Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Hell - part5

While King Emma, in charge of Buddhist hell, has more in common with Hades than with Satan, the Hells of Dante and Genshin, not surprisingly, have similar occupants. Both writers, however, differ greatly in their conceptions of the shape and size of the cosmos. Dante's conception was the general Ptolemaic conception, with the heavens lodged in the spheres. For Genshin, many of the various realms of the six migratory states of existence mentioned above are located on or near Mount Sumeru, the axis of every Buddhist universe. The lower divisions of the Earthly Paradise are located on top of this mythological mountain while the True Paradise lies trillions of Buddha lands to the West, beyond the limits of the World as we know it.



No comments:

Post a Comment