Shape of the Buddhafield: Level or Globe?

For the past few decades (maybe a century or two) a single scientific consensus of cosmology has prevailed on earth: a globe in a heliocentric model, part of a galaxy in an expanding universe originated from a "big bang" and hurtling itself in helixes into a black hole of its own demise far, far away.

Ancient cultures, however, have reported it differently: leveled, embodied, and fuller of meaning than any mathematical model. Cultural myths, origin stories, and religious texts have demonstrated their own versions of leveled and spherical worlds earth often pointing to some World Tree or Mystic Mount at the center of their plane(t).

Ancient cosmologies are often foundations for vast, corresponding systems of meaning as related in their oral or scriptural tradition: the bases of cultural and moral values. 

If the notion of "flat earth" is to re-enter the mainstream (beyond the meme) it will be through a renewed interest in the foundational myths and sciences, the cosmologies of ancient histories and esoteric wisdom traditions inasmuch as modern curiosity and the scientific method itself. This exploration of the level globe/ earth debate specifically examines the Indo-Tibetan tantric cosmologies of Mahāyāna Buddhism in modernity.

Religion and science collide like tectonic plates regarding the shape and characteristic of our very own earth. Intellectual authorities and religious highnesses of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist traditions have shifted their takes completely in just the last few decades. 

The traditional Mahāyāna Buddhist views of Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye and Dudjom Jigdrel Yeshe Dorje will be examined in detail. Gendun Chophel's and His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama's modern scientific views will be contrasted. 

Translations of Jamgon Kongtrul the Great and Gendun Chophel the Modernist are by StevenRAJ.

The Traditional Indo-Tibetan View of the World

All together, Jamgon Kongtrul the Great’s Universal Knowledge comprises a complete overview of the entire Indo-Tibetan system of five sciences featuring the most eminent among them, the holy dharma, in pithy root verses combined with lucid auto-commentary. Ten hardcovers, distinct translations sponsored by Tsadra Foundation, are published by Snow Lion in English as the series, Treasury of Knowledge. 

In transcreation, we could call Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye འཇམ་མགོན་ཀོང་སྤྲུལ་བློ་གྲོས་མཐའ་ཡས།, this luminary of Tibet, Guardian Angel, Eminence of Kongpo, Intellect Infinity.

That this is his "treatise" means that it is a commentary on the scripture of Buddha: a genuine part of Buddha's lineage of scripture and realization. It is composed according to the format of the great treatises of the Indian tradition: a title in Sanskṛt and Tibetan; an opening homage; a promise to compose; main body; and conclusion. Kongtrul the Great wrote treatises on the all the sciences that are the scriptural basis for the path of realization.

In Sanskṛt:

YĀNASARVAMUKhEBhYAḤ SAMUCChAYAPRAVACANAṂ RATNAKOŚATRIṢIKŚĀSUDEṢIKĀṢĀSTRAṂ SARVAJÑEYASPhARAṆANĀMAVIHARATISMA

In Tibetan:

ཐེག་པའི་སྒོ་ཀུན་ལས་བཏུས་པ་གསུང་རབ་རིན་པོ་ཆེའི་མཛོད་བསླབ་པ་གསུམ་ལེགས་པར་སྟོན་པའི་བསྟན་བཅོས་ཤེས་བྱ་ཀུན་ཁྱབ་ཅེས་བྱ་བ་བཞུགས་སོ།

In English:

Universal Knowledge: A Collection of the Vehicles' Every Gateway; A Treasury of the Precious, Most Excellent Speech; A Treatise of Fine Teachings on the Trainings Three.

