Some aspects of Buddhist Cosmology to chew on.......
It may be interesting to you Lee to consider another view of the Cosmos.
The Buddhist scriptures (which are huge) clearly correspond remarkably well with modern astronomy.
Until very recently the Christian world believed the universe consisted of seven concentric spheres, one within another like Chinese ivory balls, with the Earth at the centre and the stars at the circumference, created by the fiat of the almighty about 4000 years BC, and about 10,000 miles across. Note I say ''the Christian world'', not the bible on which I am no expert. The corresponding Buddhist notions I find overwhelming.
To begin with the phenomenal universe is declared to be without perceptible limit in space or time. Perceptible is here the operative word. As one of the oldest doctrinal formulae makes clear, the fact that the universe is not finite, either in space or time, does not mean that it is infinite. It says these alternatives are self contradictory and that space and time are not objective realities external to consciousness but part of the conditions under which it perceives things. However far one may go, therefore, in any direction, it is still possible to go further, for wherever one goes the mind goes too.
This ancient perception of the universe is filled with millions of world systems, described as disc like, each containing 10,000 worlds and distributed at inconceivably vast distances.
As space is mapped out like this so time is measured in ''kalpas'', each of which is the life period of a world system. Scholars with a penchant for maths varied somewhat in their estimate of a kalpa, but are in the right region of thousands of millions of years. The Buddha, perhaps more wisely, was content with a really stunning simile. Suppose, he said, there was a cube of solid rock four leagues square (12 miles I believe), and at the end of each century a man were to come and stroke it once with a fine piece of Benares muslin......the rock would be worn away before the kalpa came to an end !
Of course Buddhism has it's contradictions too.....but the statement ''King Charles was beheaded two hours after sunrise'' is not invalidated by the fact that sunrise is an illusion, so a little poetic license must be interpreted in all religions eh? Science after all is limited to time and space whilst meditative religion has depth.......whoops, forget it !
Off topic?
regards to all, and keep up the good work Mike,
John Wickenden. |
