by Harvey Kraft
“If you please, World-Honored One, my mortal body can never be immortal. But if my Eternal Soul is purified again, it will return to its immortal state. Even if the gods are mortal, with all due respect,” the Jaina seer asked, “is not my soul immortal?” he asked.
The Jainas believed that the soul (Skt. Jiva) was eternal, indestructible, and an independent entity that separated from the body upon death. Because every living being was a host to an Eternal Soul, they regarded the life of all creatures as sacred. Causing harm to any creature would stain the perpetrator’s soul.
Jainism’s Cosmic Mountain cosmogony echoed the twin peaks of the ancients, but with one major difference. The upper peak of Heaven beyond the hemisphere appeared upside down, so the two peaks intersected in the middle to form an hourglass shape. Hovering above this structure was a transcendent space, the home of Eternal Souls. This design evoked the head and body of a standing cosmic figure, a per-sonification of the Cosmos itself as a living, supreme, and transcendent being. His waistline area, the bowels of the cosmic being, coincided with the Earthly plane; his upper body was the higher peak of Heaven and his lower half was the home of the netherworlds.
The Buddha replied, “Some believe that they can attain after death what they imagine to be unattainable in life. But what they fail to realize is that by cultivating pure compassion in their present body they can attain in life a cosmic state they could never have imagined.”
As the debate continued Sakamuni offered five new doctrines through which he reconfigured the Six Worlds (Samsara), as follows:
1. The entire Six Worlds system was mortal. All residents of the cosmos—even heavenly deities—were subject to a limited lifespan. Based on his universal Doctrine of Imperma-nence, the Buddha stated that all beings, without exception, were subject to the ongoing cycle of renewal through birth, growth, maturity, decline, death, and renewal. Although the lifetimes of deities were much longer than that of humans, eventually their divine missions and heavenly status expired as well.
2. The Six Worlds system was unenlightened. Sakamuni characterized the Six Worlds as the six conditional realms (Hell, Hunger, Anger, Animality, Humanity, Heaven) of unenlightened beings. Through the Twelve Link-Chain for Causation of Perpetual Suffering he explained that all mortals were caught in a cycle of rebirth rooted in illusions. However, this cycle could be broken. To do so one must start with a vow to overcome the inherent ignorance of the True Self, the original cause that leads one to unwittingly cultivate the circuits of sorrow.
3. The Six Worlds system was made of form, formlessness and Desire. The Buddha explained that the system of Six Worlds was composed of the Threefold Field of Form, Formlessness, and Desire, rather than the Dual Cosmology of separate material and spiritual dimensions. He refashioned the Cosmic Mountain system into a holistic cosmology with Desire as the transformational element connecting substantial and non-substantial realities (Form and Formlessness). Desire, the triggering mechanism of Cause and Effect, provided purpose to Existence. Desire, expressed through actions, words, thoughts and emotions, provided one with the power to cause phenomena to emerge, function, continue, transform, and disappear. Without it, everything would stop. Yet, because Desire was temporary and pliable, it could either be directed in a constructive way toward evolutionary progress, or be used to deconstruct, destroy, and devolve leading to renewal.
4. The Six Worlds integrated mental, physical, emotional conditions. The Six Worlds cosmos was a singular overarching system of conditions tied together by personal accountability. Originally conceived as the inter-dimensional map of rebirth, the Buddha redefined it as an ongoing process of renewal taking place in one’s experience in the here and now. In the Buddha’s rendition of the Six Worlds, the principle of transmutation applied to changes in mental, physical, and emotional expressions in the present moment. In his view, during one infinitesimal moment everything appeared, disappeared, and reappeared in a slightly different way. This cosmic vision explained why life appeared to be continuously changing, as Cause and Effect invariably reshaped conditional reality over a string of moments.