NAMAḤ ṢRĪMAṂ SADGURUPĀDĀYA

Morals pure and fine as gold support the ground
Ten-to-the-fifty-third samadhis arrange the mount and continents
Wisdom is the sun; the moon’s appearance cosmos clarifies
Salute! Supreme Sage who’s proven the meaning to all

‍Whatever realms of souls the brave mind comprehends
Good Conduct fills the dharma sphere complete
Father of victors; Victor’s son yet seems
Lion of Speech! Confer the best intelligence

‍Good advice revives the elemental seed, matures then frees
Creation and completion pur’fies adventitious stains 
Beneficiaries’ fruit is four bodies’ bliss 
Bow to the mentor! Highness who has lineage

‍Even though we’re not perfect or quite smart enough
Being inferior in canons and in wisdom realized 
So our eon be unbroken on our jeweled isle
We should clarify a little, and say it fine complete

‍In this illumined eon a buddha field appeared
Our Teacher spake and realized, his teaching thus are two
So while these bide and grow upon Rose Apple Isle
The way of abiding—hearing, contemplation, cultivation—shall be composed
That the path may be traversed in full, this body of work
The count of ten perfections positively put¹

The traditional treatise thus begins with titles in Sanskṛt and Tibetan (and thus our English too). A Sanskṛt homage follows, then verses of salutation and bows. Finally, his high kāvya poetry features a very humble promise to compose.

The style suggests both the author’s and reader’s placement square in the buddha field. It’s an aspiration prayer of its own to the fruition of the two transmissions: scripture and realization. It is the preamble to a vast and profound literary masterpiece.

The cosmic metaphors are distinctly one per quatrain according to kāvya, high Sanskṛt poetics:

• Golden Ground, Mount Meru, Four Continents, Sun and Moon
• The dharmasphere
• The lineage element
• Our illumed eon
• Rose Apple Isle
• Ten perfections (the moral component)

And without missing a beat the main text of Kongtrul the Great’s magnum opus begins with the following section on the nature and characteristic of our world.

To start, causes and conditions are general and specific
Wherever is the expanse of space and realms of sentient beings
There is the compassion of victorious ones, the karma of souls
Not-creating, the objects of taming and the ones who tame
Appear in an inconceivable, correlative arising
Closely examining the lineage element of the ones to be tamed
The ones who tame arise in an array of buddhafields and bodies
And teach transcendence through a range of method and miracle
While nothing changes apart from the realm of phenomena
Blessings, prayers, actions, and the nature of things
Having obtained causality, appear as oceanic fields
Free from adventitious stains is Unsurpassed
Transcending the three realms, their gnosis is unbiased
There, in self-appearing spontaneity, is Dense Array
The Illuminator, Gnostic Great Glacial Lake
Whose billion buddhafields in every pore
Their places, shapes, extents in inconceivable arrays
There's an atom, center-palm, a world-realm
Placed inside an ocean, amidst many world-realms
Foundation & Center Adorned With Flowers' field bides
Further, throughout Unsurpassed's four continents
There are a billion, great third-order-thousand worlds
Factors of billions from among them
Are our collective—universal, interconnected, oceanic continua
Center Adorned with Flowers, each and all
Rest on an ocean and are together encompassed
This is the supreme emanation, the single taming field
Within its great, encompassing sea of scented water
Four jeweled lotuses support their world realms
The thirteenth of twenty-five stacked high abides
Named Endurance, Sahā renowned—a third-order thousand
Saturated with some forty-seventh-order-tens of different elements 
Each element a field, the worlds of the thirteenth altogether
Encompassed and aspected in a globe of crossed vajra
A variety of central winds abide in networks of lotuses
The teacher, moreover, Vairocana the Illuminator
Pervasively dwells in the sacred pure abode, Unsurpassed
These four-continents are what the Blessed One spake
We are surrounded by ten other four-continent worlds
Contemporaneously enacting desire and fear, thus he spake
Only lords of the ten grounds’ experiential domain²

Thus the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist belief of our world’s characteristics is that it is one among a stunning and inconceivable array of worlds, realms of worlds, and buddhafields; that our world is of the field and form of The Illuminator, Vairochana Jñānamahāhimasgāra³ the Great Glacial Lake, central in Buddhafield Unsurpassed. Our local four-continent world is a minute piece of the whole shebang (which is only visible as such to spiritual heroes on the tenth ground of awakening, the stage of awakening immediately prior to the attainment of buddhahood itself).

