the Doctrines of Transmigration Found in Ancient Indian Religious Traditions, Shakyamuni Set Up a Phenomenology of Life in Terms of Past, Present, and Future Causes and Effects, with Recurring Cycles of Six Courses of Existence
From the basic idea that "others and self are one, natures and characteristics are equal," and the methodology of doing good and eliminating evil, one arrives at the realm of "one suchness" and "equality," whereupon it becomes a matter of course to delve into the question of the source of the life of living beings. Shakyamuni used the method of generalization to array the species of life into kinds, dividing them into general categories known as the six courses of existence: the celestial course, the asura or antigod course (whose realm is on the border of the divine and the demonic), the human course, the animal course, the hungry ghost course, and the hellish course of existence.
Because of the differences in the amounts and degrees of good and bad in their thoughts and actions, all living beings immerse themselves in being phenomena of life right in these six courses. People can do good and be born in heaven, and they can also do evil and turn into animals or hungry ghosts, or even fall into hell. But if celestial beings forget goodness, stir their thoughts, and do something wrong, they can also turn into antigods, or even go off into other courses of existence. At this point it is recognized that the phenomena of the life of all living beings in this universe, those that are different and those that are the same, all interchange through the good and bad in a single thought formulated in the mind. This is similar to the Taoist theory of the evolving universe. (But note that similar does not mean entirely the same.)
So the good and bad in a thought, and the action of rousing the mind and stirring thoughts, build up the subtle bit by bit to develop into the manifestly obvious. So Shakyamuni formulated the theory of cause and effect in three time frames: past, present, and future. Past causes build up into present effects, and the implications of present causes will build up into future effects. So the future and the past are like an endless ring, and the expression of recurring cycles of transmigration refers to this cyclical movement. Then he set up a doctrinal system of past, present, and future causes and effects, with recurring cycles of the six courses of existence. This is similar to the concept of causes and effects of virtue expressed in the I Ching: "A home that accumulates goodness will surely have abundant felicity," and "If goodness is not accumulated, it is insufficient to establish one's name; if evil is not accumulated, it is insufficient to destroy one's person."
Shakyamuni Pioneered Views of the Universe and the World
Whenever the ancient religions and philosophies of India approached metaphysical problems, they naturally touched on the search for the meeting point of the celestial and the human. Although the ultimate ends of their ideas and doctrines all came down to getting into Heaven, the Heaven worshiped by each individual sect and school was different, with no unity among them, and in addition there existed a clash between ideas of monotheism and pantheism.
The doctrine of Shakyamuni synthesized the borders of the celestial and the human into three zones (the "three realms") called the realms of desire, of form, and the formless realm. The realm of desire stretches from the celestial inhabitants in the heavens of our solar system to the humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and denizens of hell below.
The expression "realm of desire" indicates that the life of the beings in this realm comes from craving (for sex and nourishment). Speaking in a broad sense, craving includes the pleasures of the five desires for form, sound, fragrance, flavor, and feeling. In a narrow sense, it involves the acts of smiling, looking, conversing, embracing, and touching.
The realm of desire has six levels of celestial realms; for instance, the one among them called the Traya-strimsha Heaven contains an array of thirty-three heavens that alternate in prominence according to the time. The human realm within the realm of desire is generally divided into the four sectors—east, west, north, and south. Our human world is in the southern sector known as Jambudvipa. The overall name of this world is Saha, which has a double meaning: endurance and sorrow. This refers to the fact that this world is full of sorrow, with much that is painful and difficult; and yet humans and all living beings not only can endure that sorrow, suffering, and hardship, but can diligently turn toward good, thereby becoming worthy of praise. If there were no sorrow or suffering in the world, we naturally could not distinguish good or bad. Fundamentally, there is no good or bad to speak of, so it should be the completeness of nature that is considered good; then nothing can be totally denied, and nothing can be praised.
Each of the celestial and human worlds in the realm of desire has a ruler. Beyond the realm of desire is the realm of form, where the beings experience only feelings and ideas, without desires. The beings in the realm of form can produce the fruit of life just by looking at each other and smiling in a meeting of minds. In that realm are eighteen levels of heavens corresponding to states of realization produced by beings cultivating the realms of quiet contemplation and meditative concentration. The highest heaven in the realm of form is called the Heaven of the Ultimate of Form, whose ruler is the god Mahesvara.
Beyond the realm of form is the formless realm, which is reckoned to have four levels of heavens. Those who have attained the fruits of practicing meditation are born in the formless realm where they have only mental consciousness; emotional desires do not exist for them. Finally, the one governing this whole domain of three realms is called the great god Brahma.
From this simple explanation it can be seen how Shakyamuni partitioned the spheres of the celestial and human into a general scheme of sixty heavens under the overall rubric of the three realms, all of which are still within the bounds of the recurring cycles of the six courses of existence. This cosmic world of three realms has an individual solar system as its primary unit. And stretching from the human world up to the sun and moon, and the heavens within the three realms, the realities and concepts of time have their own individual differences. For example, a day and night on the moon is equal to a fortnight in the human world; a day and night on the sun is equal to a year in the human world. Differentiated in this way, the time frames of the worlds of the cosmos are so many and so detailed as to be incalculable, but in sum it can be said that Shakyamuni's view of the universe was that of an infinitely vast cosmos.
In his worldview, with one solar system as a basic world system unit, a world system of a thousand solar systems was called a thousand-world system. A group of a thousand thousand-world systems was called a million-world system. A group of a thousand million-world systems was called a billion-world system. Shakyamuni said that in this limitless, boundless cosmos there are innumerably many such billion-world systems, as many as there are grains of sand in the Ganges River. When from this perspective we look back upon the tumultuous agitation of lustful beings in the human world, it appears pathetically small and trivial.
Shakyamuni expounded his view of the cosmos in terms of three realms containing billions of world systems, thus synthesizing the various ancient Indian religious and philosophical concepts of the divine and the human. He also opened up the domain of the heart of human knowledge, reaching worlds inaccessible even to astronomy and mathematics, and in the other direction analyzing matter all the way to the subatomic level, entering so deeply as to reach the ultimately formless and signless subtlety. Thus he made it hard for the contents of the philosophical thought of any school, past or present, to compare with his for richness and completeness.
Shakyamuni Synthesized a Metaphysical Ontology
The controversies of ancient Indian religious philosophies and various sects of philosophical thought with regard to the source of life in the universe are not only a welter of diverse doctrines without a unifying agreement as to what is right, but they also each construct a system of doctrine based on logic. These doctrines, however, never go beyond the bounds of theism and atheism, monism and pluralism, idealism and materialism.
In reality, if we sum up the most basic and fundamental searches of human culture throughout the world and its history, they
