The Buddhist Cosmos

by Punnadhammo Mahathero

  Part Two—Cosmic Time

  2:1 NO BEGINNING

  The Buddha said that a first beginning of saṃsāra cannot be discerned.134 Strictly speaking, this is not a definite affirmation that the universe is beginningless. Indeed, whether the universe is eternal or not is one of the questions the Buddha categorically refused to answer. He discouraged such speculation on the grounds that it was useless for the project of awakening. Whether the world has a beginning or an end or both or neither has no effect on our situation in the here and now. The Buddha gave the simile of a man struck by a poisoned arrow who foolishly refused to have the arrow removed until all his questions about the arrow and the archer could be answered (MN 63).

  This however, has done little to dissuade subsequent generations of Buddhists from thinking about the origins of the world. It is certainly the case that an assumption of a universe without a beginning is more in accord with the general principles of Buddhist philosophy than one which began at a single point in time. It is a cardinal idea of Buddhism that all phenomena are dependently arisen, that is to say, nothing arises without a prior cause. A singular moment of creation would be a very significant departure from this universal principle.135 It is more logical to assume that for no matter how far back in time you go, there will always have been a prior moment.

  The assumption of beginninglessness also harmonizes well with the general Indian tendency to see time as cyclical rather than linear, and this is also a central theme of the Buddhist view of cosmological time. It is important to bear in mind that when the texts speak about origins and endings, they are referring to a scope limited to a single world, or to speak more precisely, to a finite number of world-systems. There were worlds before this one and there will be others after it.

  2:2 THE KAPPA

  The basic unit of cosmic time is a kappa. This word is somewhat variable in meaning136 but is usually taken to mean a mahākappa, or great kappa, which is the time elapsed during an entire cycle of a world, from first origin to final dissolution. This is a very long time indeed, but the Buddha deliberately refrained from attempting to number it in terms of years. “It is not easy to reckon a kappa in terms of years, of hundreds of years, of thousands of years or of hundreds of thousands of years” (SN 15:5). Instead, the Buddha gave two similes to express the vastness of the time elapsed for a mahākappa.

  Suppose there were a great stone mountain, a yojana across, a yojana broad and a yojana high, without holes or fissures, one solid mass. And suppose that every hundred years a man would stroke it just once with a very fine piece of cloth. That rock would be worn away completely before the end of the kappa (ibid.).

  Suppose there were an iron-walled citadel, a yojana across, a yojana broad and with walls a yojana high. Suppose this citadel were filled with mustard seeds, very tightly packed. And suppose that a man were to come along every hundred years and remove just one mustard seed. That great heap of seeds would be exhausted before the end of the kappa.137

  One reason that even the commentaries do not attempt to provide a number of years is that the concept of a year itself is problematic. A year is conventionally understood as the time elapsed for one full revolution of the sun around the ecliptic, but for part of the kappa, as we shall see, the “sun and moon are not evident.” Also, the passage of time itself is different in the saggas (deva realms) with the “celestial year” varying according to the level.138 These considerations would certainly make the length of a kappa “not easy to reckon in years.”

  In any case, the intention of the texts is to emphasize the extremely vast expanse of time involved in a kappa and the Buddha’s purpose here is a practical one, related to the great project of liberation. He wanted to bring home to the listener the ultimate futility of saṃsāric existence:

  For so long have you endured suffering, pain and misery. For so long have you filled up the cemeteries. It is enough to be weary of all compounded things, to become dispassionate, to liberate oneself from them (SN 15:5).

  2: 3 DIVISIONS OF A KAPPA

  A mahākappa is divided into four phases, all of which are “not easy to reckon as so many years”. These are therefore called the four asaṅkheyya kappa (“incalculable aeons”):139

  kappa saṃvaṭṭa tiṭṭhati—the era in which it stands folded up, the empty universe between cycles.

  kappa vivaṭṭati—the era, in which the universe unfolds, evolves or more literally “rolls out.” The period during which a new universe comes into being.

  kappa vivaṭṭa tiṭṭhati—the era, in which it stands unfolded. The evolving world as we know it, the period we are living in now.

  kappa saṃvaṭṭati—the era, in which the universe folds in, devolves or more literally “rolls back.” The great destruction at the end of a cycle.140

  These represent an interminable cycle of new creation (albeit without a creator) followed by destruction and then a fresh creation; the whole process driven by natural law, principally the kamma of the beings inhabiting the worlds. The details of this great cosmic history are complex and often difficult to interpret. In what follows we will be relying principally on the Pali sources but cannot avoid frequent reference to the Abhidharmakośa, which has a very similar narrative but one in which those details which remain obscure or contradictory in the Pali sources are worked into a more coherent system. For example, the relative durations of the four asaṅkheyya kappas are not specified in the Pali but the Abhidharmakośa informs us that they are of equal length (AK 3:6. p. 479). In should be noted that there are some potentially confusing differences in the terminology used by the Pali sources and the (Sanskrit) Abhidharmakośa. Unless otherwise noted, we will be using the Pali version of the terms, as found in the Visuddhimagga.