When it is said that places, shapes, extents, and arrays of buddhafields are inconceivable, Dudjom Rinpoche speaks a little more to their quality of correlative arising:

"All these fields have distinct features; for the expanse of reality is filled with oceans of fields and buddha-bodies which do not intermingle, take birth or change into other forms, alter or decline, and which are not even slightly covered by extraneous matter."⁴ - Dudjom Rinpoche

Echoing the first line's description of "general and specific," the author playfully dances between the causes and conditions, center and surrounds, and the fields and elemental particles of our world as supported by Buddhist scripture. The weaving style of play in the poetry itself indicates the author’s personal realization of enlightenment within the vast and meaningful matrix of correlative arising.

The Cause of the World is Compassion & Karma

Kongtrul the Great states that wherever space exists, so too are sentient beings. Wherever one looks in apparent and possible existence, there are sentient beings and souls to be found.

The extent of space is simultaneously pervaded by the compassion of the victorious ones, the buddhas of the ten directions. The blessings, prayers, and intentions that they've previously made are of the nature to spontaneously ripen when they meet their appropriate conditions. Particular types of sentient beings match up with the previous prayers of omniscient buddhas as well as the particular prayers and aspirations of spiritual heroes on the grounds. Sentient beings find refuge and aid; thus they are guided to complete awakening.

Could even the most brilliant and adept of gods have created this place purely by their own design?

It seems an enigma: the sublime intentions of victorious ones connecting with the critical needs of souls that become a cause for worlds to appear (though never deliberately created as such).

How is it possible to create in empty space where all phenomena are non-existent and void?

There is no difference between a buddhafield and a realm of wandering souls. That they are one and the same in reality makes it purely a matter of perspective.

When the primordial nature of the ground is not recognized, ignorant sentient beings move and transmigrate through cycles of endless suffering by the power of their karma, their collected and collective deeds. The buddhas recognize this and, out of their compassion, spontaneously emanate an inconceivable diversity of fields (as diverse as the suffering souls themselves). One such extensive field—ours—is situated in the center of the palm of the hand of The Illuminator, Vairochana, Gnostic Great Glacial Lake. 

Dudjom Rinpoche also explains the inter-relatedness of compassion and karma [deeds] in summing up the locale of our local world as one within the buddhafield of Buddha Illuminator:

"The world systems of the universe, which are like vessels, supports created by the oceanic extent of the buddhas' compassion and the deeds of sentient beings, are spread throughout the infinite reaches of space. Therein, the place enjoyed by the buddha-body of perfect rapture, Vairochana the Great Glacial Lake, is the buddhafield whose Foundation and Centre are Adorned with Flowers. Within each pore of the conqueror [Vairochana] residing there, there appear oceanic systems, numerous as grains of dust. Upon the lotuses which float in the perfumed oceans in the palms of his hands, there are twenty-five world systems situated one above the other. And here, in the thirteenth among them, the world of Patient Endurance, there is a great trichiliocosm consisting of one billion worlds, each with four continents."⁵

Our world appears by the meeting of the buddhas' compassion with the karma of sentient beings. Thus it is a buddhafield arisen to satisfy the wishes of wandering souls each of whose “lineage element” are one and the same; while diverse in expression, buddha nature.

On Reading the Verse of Jamgon Kongtrul

Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye's verse is woven like double-helixed DNA. It zooms to pull in the reader. It pans to push the boundaries of perception. The push and pull are what brings it alive with a depth of lineage and knowledge base.

Kongtrul the Great's verse is calculated, grammatically precise, and rich in meaning. This type of verse is common in literary Tibetan. In this case, each line is composed of nine syllables in trochaic feet (the final ninth syllable is accented). 

Translations of such sprung verse as is common in Tibetan are often fleshed out in long and prosaic lines. In many cases, the lines break themselves and are the only feature that sets out these translations from prose. In our translation, we strove for a maximum of meaning in a minimum of verbosity—a reflection of its poetry. Our translation features a style of sprung verse echoing the density of the original though the meter itself is not as strict.

The introductory verses are traditional treatise formulae and square in the ancient tradition of Sanskṛt kāvya poetics. Metaphors are employed colorfully, each in their own space of the deeper meaning. Stylistically, these first few verses are classical odes, promises and pleas.

Understanding the subtlety of each name, phrase, and line is just part of the experience. The better half is following such frequent expansions and intensifications of the matter of mind in verse. 

