Important Question (Earth, Buddhism, hell, nuns, faith)

[criticizer]

Hi,

I want to ask a question about what the Buddhism holy texts said about the shape of the earth ?



And Thank you

I'm doing a search about the shape of the earth in the holy texts of the religions.

[Engyo]

Hmmmm...

I am not exactly sure; I think in general the Buddha didn't contradict the Hindu understandings of his time (and I don't exactly know what that was). I do know that when asked questions like "Where did we come from" etc., his usual answer was that it wasn't really important; and that what was important is what we do in our daily lives.

The other thing I can point to is the descriptions in the Lotus Sutra of an infinite universe, with different worlds and realms in all different directions, inhabited by different kinds of beings.

From the Lotus Sutra Chapter One:

At that time the Buddha emitted a ray of light from the tuft of white hair between his eyebrows, one of his characteristic features, lighting up eighteen thousand worlds in the eastern direction. There was no place that the light did not penetrate, reaching downward as far as the Avichi hell and upward to the Akanishtha heaven.

From this world one could see the living beings in the six paths of existence in all of those other lands. One could likewise see the Buddhas present at that time in those other lands and could hear the sutra teachings which those Buddhas were expounding. At the same time one could see the monks, nuns laymen, and laywomen who had carried out religious practices and attained the way. One could also see the bodhisattvas and Mahasattvas who, through various causes and conditions and various types of faith and understanding and in various forms and aspects were carrying out the way of the bodhisattva. And one could also see the Buddhas who had entered parinirvana, towers adorned with the seven treasures were erected for the Buddha relics."

From the Lotus Sutra Chapter 16:
"Suppose a person were to take five hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a million nayuta asamkhya thousand-million-fold worlds 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. Good men, what is your opinion? Can the total number of all these worlds be imagined or calculated?"

I don't know if this helps at all, but there it is.

[dhammasaavaka]

Hello,

There is actually nothing mentioning what they actually thought the shape of the world was. It was common for the earth in early Hindu and Buddhism to made as a square sign representing the four directions which bind and define it.