  These cycles of creation and destruction affect many thousands of cakkavāḷas at once, and include some of the brahmā realms as well. We shall postpone the complex question of defining their precise limits until we have described the general picture of the cycles, but it should be borne in mind that in what follows we are not talking about a single cakkavāḷa only. The era in which a universe “remains folded up” (vivaṭṭo tiṭṭhati) is a long period during which that section of the cosmos is completely void. “The upper space and the lower space together are just one great darkness” (Vism 13: 42). “There is only space where the world once was” (AK 3:6. p. 477).

  2:4 THE UNFOLDING KAPPA

  The first thing to arise in the new cycle, at the outset of the kappa vivaṭṭati, is a great cloud which begins to rain upon the empty spaces of the former world-systems. At first the rain is gentle but it gradually builds up into a tremendous downpour which first dissolves all the “burnt places” (daḍḍhaṭṭhāna) of the previous worlds141 and then gradually begins to fill up the empty space, until the water rises to the level of the brahmā world. It then begins to gradually subside and the various realms, empty as yet of living beings, appear one after the other from the top down. During this phase, the water is held in place by tremendous winds which blow all around the mass of water and underneath it, acting as a container (Vism 13: 42–43).

  The Abhidharmakośa does not mention the great cloud, the rains or the mass of water, but attributes the creation of the new universe solely to a great wind which it explicitly states is caused by the past kamma of beings from the old universe (AK 3:6. p.477). The appearance of the abodes, including the palaces of the various orders of brahmā and deva, precedes the arrival of sentient beings. This is in accord with the general nature of these realms, where a vimāna (heavenly mansion) may appear in the deva world before the appearance there of its owner, made by the force of the kamma performed by a person while he is still alive in the human realm, and it stands there empty awaiting his rebirth.142 The sentient beings of the old universe had all been reborn upwards into higher brahmā realms beyond the scope of destruction and they now begin to be reborn downwards into the new abodes, beginning again with the highest realms.143 Human beings originate from beings b
eing reborn from the Ābhassara or second jhāna level realm (Vism 13: 44 & DN 27).

  The process by which these Ābhassara beings devolve into human beings as we know them now is explained in detail in the Aggañña Sutta.144 These beings in their previous state in the brahmā realm were “mind-made, feeding on rapture, self-radiant, moving through the air and glorious.”145 These are standard epithets for beings in the brahmā worlds. “Feeding on rapture” (pīti) refers to the jhāna factor of joy which is a characteristic of second jhāna. Brahmā beings do not need to take any physical nourishment. As these beings lifespans came to an end and they passed away from the Ābhassara realm they were reborn into the vicinity of the earth. At first, and for “a very long time”, they retained the characteristics of a brahma, as listed above, as well as being “spontaneously born” (opapātikā), meaning that when “born” they just flashed into existence fully formed; there being no gender distinctions and no sexual reproduction among brahmā beings. Although they were at this stage virtually indistinguishable from the Ābhassara beings they had been, the commentary makes clear that they should be classed as part of the human realm (manussaloka). This makes understandable what happens next.

  At that time the earth was still submerged in the primordial water and was covered by great darkness, as the sun and moon were not yet manifest. The verb in the Pali is paññāyati which means “to be known, to be evident.” This implies that the sun and moon were existent but not visible.146 As the primordial water continued to subside, there formed on its surface a covering called rasapathavi (“tasty earth”). This is compared to the skin that forms on boiled milk as it cools down and is said to have been “endowed with colour, smell and taste.” Its colour is compared to butter or ghee, or to the golden flowers of the Kanikāra tree, the scent was like the subtle aromas found in the deva worlds and the taste as sweet as wild honey.147 Some of the beings, those of a greedy nature (lolajātika)148 wondered what this stuff could be and taking some of it up on the tip of their fingers, tasted it.

  This was the critical moment in the primordial descent of these brahmā-like beings into devolved humans. It also makes clear that even before partaking of the nutritious essence, they could no longer be fully classed as brahmā beings. Brahmās are beyond the realm of sense-desire and in fact do not possess the senses of smell or taste.149 Taking up some of the rasapathavi to taste is a complete departure from brahmā nature, and even their initial curiosity about it can be seen as an impulse more human than brahmic. The obvious symbolic interpretation of this passage is to see it as the entrapment of the elevated primordial mind into coarse materiality by the lure of sensuality. There is a striking parallel here to the account in Genesis where the fall of mankind is also through the agency of taste. Other readings are possible. Gombrich sees the entire Aggañña account as a satirical critique of brahmanical religion.150 Sugunasiri finds another striking parallel for the descent of the Ābhassara beings with modern scientific theory. In this reading, the rasapathavi is the primordial soup of amino acids energized by photons from space; one somewhat creative breakdown of the word Ābhassara yields “hither-come-shining-arrow”, which sounds like a poetic description of a high energy photon.151

  Returning to our account, after the initial plunge into the sense realm of taste and smell was made, more and more of the beings began breaking off great chunks of the rasapathavi and eating them, thus further entangling themselves in the world of coarse sensuality. The result was that their bodies became coarser and their self-luminance disappeared. They were now plunged into darkness. It was at this point that the sun and moon appeared.152 With the sun and moon, there began the reckoning of time by days, fortnights, months and years. This marks the end of the kappa vivaṭṭati and the beginning of the established world of the kappa vivaṭṭa tiṭṭhati. We might say that with the appearance of the heavenly bodies in their regular orbits, we have entered into ordinary historical time.