The main body of the text of Myriad Worlds stylistically veers into the territory itself. It is a winding and cosmic adventure in metered names and phrases!

General and specific, vast and minute, buddhas and souls weave through the verse like a literary helix or the apparent pattern of the cosmology’s characteristic itself. The phenomenological experience is thus one of dazzling openness. 

Reading becomes a deeply contemplative exercise in and of itself. Reading becomes a practice that primes the acuity and malleability of mind so it might catch a glimpse of the ultimate truth, the meaning to be portrayed.

Merely reading and following the text, then, becomes a prerequisite that leads to the domain of spiritual heroes on the tenth ground. The author's intent is clearly in alignment with the teachings themselves: to meet sentient beings with compassion, and awaken their gnostic element. Whatever the universe, its world and characteristics, the aim is altruistic in the development of souls.

Therefore please refer to the translations above and read them again anew. Then let's take a deeper dive, and closer look at Subjective, our local world.

A Closer Look at Subjective, Our Local World

In the buddhafield Unsurpassed, Vairochana the Illuminator abides as the lord of the families within his own local buddhafield—Dense Array. There, in a pore in the palm of his hand (where his palms rest in the gesture of meditative equipoise) is our world-realm, Foundation & Center Adorned with Flowers where twenty-five stacked trichiliocosms abide. Within the thirteenth among them is Sahā or Endurance in English; and within Endurance, our local four-continent world, is somewhere in the midst of a billion four-continent worlds shaping a globe and aspected by crossed vajra . 

On the meaning of Sahā (Tib. mi mjed), or Endurance, the name of our local world-realm, Dudjom Jigdral Yeshe Dorje states:

Sentient beings of this field endure desire, endure hatred, endure delusion and endure fetters of conflicting emotion. Thus, it is so called because the [Sanskrit] word saha conveys the sense of endurance or capability.

During the creation-stage of Endurance, one thousand lotus flowers appeared in the ocean, an omen that one-thousand buddhas are bound to appear. So our world is known as an illuminated world and its duration is an auspicious eon. Even though the souls who find themselves here must endure many afflictions, they are greatly benefited by the auspiciousness of the circumstances to cleanse and purify and progress quickly on the path to enlightenment.

Within Endurance is our four-continent world (the smallest in the cosmology of fields, realms, and worlds). A four-continent world refers to a local world with its central King of Mountains (Mount Meru) surrounded by four continents, eight subcontinents, four oceans, and a mountainous rim of iron that contains it all. 

The description proceeds to discuss the continents themselves. The so-called central country is Magadha in the southern continent of Jambudvīpa or Rose Apple Isle. It's called "central" because of the Vajra Seat at Bodhgaya, the domain where all one-thousand buddhas of our fortunate eon are to have attained enlightenment, one after the other, as in a beautiful rosary. The other three continents are Superior Body (Skt. Videha) in the east; Boundless Cows (Aparagodānīyaḥ) in the west; and Unpleasant Sound (Uttarakuruḥ) in the north.

This level of locality is where differences in modern and traditional cosmologies become obviously divergent in the views of we ordinary souls who look with jaundiced, globular eyes. Is there any way to reconcile the buddhafield and the globe?

Perhaps one could examine an azimuthal equidistant map, and imaginatively transform our "seven continents" to make four, and assign the continent containing India, the place where the Thus Gone One attained enlightenment as Rose Apple Isle. Perhaps "Boundless Cows" in Western Continent conjures great buffalo herds roaming upon so-called North America's vast and open plains. “Perhaps,” however, is quite the stretch! 

Since it’s easy to visualize the earth we've been taught (a blue marble in a solar system spinning around in empty space), it's only fair to examine the Indo-Tibetan more closely so it is seen correctly in its context with all the proper nuance.

Jamgon Kongtrul explains the shape of our world-realm, Endurance, thus: "a globe, an aspect of the four-prong scepter.” Firstly, he's not referring to our local world but a sort of "galactic" thirteenth of twenty-five stacked world-realms that make up a sort of "universe," Foundation and Center Adorned with Lotuses. Endurance is a third-order-thousand world-realm: a realm of one-thousand local worlds is multiplied by a thousand, and the second-order-thousand is multiplied by a thousand yet again. These make a billion individual worlds conglomerated to shape a globe in the aspect of crossed vajra. 