5. All the realms of the Six Worlds existed as one. The Buddha proposed that the Six Worlds constituted a single metaphysical system that covered the entire Universe like a vast fabric, layered and folded many times over. Although he was speaking of the Six Worlds as they applied to the Earth’s world-system, the principles involved defined the cosmos as a “Great Three-Thousand-Fold Universe” composed of a billion world systems165 extending out into space. Through this principle the Buddha introduced his Universal Doctrine of Non-Differentiation, or inseparability, which stated that no separation existed between matter and energy, mind and body, beings and their environment, here and there, or now and then. Therefore, any phenomenon existed only relative to other phenomena in a singularly integrated, composite Reality. As all phenomena were composite forms; there could never be such thing as an absolute form. Consequently, all Six Worlds of the Golden Mountain were folded into one indivisible composite with infinitely diverse variations.
REDESIGNING HEAVEN
Sakamuni’s dramatic views about Karma and Samsara drew a wide audience. Although the cause of much controversy, he was also an inspiration to many and increasingly garnered growing attention and respect from both ordinary people and monarchs. One day, he prepared to offer modifications to the immortal pantheon. The sage one slipped into a cosmic vision, looked into the Heavens, and as his mind’s eye flew over the Cosmic Mountain he would describe what he saw.
As everyone believed in the Cosmic Mountain, it provided him with an ideal platform for reshaping commonly-held beliefs. To start, he formed a base of agreement with Vedic, Brahmin, and Jain cosmogonies. For the Brahmins, he recognized the Creator, Brahma. For the Vedic Rishi, he acknowledged Indra. To the Jainas and other Sramana, he held out Nirvana. However, as his vision of Heaven unfolded, a distinctively Buddhist outlook emerged.
Using a step-by-step technique of acknowledgment, deconstruction, and reformulation he encompassed and then redesigned the Sumeru Heaven within the framework of his Buddha-Dharma. This process applied the mythic language of traditional shaman seers to illustrate and advance a replacement Cosmology. The Buddha’s technique echoed the Magi Order’s pursuit of a holistic cosmology that would encompass critical knowledge from seers past, present and future.
The Buddha used a “Skillful Method” (Skt. Upaya) to explain these alternative concepts in a way that the listeners could understand. At the same time he offered his audience training in the use of skillful methods with which they can apply the wisdom he shared.
All the listeners agreed that divine beings (gods), nature beings (spirit creatures), and sentient beings (humans and animals) lived in the Six World system, but the Buddha wrapped the Six Worlds within the auspices of Universal Truth. In other words, he reversed the idea of the gods making Law and deciding human destiny with the proposition that the gods operated within the context of Natural Law while exerting some influence on the worlds below. With one bold stroke, he placed the divine under the Law.
With a second stroke, the Buddha placed Heaven entirely within the framework of his cosmic super-structure, the Threefold Field of Form, Formlessness, and Desire. In his view the Threefold Field provided the scaffolding for all of Existence, including the large-scale Universe, the microcosm down to the smallest atomic level, as well as sentient and insentient beings and even divine beings. By encompassing Heaven within the Threefold Field, Sakamuni restored deities and spirits to their original role as Nature’s functionaries entrusted with governing the corporeal world (Field of Form), as well as the emotional, instinctual, and mental realm (Field of Desire), but yet required them to work within the scope of Universal Laws (Field of Formlessness).
Recounting his vision of Universal Radiance Buddha and the emergence of the boundless Universe filled with innumerable buddha-stars, Sakamuni declared, “Everywhere, among the innumerable stars, countless numbers of world-sy
stems appear, each with their own Sumeru, each with their own Heaven, each with their own Nature, each with their own Underworld, and each with their own Creator and heavenly beings. Everywhere in the Universe all the gods in all the Heavens cheer the enlightening work of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who initiate, support, nurture and advance the evolution of life.”
“The number of stars in the sky is many times more than all the grains of sand along the entire Ganges River,” he said. “Can you allow your mind to encompass such a boundless scope of existence? Yet, all those worlds come and go, just as the winds will scatter grains of sand. Knowing this, can you deny that all things in existence are impermanent? Throughout the Universe, all the realms of existence, all phenomena in nature, and all beings in the cycle of rebirth are mortal. Being mortal, everything across the vast eras of time and boundless space, without exception, is ever changing. Even the Heavens must change.”
News that the Buddha would be looking into the Cosmic Golden Mountain had attracted aspirants far and wide, from across Greater Aryana and the subcontinent of India. Brahmins, Jainas, Vedic ascetics, Skeptics, nobles, merchants, ordinary men and women, hermits, and lay people flocked to hear the details of his vision.