  2:5 DEVOLUTION OF HUMANS

  With the appearance of the sun and the moon the era of unfolding is finished and the universe stands completed as an abode of beings and as a theatre for the ongoing drama of saṃsāra. From here on the texts which deal with cosmological time focus on this human realm. The Aggañña Sutta (DN 27) is still the principal source for the next stages of human evolution, or more accurately, devolution.

  At the outset of this unfolded aeon, the beings on earth are no longer quite so brahmā-like. They have fallen to earth and lost their radiance. But they are still glorious and long-lived relative to modern humans, and they are not yet divided into genders. As time goes on, beings lapse into greater and greater immorality and become coarser and shorter lived. There is a parallel evolution in their food source. The golden, sweetly delicious rasapathavi devolves in stages to the rice of today which requires hard labour to sow, harvest, thresh and cook.

  The devolution process may be divided into seven stages and the process itself is represented by the types of nourishment available. At the beginning of a period of world expansion, beings descend from the Ābhassara Brahmā world, the earth is dark and unformed, and sun and moon “are not evident.” The beings live in the air, “self-radiant, feeding on bliss.”

  At this point, the second stage occurs, and a nutritious foam, rasapaṭhavī, forms on the surface of the sea. Craving arises in the Brahmā beings and they take it up on the tips of their fingers to taste. They thereby enter the kāmabhūmi (“plane of sense-desire”) and fall to earth.

  As a result of the fall to earth, in the third stage, the beings’ bodies coarsen; some become beautiful, some ugly. Arrogance and conceit arise in the beautiful and because of this, their source of food deteriorates, becoming bhūmi-pappaṭaka (a fungus?)

  The exact meaning of bhūmi-pappaṭaka is problematic. Maurice Walshe translates it as “mushroom” and Rhys-Davids as “an outgrowth.” Sugunasiri makes a suggestive comparison with the cognate Sinhala word papaḍam which refers to a thin and crunchy fried grain, sometimes called a “fritter” in English.153

  The text tells us they were “like mushrooms” (seyyathāpi nāma ahicchattako) and the commentary says they grew in ponds of mud, which implies that the primordial waters were continuing to dry up. A literal translation of the passage describing the coarsening of the beings is as follows:

  As these beings continued to feed on the rasapaṭhavī, a coarseness descended into their bodies (kharattañceva kāyasmiṃ okkami), a discolouration (vaṇṇavevaṇṇatā) was perceived. Some beings were of a better colour (vaṇṇavanto) some beings of a bad colour. Then those beings with good colouring came to despise those with bad colouring, thinking “We are of a better colour, they are of a worse colour”. Because of this pride of colour (vaṇṇātimāna) and this pride of birth (mānātimānajātikā) the rasapaṭhavī disappeared.

  The phrasing of this passage lends some support to Gombrich’s reading of the Aggañña as a critique of the brahmins’ views on caste. The repeated use of the multivalent word vaṇṇa in various compounds is significant. I have translated it here as “colour” but it can also mean “complexion,” “beauty” or even “caste.” These ideas are all related in the ancient Indian context, because the caste system originated as a kind of apartheid imposed by the lighter skinned Aryans on the darker natives. The phrase “pride of birth” used near the end reinforces the idea that this passage represents a critique on the emergence of caste prejudice. Otherwise there would be no need for the phrase; after all, it makes little sense in the context of spontaneously born beings that have no ancestry!154

  In the fourth stage, the process continues with further coarsening, greater differentiation of appearance and more consequent arrogance among the good-looking. The bhūmi-pappaṭaka disappears and the food becomes creepers (padālatā). The creepers are said to resemble bamboo shoots. The commentary says they were sweet and describes them as bhaddālatā. Bhadda can mean either “lucky” or “an arrow.” Perhaps these were something like arrow-roo
t plants.

  In the fifth stage, sexual differentiation arises with division into male and female. The building of houses begins to conceal acts of sexual intercourse between beings. Nourishment comes in the form of rice, quite different from the modern kind: it grows on unploughed land (akaṭṭhapāko), without husk or chaff. That which is taken for the morning meal is fully replenished by the evening. At that time cooking vessels also “arose” (uppajjati), which implies they were generated by the kamma of the beings rather than made in the ordinary fashion. Beings cooked their rice by placing it in one of these vessels and placing that on top of a special rock which spontaneously generated a flame.155 They had no need of curries or spices because the rice took on whatever flavour they wished for (Vism 13:50).

  The differentiation into genders is described as follows:

  So those beings enjoyed that unploughed rice, it stood as their food and their nourishment for a long time. So their bodies gradually became coarser. (Further) discolouration (vaṇṇavevaṇṇatā) was perceived. The females developed female organs and the males male organs. The women contemplated excessively on the men, and the men contemplated excessively on the women. Infatuation arose and lust arose in their bodies. Because of that lust, they practised sexual intercourse.