Beings of the two worlds and the eight groups
Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia is now 14 years old
Our Encyclopedia recently received a wonderful opportunity for a major renewal on its 14th birthday . After many years of growing our Encyclopedia had become bit slow and sometimes even decided not to answer when people knocked on the door.
A very big thank you and blessings to Dmytro Rudiy (rudiy.nl) for his great work in upgrading the server, website and all of the infrastructure and helping make TBE fast and reliable again for everyone!
We kindly ask our readers to help us cover the cost of this important upgrade and also help with the ongoing costs of keeping the Encyclopedia alive and freely available.
or card
Every little donation helps and every one is deeply appreciated. 🙏🙏🙏
OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM 🙏🙏🙏
May blessings shower down on all of yous 🙏🙏🙏
beings of the two worlds and the eight groups
二界八番 ( Jpn nikai ﾭhachiban )
The beings that assembled to listen to the preaching of the Lotus Sutra. They are listed in the "Introduction" (first) chapter of the sutra. They are beings that reside in the two worlds—the world of desire and the world of form. The eight groups are a further division of the beings of the two worlds.
They are
(1) the gods of the world of desire,
(2) the gods of the world of form,
(3) dragon kings and their followers,
(4) kimnara kings and their followers,
(5) gandharva kings and their followers,
(6) asura kings and their followers,
(7) garuda kings and their followers, and
(8) the king of the human world (i.e., Ajatashatru) and his followers.