By reorganizing the heavenly realms and deities of the Cosmic Mountain within the context of the Threefold Field, the Buddha defined the divine Mind of Nature as an expression of Form, Formlessness, and Desire. Within this construct the intricate forces of Nature took on their various roles in the world, as follows:
The Heavens of Desire in the Golden Mountain Cosmology ( Pal i / Skt. kama-dhatu) addressed key divine features of the Rig Veda—Agni’s inspirations and Indra’s protection. The Buddha painted the Heavens of Desire as a place of inherent conflict between the natural forces that drive evolutionary progress. Here resided the forces of Nature that influ-enced and shaped life’s direction as expressed through desires.
The heavenly forces of Desire represented such fundamental con-flicts in Life as: impulse vs. planning, attraction vs. repulsion, tendency vs. aversion, order vs. entropy, ecstasy vs. depression, and positive vs. negative. Like archenemies in a perennial battle, these oppositional forces drove the process of change across the Six Worlds.
The governing deities of the Heavens of Desire lived in six tiers situated along the bottom half of the Cosmic Golden Mountain, a level coinciding with the Earth’s atmosphere. Positioned just below the Heavens of Form, the Heavens of Desire represented the underlying forces that drove and shaped changes in the Field of Form.
The countervailing pairing of forces in the Heavens of Desire stated that competition was essential to the determination of evolutionary progress. Conflict was a necessary element in the process of selecting which or when manifestations will arise next. The mission of this Heaven was to set the stage for the process of natural selection that ultimately determined the course of evolutionary development and diversity. Competing pairs of Desire tested the viability of various manifestations to survive, adapt, and prevail in the face of challenging circumstances and experiences.
The deities living in these Heavens included Sakra, the God of Light and Joy; Mara, the King Demon, Seducer of the Pure and Murderer of Wisdom; and, Yama, the God of Darkness and Justice of Time.
The God Sakra led a host of forces dedicated to joy, goodness, and positive development. He was the Buddha’s revised characterization of the tutelary Vedic deity, Indra, depicted in the Rig Veda as a protective god riding a flaming celestial chariot and wielding a lightening bolt. His frightening bull-face intimidated the forces of destruction. Indra drank Soma, the Elixir of Immortality, from which he gained the power of invincibility. But in Brahmin literature, Indra had been demoted to a minor god.
In the Buddhist rendition Sakra represented the re-elevation of Indra to the exalted position of a major god, but not before the Buddha reformed his character. As Sakra-Indra he regained a new mantle of protective duties. But instead of the Vedic guardian of the Arya tribes, here his role provided protection for all that was good. His role was to represent the positive forces of Nature, the desires that inspired joy in Life.
Sakra kept Indra’s fearsome image to illustrate that joy and goodness were as fierce as any negative forces and powerful enough to counter destructive or seductive influences.
The chief enemy of Sakra was the same challenger the Buddha had faced and defeated in his breakthrough Enlightenment under the Sacred Tree of Illumination. The Demon King, ruler of the Sixth Heaven of Desire, Mara, had been the guardian of the gate to Perfect Enlightenment. His role was to tempt living beings with instinctual pleasures that led to obsessive cravings and sufferings. He was also known as the “murderer of wisdom.” Through the rivalry between Sakra and Mara, the Buddha suggested that competing desires inherent in nature fostered evolution on spiritual, mental, emotional, and biological grounds.
By creating a six-tier design of the Heavens of Desire he extended Philosophical Naturalism into the struggles humans encountered in navigating between their aspirations and challenges.
The Sixth Heaven, named the “Heaven of Satisfying Desires Through External Attractions” was the top tier in the Heavens of Desire. This was the residence of the Demon King (Skt. Mara), the great dragon-snake— seducer of the pure and the murderer of wise judgment. Victims of the Demon King’s intoxicating venom, compelled by instincts to crave material things, would fall into a state of self-centered, primitive behaviors.
