Inner-Space Worlds

Dhr. Seven and CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly, based on Ven. Nyanatiloka Mahathera (anupubba-nirodha) from A Buddhist Dictionary: A Manual of Pali Terms and Buddhist Doctrines 

The nine "successive extinctions" are the eight extinctions or sublime temporary-liberations reached through the eight meditative absorptions known as jhanas.

  
In addition, there is a more profound and exclusive meditative accomplishment known as nirodha-samapatti or the "extinction of feeling and perception." [It is exclusive in that only non-returners and arhats can attain it.] It is not actual extinction of suffering.

As it is said in A. IX, 31 and D. 33: 

1. "In one who has entered the first meditative absorption, sensual perceptions (kama-sañña) are extinguished. [That is, the meditator is blissfully but temporarily liberated from their oppression.]

2. Having entered the second absorption, thought-conception (vitakka) and discursive-thinking (vicára) are extinguished. 

3. Having entered the third absorption, the supersensual rapture (piti, joy, pleasant sensations) of the previous absorptions is temporarily extinguished. 

4. Having entered the fourth absorption, in-and-out breathing (assása-passása) are both temporarily extinguished. 

• "In-and-out breathing" are corporeal or physical functions or "formations" (kaya-sankhara), whereas thought-conception and discursive-thinking are called verbal functions or formations (vaci-sankhara). They are one of the six aspects of the motion-element. (Vayo-dhatu, translated as "wind-element," refers to the qualities of movement, support, strength, etc.)

On the edge of knowing (Glowing Star/flickr.com)

5. Having entered the plane of boundless space (akasha-nañca-ayatana), corporeality (rúpa) perceptions are extinguished.

[Numbered accordingly, entering upon this base is called the fifth absorption as are the three remaining immaterial absorptions.]

6. Having entered the plane of boundless consciousness, the perception of the plane of boundless space is extinguished. 

7. Having entered the plane of nothingness, the perception of the plane of boundless consciousness is extinguished.

8. Having entered the plane of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, the perception of the plane of nothingness is extinguished.

9. Having entered the extinction of perception and feeling, perception and feeling are temporarily extinguished."

Buddhist Cosmology
Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

Breathing in, breathing out, nivarana, nimitta, jhana, piti, upekkha, rupa, arupa, nirodha

 

31 Planes of Buddhist Cosmology (Inward Path)

The Buddhist description of outer space in the physical universe corresponds to inner states of consciousness.
 
Ordinary states (semi-conscious, beset by lust, annoyance, and delusion) limit us to the Sensual Sphere.
 
This is the lowest of a threefold division of our "world-system," which we can think of as our galaxy.

The worlds of sensuality (kama-loka) are bound in a sphere that includes sensuous "heavens," or superhuman worlds in space, as well as all the miserable worlds inferior to the human plane. And there are lots of them. For instance, although naraka (the Great Waste or purgatory-hell) is spoken of as one plane, it is classified as having at least 16 increasingly miserable levels -- the worst one of which is not even counted.
 
This desolate and abysmal hell is called "interstitial" because it is a kind of exile outside the multiverse into the spaces between bubble-like world-systems. (If there is only one universe, then we may think of world-systems as the countless galaxies in it). Like hyperspace, there is no light in those places, and beings reborn there feel utterly alone.

Hyperspace is no more static than this tesseract

  
The animal world, another plane, is so incredibly diverse as to easily constitute a million planes: Think of the life of an ant compared to that of a cow, or the existence of an apartment dog compared to that of a frigid penguin, or a lake amoeba compared to that of a kinkajou... or the countless species we have yet to discover and describe here and on other planets.

The 31 Planes of Existence are general types of worlds within a world-system. They can be reached from here. That may be because there are waves that make limitations in the speed of light irrelevant or may be due to the fact that whatever can be known exists interdependent with consciousness, that is, the knower.

And a knower can gain awareness and therefore verify the reality of these other worlds by success in meditation. What is "success"? First of all one lets go and thereby attains a natural state of relaxation and sharp awareness not distracted by personalizing or identification with impersonal phenomena.

Artist's rendition of cycling through 6 sensual planes

Of course, all of these worlds are ultimately in flux, unsatisfying, and impersonal. Therefore, one may speak of "escape" or "final liberation" from the transient, disappointing, egoless phenomenal world. Where, what, how!?

It is not possible to say "where" anymore than it would be possible to say where a flame goes when it is extinguished -- right, left, north, south? These terms do not apply.

What does apply is the unsatisfactory explanation that whatever there was before, in this case the fire, was utterly dependent on constituents -- fuel, oxygen, heat, and so on -- and when one or more of the constituents was exhausted, the phenomenon ceased.
 
