Quotes from Akira Sadakata

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.

According to Buddhism, the human life span today has diminished to around a hundred years, and will continue to decrease. That we are living in a time of increasing evil is a common idea among ancient people.

Buddhists consider a personal encounter with a buddha a rare chance, and an occasion for deep gratitude. The rarity of this opportunity is emphasized by the Buddhist saying that it is as difficult for a living being to be born human and to encounter the Buddha as for a blind turtle that raises its head above the surface of the sea only once in a hundred years to put its head in a hole in a floating log. This metaphor encourages the devotee to pursue religious training.

In northwest India around the third century C.E., the belief grew that Maitreya would be the next buddha, following ??kyamuni. At present accumulating religious training as a bodhisattva, Maitreya is the focus of hope of those born too late to enjoy ??kyamuni's salvation. All the same, he is not due to appear until 5,670,000,000 years after ??kyamuni's death.

Because its philosophy and practice are so difficult, Buddhism began as an elite religion. But Mah?y?na Buddhism did not forget the masses, and offered them an easier road to salvation: praying to buddhas, bodhisattvas, and gods.

While in H?nay?na Buddhism the Buddha appears and disappears in the universe, in Mah?y?na thought the Buddha is the universe itself, eternal existence. This idea was probably influenced by the notion of Brahm?, Brahmanism's fundamental principle of the universe, and by Hinduism's concept of the gods Vi??u and ?iva.

Mah?y?na Buddhism arose in India around the first century C.E. It can be classified into three periods: early, or dynamic (1st century C.E. to 4th century C.E.), middle, or scholastic (4th–mid-7th century), and late, or esoteric (mid-7th–early 13th century).

Though we have translated deva as "god" and "deity," there is a vast difference between Indian gods and the modern Judeo-Christian idea of a deity. The Buddhist being that is closest to the Judeo-Christian notion of God is the Buddha. We cannot, though, in the narrowest sense of the word, call the Buddha a god.

We have seen how the Buddhist conception of the universe underwent numerous changes over time. If we view those shifts as changing responses to the problem of human suffering, we can see a steady progression in one direction: Buddhists gradually ceased to regard life as suffering.

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.

In modern times, the idea of existential suffering has further weakened. Human life is no longer regarded as a realm of suffering but instead as a setting for the actualization of human happiness.

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.

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.

Pessimism regards this world as imperfect, but it does not deny everything. In these terms, Indian Buddhism is certainly pessimistic, for it denies that the reality of this world is anything more than transmigratory existence. But it has one clear purpose, liberation, and it sets out along a defined road, religious training. Transmigration and liberation from transmigration: these are the two wheels of the chariot of Indian Buddhism, indispensable to its view of human life.

Buddhist cosmology according to the H?nay?na tradition centers on (1) the realm of Mount Sumeru, (2) dharmas (the Buddha's teachings), and (3) the notion that the Buddha (??kyamuni) is a historical person. In Mah?y?na Buddhism, (1) the various "buddha-realms" are more prominent than Mount Sumeru, (2) the Buddha (or buddhas) takes precedence over dharmas, and (3) the Buddha is a superhuman (cosmological) existence.

There are nine mountain ranges on the surface of the golden earth layer. Towering in the very centre is Mount Sumeru, with seven ranges forming concentric squares around it.

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).

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.

On the summit of Mount Sumeru is the heaven of the thirty-three gods ( trays-tri???? ), whose roles are also somewhat mysterious, except for Indra.

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.

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 J?takas , 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.

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.

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.

The idea of transmigration hardly appears in the Hindu ?g Veda (12th–8th century B.C.E.), though by the time the new religious movements arose in the sixth to fifth centuries B.C.E., most of the important ones included a philosophy of transmigration, outstanding examples being Buddhism, Jainism, and the religion of the ?j?vikas. We also find the idea in Brahmanism in the new literature called the Upani?ads .