The Evolution of Our World: Buddhist Cosmology according to Longchenpa’s Wish-Fulfilling Treasure
cosmology is the story of our universe told as a drama of going astray into samsara, and how the buddha-fields were manifested in response. Once we understand cosmology as this unfolding drama, we can better understand how it plays out in us, the microcosm.
In this story, i,oooJ(i,ooo x 1,000 x 1,000) world systems like our own are the field of activity of a nirmanakaya (Sanskrit) bud-dha such as Shakyamuni. These systems are further embedded in a much larger system, the “Field Adorned by Flower-Essences” (Sanskrit: Ghanavyuha), which is the field of activity of the sambhogakaya (Sanskrit) buddha, usually referred to as Vairocana. In order to express the enormity of this vision before the advent of modem conceptions of infinity, Buddhists used the image of the supercosmic buddha Vairocana. In his heart is a smaller supercos-mic field. This field is made up of twenty-five universes in which different aspects of his enlightened qualities are manifested. In each of those universes there are nirmanakaya buddhas; that is, buddha-hood taking on physical form. Of these twenty-five worlds, each an aspect of the body of the supercosmic buddha Vairocana, our world is located in the middle, the thirteenth world. This thirteenth world is a field of operation of Shakyamuni, equivalent to iooo1 of the little Mount Meru worlds described above.
Furthermore, temporally speaking, during periods of stability in these little worlds such as ours, there are one thousand manifestations of the nirmanakaya. Our perishable world-system is divided according to the four defining characteristics of all entities of reality: origination, stability, destruction, and emptiness, projected into four epochs (kalpa) of enormous lengths of time. In our world, Shakyamuni Buddha is the seventh nirmanakaya manifestation out of one thousand.
The point of these supercosmic visions of worlds upon worlds is not to study them as if they were scientific descriptions, but to make us understand the awesome, wonderful fact that we embody all these worlds. How? That is what Padmasambhava’s teachings show us very directly. Longchenpa points to this symbolically in his description of Buddhist cosmology. Behind all this is a Tibetan conception of Buddhist teachings, known as the nine vehicles (yanas), which move deeper and deeper into the heart of reality, from Sutric teachings to tantra and then to Dzogchen.*
“Cosmology” here means the manifestation of samsara, which itself manifests the display of the buddhas. The drama of enlightenment takes place in this process, our world being a very small but important part of this drama. It is important because it is the world from which sentient beings begin their long road to awakening.
In presenting this story, Longchenpa basically follows the outline of the third chapter of the Abhidharma-kosaf but gives structure to a system that could have lapsed into mere mythology, originally adapted as it was from traditional Indian sources. We will focus on his teaching about the five phases.
As mentioned, our world goes through four stages of origination, stability, decay, and cessation. Longchenpa divides the epoch of origination into:
1. The site for the foundation of the world system (ten {hi), the five phases.
2. The foundation (ten), the cosmic mountains, oceans, and continents.
3. Sentient beings, who inhabit the system (ten).
The following is a translation of Longchenpa’s discussion of the first topic, from his Wish-Fulfilling Treasure (Yqhin D^oJ)? His work is in verse form with his own commentary on the verses:
Now, in order to present the nature of our world system in more detail, I shall first present a summary:
Out of the appearance of the buddha-fields
I shall present, in particular, the Saha world system, Which has four epochs: origination, stability, destruction, and emptiness.
I have shown in the previous chapter how the 1,000* transitory world-systems arise from the Field Adorned by Flower-Essences,4 which is the display of the buddha-fields that I have just discussed. Now we should properly understand the sentient beings and their environments in this perishable worldsystem by means of the time periods of origination, stability, destruction, and emptiness: founded on space, originate from above. Sentient beings, who are the quintessence of the world, also spread from above to below.
First, the explanation in stages of that which is founded on the earth phase:
If 1 sum these stages up in brief, there are three: The site for the foundation, the foundation, and the founded.
To make a proper start, I shall make a presentation summed up according to the sutras of the ordinary pursuit, which give a mythological presentation of the perishable world-system; according to that which is superior to the above, the extraordinary pursuit represented by the Hua Yen teachings; and also according to the Tantras.7 First, in showing the Epoch of Origination, there are the site for the foundation of the world, the phases; the foundation, the cosmic mountains, and so on; and what is founded on this, the sentient beings. Of these:
First I shall show how the phases are built up.
Following the completion of the twenty interval epochs of the epoch of emptiness,
The mandala of wind equal in extent to the i,ooo3 world systems
Arises on the surface of space radiant with white light called pure mind.