If we follow the maxim of "as above, so below," we follow the crossed vajra, the emblem of solid ground at Gautama's seat of enlightenment, the Vajra Seat. This emblem of the crossed vajra is characteristic of the billion-fold world system of Endurance itself. The characteristic of indestructibility also extends to the actual essence of Illuminator and his buddhafield, Unsurpassed.

Jamgon Kongtrul uses the words "surrounded" and "encompassed" to describe worlds and world-realms. "Surrounded" by an iron ring of mountains that holds in the oceans on a level earth. The crossed vajra is also used to characterize the protection sphere of a mandala where vajras are crossed and linked in an impenetrably protective barrier—thus we are “surrounded.” 

The aspect of crossed vajra represents a mandala-style blueprint of a level ground as the Vajra Seat at Bodhgaya or an utterly firm and protective sphere of interlinked and doubled vajras that holds and shapes our galactic world system.

Traditional Prayer and Offering: The Short Mandala Offering

Golden ground anointed, flowers strewn
Mount Meru, four cont'nents, sun and moon
Buddha realm imagined then offered
All souls also course onto pure realms!

TRAṂ  GURU RATNA MAṆḌALA PŪJA MEGhA SAMUDRA SPhARAṆA SAMAYE  ĀḤ HŪṂ

Read the long, 37 Heap Mandala Offering in Transcreation: Sublime Offerings

7 Merits of Vajra

The Indian tradition assigns seven particular features of Indra’s “vajra”, the adamantine thunderbolt scepter. In the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the vajra is a doubled five or nine-prong scepter; or doubled and crossed (as the aspect of our galactic world-system, Endurance). 

The Tibetan word for vajra, dorje, literally refers to diamond or “lord of stones” as well as the ritual implement (because the physical aspect of diamonds share much in common with Indra’s thunderbolt scepter). 

However it’s fashioned, the plasmic inner and secret qualities of vajra are listed in Seven Merits of Vajra below.

1. inseverable (mi chod pa)
2. indestructible (mi shigs pa)
3. true (bden pa)
4. solid (sra ba)
5. stable (brtan pa)
6. unobstructed in its every advance (phar thams cad du thogs pa med pa)
7. undefeatable since whatever approaches is more than ineffectual (tshur gang gi kyang mi tshugs pas ma pham pa)

These merits of vajra are thus the merits of the earth we stand on, the above and below of the cosmos we inhabit.

Modern Tibetan Lamas' Refutations of Traditional Cosmology

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

In 2005 The Universe in a Single Atom was published wherein His Holiness the Dalai Lama (perhaps the best-known and most authoritative voice on Tibetan Buddhism in the world) echoed the Buddha's advice not to take the doctrine at face value but to test it and see if it's authentic and true.

“Examine my words in the same way a goldsmith examines gold. He cuts it, burns it and hammers it. In the same way, accept my words only upon careful examination.”⁷ - The Buddha

In the context of modern science, the Dalai Lama says:

"If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims."⁸

That's a big if! Have we heard from the HH Dalai Lama if he personally believes there is conclusive evidence in the findings of science?

Most Tibetans (some of the last remaining believers in the flatness of our world), since the last few decades, have denounced the flatness of the world in favor of a globe for the simple reason that they were finally exposed to the rest of the world and the rest of the world believes it’s a globe. 

For some, they changed their mind because a Western patron demonstrated, with apples and oranges, why it doesn't get dark in Canada during summer, how the earth actually spins and tilts on its axis.⁹ Many gradually absorbed programming by NASA with its ubiquitous composite images of our world from space (“The Blue Marble”). 

It must be quite difficult to argue with the sentence: “Everyone knows the earth is round.”

Gendun Chöphel

Back in the medieval Tibet of 1934, before any Tibetans had heard or fathomed the globularity of our earth (with space out there, as opposed to space the great element that pervades all matter), Gendun Chophel AKA Earnest Priest went to India in search of knowledge that he suspected the Tibetans, his people, had been missing. Among many types of worldly knowledges, modern astronomy was one. 

