Which heavens correspond

[Fortyeightvows]

Christians talk about a heaven. If we were to map that onto buddhist cosmology, which heaven would that be?
How about the christian hell?

thank you

[PadmaVonSamba]

I don’t know if that works.
But I have heard the suggestion that the Judeo-Christian-Muslim god describes an Asura or “jealous god”, who is envious of the god (deva) realm.

“For you shall worship no other god:
for the LORD, whose name is Jealous,
is a jealous God.”
—Exodus 13:14

.
.
.

[Caoimhghín]

Maybe the upper heavens that are not destroyed during the ending of a kalpa, and then the hell would just be a desperate made up story to try to get people to behave, but beings still don't have endless lifespans in those heavens.

[SteRo]

Christians talk about a heaven. If we were to map that onto buddhist cosmology, which heaven would that be?

Do they teach sense pleasures in heaven? Or do they teach jhanic bliss in heaven? It is certainly not the immaterial sphere because they do no teach bodiless beings.

How about the christian hell?

These are the same as buddhist hot hells.

[Fortyeightvows]

Christians talk about a heaven. If we were to map that onto buddhist cosmology, which heaven would that be?

Do they teach sense pleasures in heaven? Or do they teach jhanic bliss in heaven? It is certainly not the immaterial sphere because they do no teach bodiless beings.

These are good points

[Caoimhghín]

One of the points of Christian heaven and Christian hell is that they are eternal and you go there forever. Leaving aside the moral issue of why a loving God sentences beings to infinite hell for de facto finite crimes, there is the central issue of the lifespan of the person and the immortality of their physical body.

No being has an eternal lifespan, even if Buddhadharma featured eternal hells.

Then the hell-wardens torture [the evil-doer] with what's called a five-fold imprisonment. They drive a red-hot iron stake through one hand, they drive a red-hot iron stake through the other hand, they drive a red-hot iron stake through one foot, they drive a red-hot iron stake through the other foot, they drive a red-hot iron stake through the middle of his chest. There he feels painful, racking, piercing feelings, yet he does not die as long as his evil kamma is not exhausted.

(MN 130)

Even the Avīci hell is determined by karma and its exhaustion. So the Christian hell is technically impossible, and the heaven likewise, to be quite honest.

[Aemilius]

They certainly exist, the heavens, that is.
What was Africa like in the imagination of the people in Europe 1000 years ago? -2000 years ago? -3000 years ago? -5000 years ago? -10 000 years ago?
Africa has been a real place all the time, but people during the different eras and different cultures have had very different ideas about Africa during those times.
You have to go and start mapping "the real Africa" (or heaven) yourself, I'm afraid.
And after you have done it You may discover that politicians and clerics will erase it. They will it declare it false, and they will draw a new map of Heavens in its place.

Polynesian conception of heavens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven#/m ... eavens.gif

[jhanapeacock]

Christians talk about a heaven. If we were to map that onto buddhist cosmology, which heaven would that be?
How about the christian hell?

thank you

It would be a pure land, heaven is presided by god itself, is outside space and time, it can`t be any realm within samsara, God itself is omnipotent and in posession of the three bodies, the Dharmakaya being equal with the "Father", Sambhogakaya with the "holy spirit" and Nirmanakaya with "the son". This is just especulation obviously but if we really believe that God is unbounded then he only can be akin to the Trikaya.

About hell, uhmm, an "eternity" sounds like Avicii hell to me. But they say that God forgives all sins, so the real Christhian hell would be something only reserved for the wickest of the wickest, and the great demons that revealed against God.

[lelopa]

.... but you could only go babtised to heaven - all others go to hell!

even if you saved a thousand lifes and are the inventor of a medicine against cancer & aids for 1,00$
you're going to hell if you are not babtised

[Aemilius]

Christians talk about a heaven. If we were to map that onto buddhist cosmology, which heaven would that be?
How about the christian hell?

thank you

It would be a pure land, heaven is presided by god itself, is outside space and time, it can`t be any realm within samsara, God itself is omnipotent and in posession of the three bodies, the Dharmakaya being equal with the "Father", Sambhogakaya with the "holy spirit" and Nirmanakaya with "the son". This is just especulation obviously but if we really believe that God is unbounded then he only can be akin to the Trikaya.

In Mahayana doctrine the Buddha Amitabha was long ago a human being, the Bodhisattva Dharmakara, practicing the path for many kalpas. As a result of this he became the founder of the Pureland called Sukhavati. Thus there is a vast difference to the Chr. dogma.
The heavens in samsara are also truly marvelous and vast, you can read descriptions of them in the Sutras and in the Abdhidharma.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_cosmology

[well wisher]

One of the points of Christian heaven and Christian hell is that they are eternal and you go there forever. Leaving aside the moral issue of why a loving God sentences beings to infinite hell for de facto finite crimes, there is the central issue of the lifespan of the person and the immortality of their physical body.

