In keeping with the abstract notion of ‘thermal death’, Helmholtz and Lord Kelvin calculated that our sun will only last about thirty million years since it lacks any kind of external energy source. Obviously, the sun’s life has been much longer. In fact, the notion of ‘thermal death’ is probably a plausible fiction.
From a Buddhist perspective, things like the sun are mind generations; only the temporal form is finite whereas the animative principle (citta) is timeless and undying. As a matter of fact, there is no thermal death for the source of the sun. Something keeps, so to speak, recreating our universe—something greater than the sum of all temporal existences and their respective systems. One can also, from a Buddhist standpoint, say that the earth is literally expanding in terms of size and mass.
Whatever this something is which is sustaining and growing things (we Buddhists know it as Mind), it transcends everything. Still, it can be met with in deep introspection (dhyana). We can even know it as our true nature which is independent of the temporal phenomenon we call the ‘human body’.
Turning back to our earlier comments about the sun, its true position, which is not the one we see which lags behind it, emits considerably more power. When the Russians N.A. Kozyrev and V.V. Nasonov aimed a specially adapted telescope at the true position of a particular star—not the one seen—its signal was much stronger than the visible star. Its radiation was calculated to have a velocity several billion times the speed of light! We Buddhist would call this radiance, svarga or sagga in Pali, being the true sun—not the one we see which is 8 minutes and 20 seconds later. Svarga (P. sagga) a term used in Buddhism, is often translated by the word “heaven”. Here is an example of its use from the Dhammapada:
“This world is blinded, few only can see here. Like birds escaped from the net a few go to heaven” (174).
The word “svarga” in Sanskrit has the following meanings: going or leading to the light or heaven, celestial; world of light, the heavens; heaven; heavenly bliss. Svarga, also, may refer to the whole god realm (devaloka).
The world before it is materialized is svarga. Good Buddhists who do good deeds go to svarga which, I hasten to add, is not like the final liberation the Buddha attained. By contrast, to become materialized with a human body is to accumulate mass (skandha) thus enduring a much higher degree of suffering and disharmony as might be borne in svarga.
That heavenly worlds (svargaloka) exist is evident by the fact that stars, like our sun, are contingent upon an animative principle that converts into mass and energy. (The ideas of the late Russian astrophysicist N.A. Kozyrev lend credence to my statement.) On this same track, I would go so far as to suggest that NDEs, known as ‘near death experiences’, in which a great light is seen is svarga. This light is sometimes described as being seen as if at the end of a tunnel when one is near death. Some who have had an NDE describe this light as a “beautiful bright light...which becomes you”. This light has the feeling of peace and love. The world seen in the NDE is described by one persona as an, “awesome brightness...with tremendous beauty”.
What we may gather from this is the spirit that animates this body of ours is coextensive with svarga. We are never actually apart from it even though we live in stressed material bodies. Also, we need to understand that svarga has many grades of being—the Buddha being foremost of all sentiency (sattva) (S.v.41-42).
A somewhat hasty coda to this, we should not, offhand, dismiss Buddhist religious works which speak of the heavenly Pure Land (sukhavati) of Buddha Amitabha (lit., infinite light), or states such as NDEs just because science is skeptical of such states of being. Science has, itself, been consistently wrong in a number of cases. For example, who today uses the Saturnian model of the atom? And before this there was the cubic model (1902), followed by the plum-pudding model (1904). One must, also, be skeptical of science, itself, and the scientific method which is based upon the fallacy of affirming the consequent.
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