It is said in the Summary Verses on the Precious Gem (Arya Ratna Guna Samcaya Gat ha): “The wind phase is founded on space and water is founded on this. On this the great earth phase is founded, and on this the moving beings are founded.” The explanation in stages is as follows: following the epoch of emptiness, at first there is space, a white light called Pure Mentation, whose motivating cause at this time is the collective karma of sentient beings, which gives rise to the environment of one world system of i,oooJ perishable worlds? The remote motivating cause of the mandala of wind on the surface of this space is the collective karma of sentient beings born here. The proximate motivating cause is wind. If you ask how this is, the answer is as follows:
Stirring up, all-encompassing, pounding, Collecting, maturing, separating:
These are the six winds that gradually stir, spread, scatter, collect, originate, and separate.
Out of that which is called the stirring up wind, which has just come up, the all-encompassing wind, by extending in all directions, condenses like fog in the sky; the pounding wind, which has as its symbol the seed syllabic YAM, scatters this fog like clouds in the sky. The collecting wind, by bringing all these winds together, thickens and heightens this vast field of reality. After the shining, red, fiery maturing wind spreads and bums, the circle of wind then arises that is level and mild. Various colors are each scattered by the separating wind with the rising of roaring noises. From among these six winds, the stirring up of the stirring up wind is the real originator. If one asks what is the size and color of this mandala of wind, the answer is as follows:
Green in color, shaped like a double-Jaz/e surrounded by a circle,9
It is six million yojanas™ in height and of immeasurable width,
And hard like a dorje.
The color of this wind is like sapphire. Its shape is like a dou-ble-^fo/ye with a circle around it. Its size is of unlimited width, and it is six millionyojanas in height. Its function is to solidify and harden, and based on this function, the functions of the mandalas of water and so on are founded. From this wind there comes the mandala of water. In the space above:
From the condensation into clouds having die essence of gold,
By the falling rain from above, the mandala of water forms.
It is completely round, and called Fine and
Clear.
Following the origination of the mandala of wind, the motivating cause of the mandala of water is as follows: from the condensation in space of clouds having the essence of gold, there falls a stream of rain as thick as cart axles. It is called Fine and Clear Water. Its shape is round and it originates like the full moon. Its size:
Its height is i,i20,ooojo/anas.
It is surrounded by the founding wind.
This mandala of water is 1,120,000 yojanas in height. It does not pour over its edge because it is encircled by the founding wind. After this, the mandala of earth originates:
Since water is stirred up by the stirring up wind, Earth originates on this as a four-sided mandala.
The motivating cause of earth is as follows: from the mandala of wind beneath the water, the stirring up wind arises with a grinding sound, and from all the motivating causes having been stirred up and combined together, the golden earth-foundation is established like a piece of cloth appearing on a lake. It is four-sided and gplden in color. As to its size:
Its height is yio^oooyojanas
While its diameter is 1,203,450^070/^25.
The depth of the water is 800,000 j/oya/zas and the height of the earth that remains above it is 320,000. The diameter of both the water and earth mandalas is 1,203,450. Its circumference is three times that. These complete the presentation of the site for the foundation of the world.
Appendix!
On the Five Phases
As mentioned in the preface, one of the reasons I was originally attracted to these texts was because of their multileveled approach to the five elements. This was fascinating to me both as a student of Dzogchen and as a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine (which employs a different version of five-element theory). What I loved about these texts was that the deeper I explored the realm of the body and matter, the further I went into the domain of spiritual experiences beyond mind. Conversely, the more I entered the domain of spiritual experiences beyond mind, the more I entered the world of the body as a microcosm of the Buddhist cosmos. Both mind and matter pointed to a qualitative field of experience that unified them.
The usual translation for the Tibetan term jungwa is “element,” well known from the ancient Greek classification of the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. Regarding this translation, Manfred Porkert’s discussion of the translation of the Chinese term hsingas “element” applies also to the Tibetan term jungwa: of Chinese culture by alluding, wherever feasible, to familiar notions and concepts. Because of the limitations of their philological resources they rendered wu-hsing by “Five Elements” ... The 5 Evolutive Phases, as their name implies, constitute stretches of time, temporal segments of exactly defined qualities that succeed each other in cyclical order at reference positions defined in space. Or, couched in terms closer to practice, the 5 Evolutive Phases define conventionally and unequivocally energetic qualities changing in the course of time. They typify the qualities of energy by the use of 5 concepts (wood, fire, earth, metal, water) that, because of the richness of their associations, are ideally suited to serve as the crystallizing core for an inductive system of relations and correspondences? The Tibetans follow the Indian tradition of five phases: earth, water, wind, fire, and space. “Evolutive Phases” is clumsy; I prefer “phases” to indicate that we are primarily dealing with processes.