No being has an eternal lifespan, even if Buddhadharma featured eternal hells.

Then the hell-wardens torture [the evil-doer] with what's called a five-fold imprisonment. They drive a red-hot iron stake through one hand, they drive a red-hot iron stake through the other hand, they drive a red-hot iron stake through one foot, they drive a red-hot iron stake through the other foot, they drive a red-hot iron stake through the middle of his chest. There he feels painful, racking, piercing feelings, yet he does not die as long as his evil kamma is not exhausted.

(MN 130)

Even the Avīci hell is determined by karma and its exhaustion. So the Christian hell is technically impossible, and the heaven likewise, to be quite honest.

Well said, great points. Any form of eternal condemnation makes absolutely no sense, from any ethical or moral standpoint.
An Jealous "God" who would do such a thing, is actually more like an unreasonable tyrannical demon instead.
It is more reasonable to believe that Purgatory / hells state should happen only to an sentient being that has done very-harmful actual actions on a very massive scale & very frequent basis (eg. mass-murder/rapists, grand-theft). But all hells are also temporary states like all things in Samsara, and once the purpose is served and lessons are learned to try and avoid repetition, and the evil karma have been exhausted, then it is time to move on.

I don’t know if that works.
But I have heard the suggestion that the Judeo-Christian-Muslim god describes an Asura or “jealous god”, who is envious of the god (deva) realm.

“For you shall worship no other god:
for the LORD, whose name is Jealous,
is a jealous God.”
—Exodus 13:14

You have some excellent valid points, I agree as well. Such jealousy and tyranny behaves more like an Asura, instead of any Deva fitting the Buddhist canons.
The other possible match I would guess is "tavatimsa" 33 God realm, due to its lack of description aside from mansions in the air. But makes more sense if one removes the jealousy & tyrant behavior portions.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dha ... /loka.html
(7) The Thirty-three Gods (tavatimsa deva) Sakka, a devotee of the Buddha, presides over this realm. Many devas dwelling here live in mansions in the air.

.... but you could only go babtised to heaven - all others go to hell!

even if you saved a thousand lifes and are the inventor of a medicine against cancer & aids for 1,00$
you're going to hell if you are not babtised

This is the very reason why I find any notion of baptism rituals silly. It operates more like a superstitious cult instead, favoring some insiders and exclude outsiders without any reasonable or logical explanations, like a form of nepotism.

[jhanapeacock]

Christians talk about a heaven. If we were to map that onto buddhist cosmology, which heaven would that be?
How about the christian hell?

thank you

It would be a pure land, heaven is presided by god itself, is outside space and time, it can`t be any realm within samsara, God itself is omnipotent and in posession of the three bodies, the Dharmakaya being equal with the "Father", Sambhogakaya with the "holy spirit" and Nirmanakaya with "the son". This is just especulation obviously but if we really believe that God is unbounded then he only can be akin to the Trikaya.

In Mahayana doctrine the Buddha Amitabha was long ago a human being, the Bodhisattva Dharmakara, practicing the path for many kalpas. As a result of this he became the founder of the Pureland called Sukhavati. Thus there is a vast difference to the Chr. dogma.
The heavens in samsara are also truly marvelous and vast, you can read descriptions of them in the Sutras and in the Abdhidharma.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_cosmology

Yes, from other perspective the Dharmakaya is always active and always present, the Buddha is always there. Of course, there are many differences.
As marvelous those havens are , they are still impermanent and in the case of the pure abodes the beings there enjoy a limited lifespan, that`s why a pureland would be the only option if we take those eternalist claims literally.

[Malcolm]

that`s why a pureland would be the only option if we take those eternalist claims literally.

But we don't.

[Tlalok]

Some Abrahamic religions like Mormonism and some strains of Islam and Judaism do in fact have hell as an impermanent state. These are generally regarded as heretical by the orthodoxy in the religions, however.

[DewachenVagabond]

Some Abrahamic religions like Mormonism and some strains of Islam and Judaism do in fact have hell as an impermanent state. These are generally regarded as heretical by the orthodoxy in the religions, however.

As a former Mormon, I'm not totally sure what you mean by this, because Mormonism doesn't really have hell.

Mormons believe there are four destinations you can end up after you die, and they are all eternal. These are the Celestial Kingdom (heaven) at the highest, the Terrestrial Kingdom in the middle, and the Telestial Kingdom at the bottom. Virtually all of humanity would go to one of these three heavens. The CK is reserved for Mormons who have received all of the ordinances of the gospel, including baptism, endowment and sealing and who have remained "worthy." The Terrestrial is for Mormons who have not remained worthy or valiant, people who accept Mormonism after this life, and for people that haven't accepted Mormonism but are good people (according to Mormon morality and ethics). The Telestial Kingdom is for everyone else, from Hitler to the stoner next door.