How? How can we escape the illusion, escape to reality? Success in self-development or cultivation (bhavana), also known misleadingly as "meditation," provides a way.

For scaling these heights in meditation, namely moving through the eight absorptions, opens up the possibility of developing liberating-consciousness or insight. Such wisdom undoes the painful illusion, our existence beset by suffering, impermanence, and emptiness (egolessness).

And even prior to actual liberation, attainment of any of the temporary absorptions is weighty good karma coming to fruition in the future as rebirth in excellent Fine-Material Sphere (rupa loka) planes. So inner-space quite literally becomes outer-space.

And even aspects of Sense Sphere "heavens," where beings enjoy much greater and long-lasting pleasures than can be found on the human plane, are described as coming into being on the power of one's former deeds.

Play!
But out of fear and aversion (to the unfamiliar), out of ignorance, out of craving, we want to stay. We want to play! We don't want to lose the familiar.
 
Know with certainty that it is a game. But also know that most of the "game" is spent playing in ignorance with NO idea that it is a game, or that it is unreal, or that there is an escape. When the game sours, all most of us are left with is "escapism," which is the antithesis of actual escape.

Growing up in a horrific situation where one is being molested, oppressed, or bored to near death, one often resorts to escapism in the form of violence, acting out" (as in the game of Charades when one is unable to speak so one enacts as the only means of communicating what is going on), drug abuse, alcoholic obtunding, sexual compulsion or addiction, self-mutilation, or suicide. So know that it won't be funny then.

But it will nevertheless be unreal. Isn't wisdom preferable? Intensive sitting meditation may seem boring or hard, but it is a portal to remarkable worlds of supersensual bliss, equanimity, peace, and knowledge-and-vision worthy of the noble ones.

Why is the Buddha always happy, always smiling, always balanced?

The World is Always Ending
Ven. Nanajivako (Buddhist Publication Society, Wheel No. 186)

The idea of impermanence and of ceaseless change, due to the never-ending "chain" of causes and effects has, in its broad meaning, become one of our stereotyped and oversimplified truisms, reduced, both in its formal and substantial significance, to a mere rudiment of conventional word-meaning.

As such, it may still have impressed us on the level of nursery rhymes and even of some grammar-school classics in the history of literature. (If I had to choose a deeper [poetic equivalent], I would not hesitate to select the lines from T.S. Eliot's Quartets: More

Ash on an old man's sleeve

Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.

Dust in the air suspended

Marks the place where a story ended. 

Dust inbreathed was a house --

The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,

The death of hope and despair,

This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouth

Over the eyes and in the mouth,

Dead water and dead sand

Contending for the upper hand.

The parched eviscerate soil

Gapes at the vanity of toil,

Laughs without mirth.

This is the death of earth. 

Water and fire succeed

The town, the pasture and the weed.

Water and fire deride

The sacrifice that we denied.

Water and fire shall rot

The marred foundations we forgot,

Of sanctuary and choir.

This is the death of water and fire.

In the uncertain hour before the morning

Near the ending of interminable night

At the recurrent end of the unending... More

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Massive Black Hole found, Mercury has ice

Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly

According to the Buddha there are countless inhabited worlds and world-systems (galaxies)

 

What we have been told about space, the akasha deva loka, is largely false, misleading, and isolating. We are not alone. We get information from "Others." We are not bound to this planet but are currently traveling far in outer space. When that will be revealed officially is difficult to say. Disclosure is at hand.

 

Bhutan temple shaped like space (Peterwescarey)

Currently our government and the unelected "movers and shakers" of the military-industrial complex (MIC) that runs this and other world powers is deadly serious about maintaining secrecy far above top secret. Yet pieces of the puzzle leak or are planted in the news to facilitate or thwart disclosure and the fact that our view of nearly everything in science has been distorted. 

 

Meanwhile, most of what the world's spiritual traditions say is relegated to the realm of "myth." Mars and the Moon are inhabited or in any case were in the past, so let's move there. Planets travel independent of solar systems. And inhospitable Mercury, so near our Sun, has ice, it was revealed today.

• Super-giant Black Hole baffles scientists

Buddha planet crystals (Evoljo/flickr.com)

Mars, far from being a lifeless mass with too little atmosphere or gravity to support human life, once had a rich atmosphere, water, methane-producing microbes, civilizations, and even today has enormous trees and ravenous beasts. One would do well talking to Richard C. Hoagland, Stewart Swerdlow, and Dr. Steven Greer... rather than relying on the US military, the civilian government, or NASA and its propaganda arm aided and abetted by the money-obsessed mainstream media.

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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.

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Biocentrism.