The key idea regarding the phases in these two texts is that they have two modes of functioning: the active, emblematic of forces acting against entropy, the energetic functioning of the pristine awareness that is the quintessence (chud) of the evolutionary process; and the “structure-producing” (“structive” is Porkert’s awkward term for processes that produce structures in nature), emblematic of entropic, structural materialization of the commonly experienced phases that make up the environment. But these two modes are complementary, acting together in a kind of homeorhesis, which is the dynamic, natural tendency of a living organism to continue its evolving development under different environmental conditions (as compared to homeostasis, the static maintenance of equilibrium).
Our static, perishable world-system, as presented in the standard Buddhist cosmology of Mount Meru, seven mountainchains, oceans, and four continents, is an imaginative model of our world as a closed system that is running down.2 Experientially speaking, it represents a hardening into dead forms of our open universe of experience. Yet in such a dynamic process, ever-new possibilities for self-organization are being presented with each new instability (change). We can respond creatively if we can be guided by rigpa, which may here be translated as the organizing information-energy of the universe, whose creativity is the pristine awareness of life. Instabilities usually increase our randomness and disorganization, both physically and mentally, but this need not be the case, even in the physical world:
Physical energy itself may be an agent in the service of evolution. It would then be superfluous to assume a dualism between physical and psychic organization—all organization in the universe would be physical and psychic at the same time.3
The active energy of the phases themselves is the dynamism of pure presence. This active energy expresses itself in the five forms of pristine awareness. Although our language makes it difficult to avoid using terms like “awareness” here, these five do not belong to the realm of sem (“mind”), but to the realm of semnyi (“mind-as-such”). Mind-as-such, the nature of mind, is the informationenergy of an intelligent universe. Mind would then be a loss of the optimal information-energy of the organism as organizing agent, leading to a distorted view of the world (marigpa). This loss of optimal functioning manifests as a reification of the energy dynamics of the universe flowing through us. Out of this develops the duality of the apprehending subject and the apprehended object.
Pure presence, however, is inseparable from the ground of being, and its unitary functioning is depicted in the texts as a selfpresentation or intrinsic luminosity, as opposed to a reflected radiation. This luminosity presents its dynamic transformations in the form of the five hues of pristine awareness. One mode, for example, is the pristine awareness of space as an open dimension of lived space. In our usual experience we convert this into a something that is standing opposite us and is against us: space as a container. And thus there is the origin of represented, measurable space as distance, whose origin in the oriented space of lived experience is lost.
These correlations between the phases and the forms of pristine awareness make it clear that the distinction here is not between mind /consciousness and matter, but between active and structive energies, each tending in a certain direction, like centrifugal and centripetal forces, although never wholly one or the other. Within the active energy there is a structive aspect (yin within yang). It must be remembered that both of these are fluctuations of the ground of being. While there is a breaking away from the ground, the ground remains unaffected by the fluctuations of samsara and nirvana.
Translating the Tibetan term jungwa as “phase” rather than “element” is my attempt to render the dynamic, process nature of the world as understood in tantra and Dzogchen. Furthermore, they are phases because they indicate the cyclic nature of all processes, whether they be of a fetus or the whole universe, from birth to maturation to death.
Between the 16th and the 19th centuries, European missionaries aroused interest in and furthered understanding the universe flowing through us. Out of this develops the duality of the apprehending subject and the apprehended object.
Pure presence, however, is inseparable from the ground of being, and its unitary functioning is depicted in the texts as a selfpresentation or intrinsic luminosity, as opposed to a reflected radiation. This luminosity presents its dynamic transformations in the form of the five hues of pristine awareness. One mode, for example, is the pristine awareness of space as an open dimension of lived space. In our usual experience we convert this into a something that is standing opposite us and is against us: space as a container. And thus there is the origin of represented, measurable space as distance, whose origin in the oriented space of lived experience is lost.
These correlations between the phases and the forms of pristine awareness make it clear that the distinction here is not between mind /consciousness and matter, but between active and structive energies, each tending in a certain direction, like centrifugal and centripetal forces, although never wholly one or the other. Within the active energy there is a structive aspect (yin within yang). It must be remembered that both of these are fluctuations of the ground of being. While there is a breaking away from the ground, the ground remains unaffected by the fluctuations of samsara and nirvana.
Translating the Tibetan term jungwa as “phase” rather than “element” is my attempt to render the dynamic, process nature of the world as understood in tantra and Dzogchen. Furthermore, they are phases because they indicate the cyclic nature of all processes, whether they be of a fetus or the whole universe, from birth to maturation to death.
