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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  
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7. The Universe. Buddhism declares that everything
has causes; that there is no permanent substratum of
existence. There is general agreement that the only true
method of explaining any existing thing is to trace one
cause back to the next, and so on, without the desire
or need to explain the ultimate cause of all things. The
universe is governed by causality. There is no chaotic
anarchy and no capricious interference.

The belief in karma and rebirth led to the assumption
of good and bad places to which people could be born
according to their deeds. The three spheres, or planes,
are (1) the immaterial plane where pure spirits live,
(2) the material plane where beings with subtle bodies
live, and (3) the plane of desire which corresponds to
our natural world, and in which the six classes of living
beings—gods, men, departed spirits, animals, demons,
and infernal creatures—live. Zen Buddhism in China
and Japan, however, has been rather indifferent to the


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problem of the structure of the universe. Moreover,
Buddhist intellectuals who have been educated in
modern science, however devout they may be, do not
believe this traditional cosmology.

Buddhism does not admit God as the creator of the
universe. It asserts that the universe is without begin-
ning and end, although one period of the universe
consists of the four periods; origination, duration, de-
struction, and annihilation. These succeed one after
another in cyclic change.