Mara’s attendants, ferocious Titan gods (Skt. Assura) and Spirit Cannibals (Skt. Raksasa), were able to travel between Heaven and the Underworld. In mythic terms, they personified the forces of emotional, biological, and psychological turbulence at the Demon King’s employ. The angry Titans would set upon mortal minds to infect them with the poisons of Mara’s virulent impulses by enticing them with resentments, jealousies, and greed. Their victims were hypnotized by beauty, lust, wealth, or praise. Their weapons consisted of “sensual passions, discontent, hunger and thirst, cravings, sloth and drowsiness, terror, uncertainty, hypocrisy and stubbornness, undeserved gains, flattering offerings, fame and status wrongly gained, and false friends who disparaged others.”166
Their victims would experience feelings of euphoria that wrecked their sense of responsibility and caused agitated behaviors, depression, and the desire for vengeance. In the grasp of Mara’s Demons even the wisest of people would experience unrequited desires. Enchanted, wild, and ill-tempered Spirits inhabiting the fibers of Nature aided the Assura Titans by inflicting the ravages of ignorance, ill health, and decay upon the bodies and energies of victims.
The Fifth Heaven of Desire, just below Mara’s tier, was the “Heaven of Satisfying Desires Through Internally Conjured Things.” The inhabitants of these Heavens were gifted with creative enterprise. They invented and delighted in ideas that gave the world pleasure and advanced progress and growth. When the Fifth Heaven was in force, it undermined and weakened the Sixth Heaven above it.
The Fourth Heaven of Desire was the “Heaven of Perfectly Balanced Joyful Contentment” (Skt. Tusita). The beings in this Heaven experienced selfless pleasures free of compulsions and insatiable appetites. This Heaven represented an advanced state of contentment characteristic of living beings desirous of achieving Enlightenment in a future birth.
In forthcoming sutras, Sakamuni would predict that in the far distant future, during the present Cosmic Eon of Evolution, the mortal world would evolve from instinctual to higher consciousness eventually freeing itself from the Demon King’s influences.
At such a time, a Buddha-in-waiting named “All-Encompassing Loving Kindness” (Skt. Maitreya)167 would descend from Tusita bringing harmonious order to the civilizations of Earth. Maitreya personified the coming of a future time, yet to be realized. With the actualization of “loving kindness” social harmony would be established among humans bringing forth the realization of a Golden Age of Enlightenment, Peace, and Fulfillment.
The Third Heaven of Desire was the “Heaven o
f Time Well Spent By Clearing the Senses.” Living in a perpetual state of illumination, its heavenly residents enjoyed acute sensual satisfactions through seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching. The King of this Heaven, Yama, was adapted from the Vedic Lord of Darkness where he was the justice of purgatory tasked with deciding a soul’s destination based on moral accountability.
In the Buddhist rendition of this Heaven, however, his role was redefined as the Lord Keeper of Time and Senses. He was the judge who either directed warped sentient beings to the dark underworlds until they reformed or rewarded those with clear senses to ascend to his Heaven. Using his power as Timekeeper to extend or take away time, Yama determined the length of time one would spend either in a state of punishment or reward.
The Second Heaven of Desire, the “Heaven of Celestial Illuminations” (Skt. Trayastrimsa), provided a powerful antidote to Mara’s venom. This was the classic Heaven in the sky where humans directed their prayers for salvation and the highest Heaven with a physical connection to the activities of the terrestrial world. At the center of this Heaven was the Palace of Joyful Sight, home of the powerful protector god, Sakra (full name: Sakra Devanam Indra).
The name Sakra originated from an honorific title used in the Vedic chronicles to designate Indra as an Almighty God. Sakra along with his colleague, the God Mahabrahma, sovereign of the Heaven of Form, a Buddhist adaptation of Brahma, depicted the two tutelary deities adapted in the Buddhist redesign of the Golden Mountain Cosmology—a nod to both Vedism and Brahmanism.
Sakra was attended by the joyful divinities of the Rig Veda, the Shining Divine Spirits (Skt. Deva)168 representing Nature’s forces for growth, harmony, and development. They resided in thirty-two heavenly cities with eight resplendent palaces and gardens built on the four peaks of the Trayastrimsa Heaven surrounding the central summit upon which Sakra’s bright palace was set.