Other than these three kingdoms, there is only one other destination one can end up according to Mormonism: Outer Darkness. Outer Darkness is not hell and it is not heaven. It is where the devil, his angels, and sons of perdition (anyone who has denied the Holy Ghost after receiving a sure witness) reside. It is the closest thing in Mormonism to hell, but it is never really called that. It is considered almost impossible to end up there. Most Mormon prophets and apostles seem to believe that you can only end up there if you have seen God and then gone on to deny it. Denying the Holy Ghost is held to be unforgiveable, even by Christ's atonement.

These are all of the final destinations, and they are all eternal. In between life and the final destination, however, is the Spirit World which is split in two: Spirit Prison and Spirit Paradise. Spirit Paradise is where spirits who have accepted Mormonism wait for judgement. Spirit Prison is inhabited by those who have rejected Mormonism or who haven't had the opportunity to encounter it. Spirits from Spirit Paradise visit Spirit Prison and preach to the beings there. This is the final chance for beings to accept Mormonism, and if one does so, they'll end up in the Kingdom they are "worthy" for. Within Spirit Prison spirits are punished for the sins they committed, because they haven't accepted Mormonism/Jesus's atonement. Beings who do not accept Mormonism in Spirit Prison wait there until the end of the Millennium. Next to Outer Darkness, this is the next closest thing to Hell in Mormonism. But it is closer to a bardo or limbo.

I suppose one could refer to either of these as hell. But then it would be more accurate to say that Mormonism has both permanent and impermanent hells. Still, neither of them are usually directly referred to as such. Even when referred to in that way, it seems more common to refer to Outer Darkness as hell.

[Varis]

These are all of the final destinations, and they are all eternal. In between life and the final destination, however, is the Spirit World which is split in two: Spirit Prison and Spirit Paradise. Spirit Prison is where spirits who have accepted Mormonism wait for judgement. Spirit Prison is inhabited by those who have rejected Mormonism or who haven't had the opportunity to encounter it. Spirits from Spirit Paradise visit Spirit Prison and preach to the beings there. This is the final chance for beings to accept Mormonism, and if one does so, they'll end up in the Kingdom they are "worthy" for. Within Spirit Prison spirits are punished for the sins they committed, because they haven't accepted Mormonism/Jesus's atonement. Beings who do not accept Mormonism in Spirit Prison wait there until the end of the Millennium. Next to Outer Darkness, this is the next closest thing to Hell in Mormonism.

"Spirit Prison" sounds very Kardecian.

[Aemilius]

It would be a pure land, heaven is presided by god itself, is outside space and time, it can`t be any realm within samsara, God itself is omnipotent and in posession of the three bodies, the Dharmakaya being equal with the "Father", Sambhogakaya with the "holy spirit" and Nirmanakaya with "the son". This is just especulation obviously but if we really believe that God is unbounded then he only can be akin to the Trikaya.

In Mahayana doctrine the Buddha Amitabha was long ago a human being, the Bodhisattva Dharmakara, practicing the path for many kalpas. As a result of this he became the founder of the Pureland called Sukhavati. Thus there is a vast difference to the Chr. dogma.
The heavens in samsara are also truly marvelous and vast, you can read descriptions of them in the Sutras and in the Abdhidharma.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_cosmology

Yes, from other perspective the Dharmakaya is always active and always present, the Buddha is always there. Of course, there are many differences.
As marvelous those havens are , they are still impermanent and in the case of the pure abodes the beings there enjoy a limited lifespan, that`s why a pureland would be the only option if we take those eternalist claims literally.

Are purelands really "eternal", i.e. not impermanent? And what is meant by that? Try to think about it. We can imagine living for a very long time, say like 10 000 years, or 100 000 years, etc... How does this idea feel to you? Do you not get bored, and how soon? Pesumably you will be changing, physically and mentally, during those 10 000 or 100 000 years. Perhaps it would be like going through the evolution of a horse, from a rabbit or dog size animal to its present form. Or from a microbe to a toad. Actually both if these take millions of years, so relatively 'little' would be taking place during our 10 000 or 100 000 years. But something would be taking place to our skandhas or our mind and form, this we can safely assume. How do you envisage living for a 10 000 or 100 000 years, in a same body-mind continuum?

[Aemilius]

I don't mean to say that you do not have the courage to live for 100 million or 200 million years, or more. 200 million years is the time it takes for a mountain to weather down to the ground level.
If you can imagine living for 100 000 million years, that may be likened to a permanent achievement. It is longer than the age of our present universe. Then you can continue from 100 000 million years to vaster ages of time.