I have recently come across an interesting science theory call Biocentrism as proposed by scientist Robert Lanza. I was fascinated with the many connections between it and much Buddhist philosophy. I will give you a quick run-down of what Biocentrism is about via wikipedia, which isn't the best source but it's the easiest for my purposes but I encourage you to read about it further. Biocentrism posits that life created the universe and not the other way around as traditional science has taught us. This blends nicely into the Buddhist concept that reality is what our limited and deluded mind makes of it. The seven principles of Biocentrism are as follows. Note the similarities between it and Buddhist thought:

1). What we perceive as reality is a process that involves our consciousness. An "external" reality, if it existed, would by definition have to exist in space. But this is meaningless, because space and time are not absolute realities but rather tools of the human and animal mind.

2). Our external and internal perceptions are inextricably intertwined. They are different sides of the same coin and cannot be divorced from one another.

3). The behavior of subatomic particles, indeed all particles and objects, is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of a conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state of probability waves.

4). Without consciousness, "matter" dwells in an undetermined state of probability. Any universe that could have preceded consciousness only existed in a probability state.

5). The structure of the universe is explainable only through biocentrism. The universe is fine-tuned for life, which makes perfect sense as life creates the universe, not the other way around. The "universe" is simply the complete spatio-temporal logic of the self.

6). Time does not have a real existence outside of animal-sense perception. It is the process by which we perceive changes in the universe.

7). Space, like time, is not an object or a thing. Space is another form of our animal understanding and does not have an independent reality. We carry space and time around with us like turtles with shells. Thus, there is no absolute self-existing matrix in which physical events occur independent of life.

James: Then there is this following excerpt from a different article about how scientist Robert Lanza rediscovered this idea that Buddhists have believed for eons. It is a nice image of what is being talked about with this theory and startlingly reminds me of Indra's Net metaphor:

The farther we peer into space, the more we realize that the nature of the universe cannot be understood fully by inspecting spiral galaxies or watching distant supernovas. It lies deeper. It involves our very selves. This insight snapped into focus one day while one of us (Lanza) was walking through the woods. Looking up, he saw a huge golden orb web spider tethered to the overhead boughs. There the creature sat on a single thread, reaching out across its web to detect the vibrations of a trapped insect struggling to escape. The spider surveyed its universe, but everything beyond that gossamer pinwheel was incomprehensible. The human observer seemed as far-off to the spider as telescopic objects seem to us. Yet there was something kindred: We humans, too, lie at the heart of a great web of space and time whose threads are connected according to laws that dwell in our minds.

James: As Nobel physicist John Wheeler once said, “No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.” I look forward to reading more about this theory as I am very fascinated with interactions between science and Buddhism. If everyone and everything is interdependent and interconnected then I see no reason why Buddhism and science have to be mutually exclusive. It seems to me that many of the theories posited by both are quite similar.

PHOTO CREDIT: University of Chicago Press

~Peace to all beings~

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Zen is Very Simple.

James: Zen Master Seung Sahn is one of the most fascinating personalities and wise teachers in Buddhism today. His style is so approachable from the videos, quotes and writings that I have seen/read.

He has a way of teaching serious subjects in fun, innovative and yet always challenging ways. The ability to teach from so many different angles is the sign of a great teacher to me because people learn in various ways and are at different points along the spectrum of practice.

From the 1985 Sumner Kyol Che Opening, Ceremony:

Linc just said, "Zen is very simple. Dishwashing time, just wash dishes; sitting time, just sit; driving time, just drive; talking time, just talk; walking time, just walk." That's all. Not special. But that is very difficult. That is absolutes thinking. When you're doing something, just do it. No opposites. No subject, no object. No inside, no outside. Outside and inside become one. That's called absolutes.

It's easy to talk about "When you're doing something, just do it," but action is very difficult. Sitting: thinking, thinking, thinking. Chanting: also thinking, thinking. Bowing time: not so much, but some thinking, thinking, checking, checking mind appear. Then you have a problem.

But don't hold. Thinking is OK. Checking is OK. Only holding is a problem. Don't hold. Feeling coming, going, OK. Don't hold. If your mind is not holding anything, it is clear like space. Clear like space means that sometimes clouds come, sometimes rain or lightning or airplane comes, or even a missile blows up, BOOM! World explodes, but the air is never broken. This space is never broken.

Yeah, other things are broken but this space is never changing. Even if a nuclear bomb explodes, it doesn't matter. Space is space. That mind is very important. If something in your mind explodes, then don't hold it. Then it will disappear. Sometimes anger mind appears but soon disappears. But if you hold it, you have a problem. Appear, disappear, that's OK. Don't hold. Then it becomes wisdom. My anger mind becomes wisdom. My desire mind becomes wisdom. Everything becomes wisdom. That's interesting, yeah? So don't hold. That's very important point.

-Zen Master Seung Sahn

~Peace to all beings~

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