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.

Read More

Buddha Boy's Divine Powers (video)

UPDATED June 18, 2012 - Wisdom Quarterly (REPORTING); Etapasvi.com (video)

Buddha Eyes overlook Kathmandu Valley, Bodhnath Stupa, Nepal (Cococinema/flickr.com)

 

The following documentary was made when Buddha Boy (now Ven. Dharma Sangha) had been meditating for three years without food or water. Controversy swirled around him. And few seemed to notice the more extreme miracle: It is extremely difficult if not impossible to sit in meditation for very long. It can be done by superhuman force. But no amount of force can get a teenager to do it for hours on end, day after day, month after month. (Test yourself: Try to sit still for five whole minutes, then imagine that multiplied by 288, the number of five-minute increments in a day, then by...). How many five-minute increments had there been for Buddha Boy in the first ten months? Yet he sat motionless all day long while people stared and filmed and tried to keep up. It's impossible, a "miracle" in and of itself. It was so unbelievable that people said it had to be a mannequin they were staring at. But he moved slightly, he was sweating, he wasn't going to the restroom, which he would have to if he were secretly being fed and given water. Fasting is not the miracle. The real miracle is overcoming the mental chatter ("monkey mind") while sitting with himself and the physical discomfort of not taking breaks.

• NOTE: it is impossible and no knowledgeable person asserts that this is the historical Buddha reborn. Having attained final nirvana (parinirvana), there is no possibility of that. What the locals mean is that Buddha Boy is a bodhisattva, a buddha-to-be, reborn into this world to gain supreme enlightenment and become a teacher pointing the way to the final end of all suffering.
• Giant [final nirvana] Buddha found in Afghanistan

(Etapasvi) "Buddha Boy" is the popular misnomer of Ram Bahadur Bomjon, who was eventually ordained and became Ven. Tapaswi Palden Dorje. 

Buddha Boy, Ven. Dharma Sangha, Palden Dorje

His stated goal was to sit and realize the liberating truth. The many visitors, onlookers, and investigators were disrupting him. He soon realized that would take six years, just as it had the historical Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama, Shakyamuni, "the Sage [muni] of the Shakya Clan"). When he left the area, he found a new banyan tree to sit under. But he also began to teach, and his message was PEACE. That seemed unlikely in the turmoil of Nepal, which has gone from a corrupt monarchy through a Maoist-revolution to some semblance of a republic. He also stood up to protest the barbaric "Old Testament" Brahmin practice of slaughtering an unbelievable number of animals to appease the Hindu gods (Nepal's Mass Animal Sacrifice) during the Gadhi Mai Fest. But the news reaching us today is that Nepal and its former-"last Himalayan Buddhist Kingdom" neighbor Bhutan have become the most peaceful nations in South Asia. His immediate goal seemed to have become to bring peace to Nepal. Mission accomplished.
   

Bhutan, Nepal most peaceful in South Asia

India.NYDailyNews.com, June 14th 2012

Vajrayana Buddhist novices (samaneras) in Nepal and Bhutan (india.nydailynews com)

  

Bhutan and Nepal have been named the first and second most peaceful South Asian nations, respectively. The Asia Pacific region is the fourth most peaceful region in the world.

Bhutan and Nepal have taken the first and second spots as the most peaceful countries in South Asia, according to the latest Global Peace Index (GPI).

  

The study, conducted by the Australia and US-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), has ranked Nepal in the 80th place after Bhutan among the 158 nations it took into account.

  

While India figures much behind, in the 142nd position, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Pakistan have been ranked 103rd, 91st, and 149th among the countries respectively.

  

The GPI, released late on Tuesday, shows Bhutan tops in South Asia with the 19th position, while China has slid in the peace index to 89th from the 80th position last year.

  

According to the report, deaths related to internal conflict, displaced people, weapons export, heavy weapons, armed service personnel, death from external conflict, weapon imports, and jailed population have declined in Nepal. More

Read More