[PeterC]

One of the points of Christian heaven and Christian hell is that they are eternal and you go there forever. Leaving aside the moral issue of why a loving God sentences beings to infinite hell for de facto finite crimes, there is the central issue of the lifespan of the person and the immortality of their physical body.

No being has an eternal lifespan, even if Buddhadharma featured eternal hells.

Then the hell-wardens torture [the evil-doer] with what's called a five-fold imprisonment. They drive a red-hot iron stake through one hand, they drive a red-hot iron stake through the other hand, they drive a red-hot iron stake through one foot, they drive a red-hot iron stake through the other foot, they drive a red-hot iron stake through the middle of his chest. There he feels painful, racking, piercing feelings, yet he does not die as long as his evil kamma is not exhausted.

(MN 130)

Even the Avīci hell is determined by karma and its exhaustion. So the Christian hell is technically impossible, and the heaven likewise, to be quite honest.

Well, not quite. Standard Christian eschatology describes a restructuring of the realms on the second coming (see Revelation 21) - "a new heaven and a new earth, for the former things had passed away, neither was there any more sea" etc. etc. The judging of the dead happens at that point. But even if those already in heaven are destined to stay in heaven, it's clearly not permanent. Now the Christian view would be that whatever succeeds it *is* permanent, but if we're looking at it from a Buddhist viewpoint, we would say that they have a revealed teaching showing a point in the future where heaven and earth are remade, presumably at the end of the kaliyuga, but the vision doesn't say a lot about what happens afterwards.

Now if we look at the christian heavens before that point, it would appear that they contain both dead human souls and non-human beings (the top three of the choirs of angels - seraphim, cherubim and thrones, per Aquinas' Summa Theologica). If these non-human beings with six wings and so forth are actually immortal, then these non-human beings would at a minimum correspond to devas. So we're in a heaven of some kind, but this poses a problem, because we have multiple distinct classes of beings in the heaven, of which some appear to be reincarnated mortals and some were created ab initio as immortal. But leaving that problem to one side, if we follow the schema of the Surangama Sutra (arbitrarily chosen because it's relatively detailed) then we're probably somewhere in the six karmaloka heavens, because you can get there by good deeds without developing meditative equipoise.

So this highly speculative exercise in comparative theology would suggest that beings reborn into that heaven are still on the wheel - they have not escaped it, they are simply exhausting the positive karma accumulated in this lifetime. At some point they will go elsewhere in the six realms. The corollary of this is, as you say, that the christian hell is also impermanent.

There is an implicit question behind this, which is - who or what in this context is god? Since we're recklessly mixing and matching traditions, we could maybe explain this with reference to the sequence of Brahmas under the Mahabrahma described in, I think, the Brahmajala Sutra (I may be wrong on that reference). The christian god would be another of these deluded creator gods, but one who manifests in a different form for the practitioners of the Jesus-dharma.

Of course these comparisons are by nature a bit nonsensical. But entertaining, nonetheless.

[DewachenVagabond]

These are all of the final destinations, and they are all eternal. In between life and the final destination, however, is the Spirit World which is split in two: Spirit Prison and Spirit Paradise. Spirit Prison is where spirits who have accepted Mormonism wait for judgement. Spirit Prison is inhabited by those who have rejected Mormonism or who haven't had the opportunity to encounter it. Spirits from Spirit Paradise visit Spirit Prison and preach to the beings there. This is the final chance for beings to accept Mormonism, and if one does so, they'll end up in the Kingdom they are "worthy" for. Within Spirit Prison spirits are punished for the sins they committed, because they haven't accepted Mormonism/Jesus's atonement. Beings who do not accept Mormonism in Spirit Prison wait there until the end of the Millennium. Next to Outer Darkness, this is the next closest thing to Hell in Mormonism.

"Spirit Prison" sounds very Kardecian.

It is very Kardecian. Mormons believe that the Spirit World occupies the same earth as us, we just can't usually see each other. After the Millennium the world is transformed into a crystal ball and this becomes the Celestial Kingdom. Mormons believe that the earth goes through similar stages and ordinances as humans following the Mormon goespel. For example, they think the great flood was the earth's baptism. Mormonism is about becoming deities, so the world has to be turned into a world for deities.

Actually, Mormonism is very peculiar and interesting. Much of it has to do with Joseph Smith's connection and interest in the occult/folk magic. For example, Mormons believe in a certain type of Animism. Basically, they think two things in the universe are permanent: matter and intelligence. Matter itself is of two kinds: physical and spiritual. When a god is creating a world they first create spirit bodies for every being (animal or human) as well as every inanimate object in the world, so everything is technically occupied by a spirit. It is all very strange for a Christian sect. There are even Mormons who believe in a form of reincarnation called Multiple Mortal Probations.