Though Priest was widely ridiculed in his day, today he is seen as the one of the brightest of scholars of 20th Century Tibet for daring to question established Tibetan logic and for his iconoclastic ability to nullify every opponent in debate. He was the sole Tibetan modernist who undertook the arduous journey to India all the way to Sri Lanka and back again. Practically everything he wrote was with the wish that his people, the Tibetans, would intellectually and practically benefit from his discoveries.

"The World is Round and Globular" was published in Tibet Mirror's June 28, 1938, issue in Kalimpong and distributed among the Tibetan-reading people of the greater Himalayan region. Gendun Chophel’s readers would have been aristocrats and a few from the vast monastic order. It seems to be breaking news to Tibetans that the world is round! It's written in  the vernacular, a modernization of the written Tibetan language and signed with a pseudonym, Frank Dharma. 

TRANSLATION OF "THE WORLD IS ROUND & GLOBULAR" BY GENDUN CHOPHEL

Long ago in the lands of Europe, the people had no thought as to the shape of our earth. Rather, they spoke of it in just the way it appeared: flat. There was not even a single person with the intelligence to say it was round. All the ancient European religions posited the flatness of the earth with any mention of its roundness being virtually non-existent. So when the first person with intelligence decided to speak up on the matter of its roundness, well, that person was burned at the stake to keep such talk from spreading. And yet, in the end, the brilliance of facts and reason could not be withstood and it came to pass that now everybody is certain of the roundness of the earth. 

Today, not only is this earth seen as round, but even its trifling islands the size of four or five yojanas have been measured along with entire continents and sub-continents all the way down to their fathoms and cubits. Intelligent people of great lands have no suspicions regarding these facts. In countries like Sinhala, Burma, Thailand, and China—all Buddhist nations—none of their wise people speak of the earth's roundness as a falsity. But we Tibetans are so stubborn in insisting the opposite is true! 

The few foreigners who set sail across the sea were mad, we Tibetans said, calling them “mindless juveniles.” A thoroughly intelligent person of some other place or time is alien to us—we are simply terrified when we cannot explain something ourselves—even when we see the truth in front of our very own eyes.

European scholars are also very stubborn, so much so that if they do not have the direct perception of evidence, if they do not have the proof, then they do not trust and, thus, refute to the extreme while they promise never to be duped again. Needless to say, this insistence of ours to refute it all will not become authoritative on its own. 

Buddha said the earth is flat. He was striking a consensus among the systems of outsiders and popular belief. Now, by our refusal to accept outside systems, we are totally missing the point. But this only causes a pinprick's worth of harm. At least we still uphold our traditional systems and beliefs.

Buddha's homiletics often find harmonies in the minds of living beings. But since we can't always tell which of Buddha's sermons are expedient and which are definitive, what is the use of even talking about this classification of the environment and its contents when Buddha himself taught emptiness along with the paths and stages of liberation? Buddha taught topics of such profound meaning through a great many gates of expedient truths to satisfy the minds of all living beings. 

In Buddha's lifetime the regulation of what to eat and when for the ordained was set based on some discord here and there with local peoples. Householders tended to notice the most obvious discrepancies. Back then, when everybody was saying that the world was flat, the afternoon meal was prohibited. Now, if Buddha were to say the world is round and supper was provided, wouldn't we come and listen!

The urgency of this article is inconsequential. Not even a miracle can help! These days there are so many different shades of beings, ten billion of them each with different perspectives. And we all call the other "insane." Were Gautama's miracles to be performed today, a critical eye would not trust them at all. Still anyone with eyes can see—right around the time of learning their local alphabet—that the world is round. And if one is able to trust this one little truth—that the world is round—then this is good. Good indeed.

By Frank Dharma

Modern Lamas: Reasons for Roundness

Rather than actually prove the earth's globular shape with empirical evidence, Earnest Priest exercises another sort of rhetoric that would appeal to the authority of Europe and of other Buddhist nations in Asia that have, by his time, already become modernized. With his characteristic tongue-in-cheek and ironic tone, “Frank Dharma” self-deprecates his own ethnicity's dogged insistence upon adhering only to what the Buddha taught (with apparently no hope that they'd even accept his position).

