic teachings of Buddhism is the anattā (“not-self”) doctrine. It rejects the idea, so prominent in ancient India, of an abiding, unchanging, eternal self (attā, Skt. ātman) in beings which transmigrates from life to life. While Buddhism does teach that the process of conditioned existence continues in a new form after death, it denies any substantial entity which persists and moves on. Consciousness is not a thing but a process. The idea of anattā is related to the conditionality of all things; nothing can exist as a substantial entity because everything only exists as a reflection of other things. This teaching is quintessentially Buddhist and is found in all schools but is never found outside Buddhism.
Stages of Awakening
The Theravāda school has a scheme of the path to full awakening8 occurring in four distinct stages. The first glimpse of nibbāna means that a person has reached the stage of sotāpanna (“stream-enterer,”) which is essentially a purification of the view. A sotāpanna can never be reborn into the lower realms and will only be reborn seven more times at most, always in the human realm or higher. One who has attained the second stage is a sakadāgāmī (“once-returner”) who can be reborn only once more in the human realm although he or she may be reborn several times in higher realms before attaining final nibbāna. One who has reached the third stage, where sensuality is completely transcended, is anāgāmī (“non-returner”) and will never be reborn in the plane of sense desire again but can only be reborn in the suddhāvāsa (“Pure Abodes,”) a special realm within the rūpabhūmi. One who has purified the mind from all the defilements and fully attained nibbāna is an arahant and is freed forevermore from the round of death and rebirth.
The Jhānas
The jhānas (Skt. dhyāna) are meditative attainments where a person’s mind is elevated out of the plane of sense-desire (kāmāvacara) into the plane of form (rūpāvācara) or the formless (ārūpāvācara). These will be discussed more fully in the chapter on Brahmā beings because the mind of the human meditator is, when in jhāna, functionally equivalent to the level of consciousness innate in Brahmās. Jhāna is distinct from the stages of awakening discussed above in that they do not permanently eradicate the defilements and are not considered a final liberation, although they do assist in that process.
The Theravāda School
The Theravāda (lit. “School of the Elders”) is that branch of Buddhism which is predominant in Sri Lanka and South-East Asia. It is the oldest extant school and has the most valid claim to be a faithful representation of the original Buddhism. The Theravāda has been very conservative in doctrine and has not departed far from the Buddha’s original teachings. Doctrinally, the most prominent difference between Theravāda and the Mahāyāna schools is the Bodhisatta ideal. In Theravāda, the goal of the path is to become an arahant and make an end of further becoming. In the Mahāyāna this is considered a narrow goal and the practitioner is expected to make a bodhisattva vow to relinquish the attainment of final nibbāna and continue being reborn into saṃsāra for the benefit of all beings. In Theravād
a, a Bodhisatta is someone who is on the path to Buddhahood, attainment of which is a very rare development,9 and the aspiration to take this long and arduous path is only undertaken out of great compassion.
0:9 PALI PRONUNCIATION GUIDE
Pali originated as an oral language and does not have an alphabet of its own. In Thailand the scriptures are written in Siamese script, in Sri Lanka in Sinhalese script, and so on In the West, Pali is written in Roman script with the addition of diacritical marks.
For those unfamiliar with Pali names and terms, the pronunciation can be daunting at first. But it is really easier than it looks. Pali is completely consistent in its spellings and a given letter will always sound the same. The additional markings (diacriticals) are made necessary because the Indian alphabets have more letters than the Roman. The following is meant as an introduction.
Vowels:
a is always like the a in father, never like the a in cat.
The Buddhist Cosmos Page 2