Numberless major world system dust particle kalpas
numberless major world system dust particle kalpas
五百塵点劫 (Jpn gohyaku-jintengo or gohyaku-jindengo )
An incredibly long period of time described in the "Life Span" (sixteenth) chapter of the Lotus Sutra to indicate how long ago Shakyamuni Buddha originally attained enlightenment. In the "Life Span" chapter, Shakyamuni reveals that he attained enlightenment not for the first time in this life under the bodhi tree in Gaya, India, but in the inconceivably remote past. He then explains the duration since his original attainment of Buddhahood as follows: "Suppose a person were to take five hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a million nayuta asamkhya major world systems and grind them to dust. Then, moving eastward, each time he passes five hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a million [[nayuta [asamkhya]] worlds he drops a particle of dust.
He continues eastward in this way until he has finished dropping all the particles.... Suppose all these worlds, whether they received a particle of dust or not, are once more reduced to dust. Let one particle represent one kalpa. The time that has passed since I attained Buddhahood surpasses this by a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a million nayuta asamkhya kalpas. " Numberless major world system dust particle kalpas is the term applied to the length of time described in the above passage. The Japanese term for this concept, gohyaku-jintengo, literally means "five hundred dust particle kalpas." "Five hundred" here is an abbreviation for "five hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a million nayuta asamkhya major world systems," which is described as "numberless major world systems." See also major world system; major world system dust particle kalpas.