If one appeal to authority were a fallacy, namely believing in Buddha’s Word just because; the other, science, is equally so.

Among Buddha's scripture, teachings are categorized as either expedient or definitive. This is, in fact, the crux of Frank Dharma’s appeal: though Buddha did not himself instruct which of his teachings were expedient or definitive, later generations of the lineage did. Now according to Frank, the Buddha's cosmology must be considered merely expedient, a popular yet impermanent and mistaken notion of the culture to whom he taught.

In other words, Buddha taught a level earth according to popular belief in India. Then, the Tibetans adopted the cosmology wholesale with the transcreation of the buddhadharma. Over a millennium later one modernist goes back to India to learn the earth is round and realize his people were the last to find out! 

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, along with Frank Dharma and most of the rest of the world, have debunked Mount Meru and its level earth (of vajra) by invoking science and empirical proofs. And yet, core tenets of science such as gravity and outer space have yet to be proven! So globular and vacuous sentiments seem more akin to tacit agreements than scientific arguments after all.

Buddha used expedient teachings to lead toward the definitive truths such as correlative arising, emptiness, and buddha nature. Had he not struck such a popular cultural chord by explaining it in terms of the popular cosmology of the day: dazzling with descriptions of worlds in billion-fold fields as many as the grains of sand in River Ganga; the gods on Mount Meru; our four continents and eight subcontinents; and surrounding that, the oceans and iron mountains containing them all; had he not dazzled with popular science, would he have been dismissed straightaway?

Contemporaneous Analysis: Level or Globular?

Many kinds of scientific evidence are used to both support and debunk opposing views regarding the shape of our earth. Religion has been disallowed and debunked and so it hasn’t factored into the conversation as of late. It’s not through closing our minds to all possibilities that we’ll ever know; on the contrary, the opposite perspective itself may hold the key. Since religion carries meaning, it should be just as sound a basis for informing our worldview.

People are publicly identifying in many new and diverse ways each according to their own perspective. That our world is actually called Subjective (according to Kongtrul, above) really hits the mark in naming our general mental conditions and perspectives. But the hivemind, as it were, has been hoodwinked by believing their paradigm is ultimately and inherently factual and true. So many religions, each with their own cosmology, have come and gone. So many scientific proofs have also come and gone. 

Which myth will be debunked? Which scientific proof will be disproven next?

The meaning and ultimate purpose of Buddhism remains: to alleviate sentient beings of their suffering and lead them all to nirvana—complete and perfect buddhahood. Can science in its globularity and black holes help with that? 

Hypothesis: people are happier who believe more so in vajra-like Buddhafields than the vacuity of space so dark and cold.

Question: has anyone from our so-called scientific tradition ever become enlightened? 

Sun and moon, souls wander in a firmament of fixed stars.

Regarding Other Traditions & Perspectives

Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye explains the Kalacakra Tantra as yet another cosmology that is complete in and of itself and is the basis for its own unique path to realization. Needless to say it might seem to contradict the Indo-Tibetan view discussed at length above. That it is also fully accepted by the very same tradition speaks to the view of definitive truth: that all such systems as taught are merely expedient. They are taught as vehicles to approach the ultimate truth of emptiness. Nothing is real in and of itself. 

In his autocommentary, Kongtrul says:

"One may wonder why this description of the universe does not accord with that of phenomenology and other systems. The omniscient Victorious One did not view any aspect of either the environment or the inhabitants of our world-system as ultimately real. Therefore, his teaching is not one that, based on a belief in a single view, sets forth a particular system as the only valid one. Instead, the Buddha spoke in response to the various levels of capabilities, interests, and dispositions of those to be guided [to enlightenment]."¹⁰

The "view" of not seeing the environment or its inhabitants as ultimately real is the distinguishing factor of Buddhist cosmology (it’s not at all about the appearance or shapes of things). Among the scriptures of Buddha (the sūtras and tantras), all are taught and understood in the context of this crucial point. Buddhas utilize skillful means in relation to those souls to be tamed: fields, realms, and worlds are taught for no other purpose than to develop sentient beings into their fullest potential—buddhas. 

