Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Textual chronology
- General introduction: Buddhism and civilizational history 1 – structures and processes
- PART 1 NIRVANA IN AND OUT OF TIME
- PART 2 PARADISE IN HEAVEN AND ON EARTH
- Introduction to part 2: utopia and the ideal society
- 4 Heaven, the land of Cockaygne and Arcadia
- 5 Millennialism
- 6 The perfect moral commonwealth? Kingship and its discontents
- 7 The Vessantara Jātaka
- Conclusion to part 2: in what sense can one speak of Buddhist utopianism?
- General conclusion: Buddhism and civilizational history 2 – reprise
- Appendices (translated texts)
- Bibliography
- Glossary and index of Pali and Sanskrit words
- Name index
- Subject index
4 - Heaven, the land of Cockaygne and Arcadia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Textual chronology
- General introduction: Buddhism and civilizational history 1 – structures and processes
- PART 1 NIRVANA IN AND OUT OF TIME
- PART 2 PARADISE IN HEAVEN AND ON EARTH
- Introduction to part 2: utopia and the ideal society
- 4 Heaven, the land of Cockaygne and Arcadia
- 5 Millennialism
- 6 The perfect moral commonwealth? Kingship and its discontents
- 7 The Vessantara Jātaka
- Conclusion to part 2: in what sense can one speak of Buddhist utopianism?
- General conclusion: Buddhism and civilizational history 2 – reprise
- Appendices (translated texts)
- Bibliography
- Glossary and index of Pali and Sanskrit words
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
LIFE IN THE HEAVENS
Buddhist Cosmology
It is easy to overlook the Buddhist heavens. Textbook depictions of Buddhism often reduce them to an incidental diversion, something like a pleasant vacation separate from the hard work of the Path to nirvana. From a certain kind of abstract, doctrinal point of view this is understandable, and it is certainly characteristic of Buddhist modernism; but it seriously distorts the place of the heavens in the premodern Pali imaginaire. In fact a great deal of attention is paid to them in numerous texts, and the spectrum of felicities they offer is depicted at length and with care. Their place in the Buddhist universe of evaluative discourse is determined by the conceptual opposition between desire (kāma) and its gradual renunciation, which is constitutive both of the temporally extended dynamic of the individual path from samsāra to nirvana, and also of the spatially extended hierarchy of the cosmos. Buddhist cosmology postulates three Spheres (avacara) or Levels (bhūmi), each of which contain thirty or thirty-one worlds (lokā), ordered hierarchically. In Table 4.1 these are numbered 1, 2, and 3. They are:
the Formless Sphere (arūpāvacara): 16 worlds = Meditation Levels 5–8;
the Sphere of (refined) Form (rūpāvacara): 16 worlds in 4 groups = Meditation Levels 1–4, and
the Sphere of Desire (kāmāvacara): 10 or 11 worlds (see n. 4 on the asura-s), which are the six heavens of the gods (devā), the Human World, and 3 or 4 Subhuman Worlds.[…]
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- Information
- Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities , pp. 297 - 345Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998