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Buddhist spatial cosmology
Identifier
010161
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Buddhist Spatial cosmology
Buddhist Spatial cosmology can be divided into two branches. The vertical (or cakravāla) cosmology describes the arrangement of worlds in a vertical pattern, some being higher and some lower. By contrast, the horizontal (sahasra) cosmology describes the grouping of these vertical worlds into sets of thousands, millions or billions.
In the vertical cosmology, the universe exists of many worlds (lokā) – one might say "planes" – stacked one upon the next in layers. ………. A world is not, however, a location so much as it is the systems [perceived as beings] which compose it; if the ‘beings’ [systems] in a world all die or disappear, the world disappears too. Likewise, a world comes into existence when the first ‘being’ [system] is born into it.