Each traditional view must be understood according to its own terms and cultural context. Traditional cosmologies each have their own logic that tend to lead towards a deeper understanding, morality, and purpose. Even science is not a monolithic view: plenty of scientists have differing perspective and proofs each according to their particular school and lineage of thought. 

Whichever cosmology one subscribes to should expediently lead to more happiness and enlightenment. What's the use of merely “knowing” if one is just miserable and defensive? Even subjective knowledge can lead to delight and an open heart. It's much easier to find the deeper meaning in a relaxed and natural state.

The Virtues of Our Buddhafield

Vimalakīrti teaches a multitude of cosmic guests in the comfort of his living room: this world-realm, Endurance, is the special domain and Buddhafield of none other than Buddha Śākyamuni himself. 

There are ten virtuous practices here that don't exist in any other buddhafield. These are based on the sacred prayer and intention of the Bodhisattva in his many lifetimes leading up to his final one where Śākyamuni continues to appear contemporaneously with the karma of souls. 

[I]n this Sahā universe, there are ten virtuous practices that do not exist in any other buddhafield. What are these ten? Here they are: to win the poor by generosity; to win the immoral by morality; to win the hateful by means of tolerance; to win the lazy by means of effort; to win the mentally troubled by means of concentration; to win the falsely wise by means of true wisdom; to show those suffering from the eight adversities how to rise above them; to teach the Mahāyāna to those of narrow-minded attitudes; to win those who have not produced the roots of virtue by means of the roots of virtue; and to develop living beings without interruption through the four means of unification. Those who engage in these ten virtuous practices do not exist in any other buddhafield.¹¹

While we wallow in the mud of cyclic existence (the world as we know it), the figurative lotus blooms for those who are able to endure for good. To connect with a spiritual hero practicing these ten virtues, and more yet when one practices them directly, the fast track to enlightenment is most certainly set and buddhadharma surely spreads. 

When it comes back around to the shape of our world, on the tenth ground of awakening we may know whether the earth is really round or flat. 

From our perspective in the Mountain West of North America it’s surely Boundless Cows in the Wild West. 

Wisdom is the sun; cosmos plasma moon. 

Holograms delight upon the solid gold ground.

Endnotes

1. Blo gros mtha' yas [Intellect Infinity]. Shes bya kun khyab [Universal knowledge]. dpal spungs dgon pa: mdo khams sde dge, 19th Century CE. Vol. 1: ff. 1a-2b
2. Blo gros mtha' yas [Intellect Infinity]. shes bya kun khyab [Universal knowledge]. dpal spungs dgon pa: mdo khams sde dge, 19th Century CE. Vol. 1: ff. 2a-2b.
3. rnam par snang mdzad gangs chen mtsho
4. History of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism. An Abridged Definitive Ordering of the Nyingma Teaching, the Ancient Translation School of Secret Mantra entitled, Feast in Which Eloquence Appears. tr. Gyurme Dorje. Wisdom: Boston, 1991. p. 118
5. A Clearly Elucidated History of the Precious Teachings of the Vehicle of Indestructible Reality According to the Earliest of All Teachings of the Conqueror in the Land of Snows, the Ancient Translation School, entitled Thunder from the Great Conquering Battle-Drum of Devendra. tr. Gyurme Dorje. Wisdom: Boston, 1991. p. 409
6. An Abridged Definitive Ordering of the Nyingma Teaching, the Ancient Translation School of Secret Mantra entitled, Feast in Which Eloquence Appears. tr. Gyurme Dorje. Wisdom: Boston, 1991. p. 130
7. http://levekunst.com/be-like-a-goldsmith/
8. Dalai Lama XIV. The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality.
9. Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye. Myriad Worlds. Tr. Kalu Rinpoche Translation Group. Snow Lion: Ithaca, Boulder, 2003. p. 166
10. The Noble Mahāyāna Sūtra: "The Teaching of Vimalakīrti." Tr. Robert Thurman. 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha. 9.27

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