Tushita Heavenly Man Looks at the Human World

The fourth day in the Desire Realm is the Tusita Heaven. The Tusita Heavenly being is a thousand meters long, has a solemn appearance, is happy and contented, and has a life span of four thousand years. One day and night is equivalent to four hundred years in the human world. Based on this conversion, its lifespan is equivalent to 576 million human years.

Before all Buddhas are born into the human world, they will preach to the gods in the inner courtyard of Tushita Heaven. The reason is that the blessings of the gods are much greater than those of humans. In the scriptures, we see that the ancient Buddha Deng Deng was like this, the Buddha Sakyamuni was like this, and the Buddha Maitreya was like this.

We know that time and space are relative. Hundreds of millions of years are an extremely long time for human beings, but for heavenly beings, hundreds of millions of years on earth may not be considered a very long time. This article uses the Tushita deity's view of time and space to explore the fate and future of human beings and each of our individual lives.

When Tushita deities look at the human world, humans are just a group of small carbon-based meat insects that can use tools. They live and die for dozens of generations in a day, and all of them feel compassion and love.

Of course, the gods in Tushita Heaven also know that human beings are very special among the six realms. Although they are in the same time and space dimension as the animal realm and are also carbon-based life forms, they are completely different from the animal realm. The physical characteristics of human beings are more similar to those of the heavens. They are like materialized miniaturized versions. Human beings’ wisdom and perception of time and space give them infinite possibilities to connect the past and the next. Human beings are the most suitable path for cultivation among the six paths of living beings. They have a moderate lifespan with more suffering and less happiness. They have the possibility of falling into the three paths and the opportunity to transcend the heavens. From this point of view, it is beyond the reach of the heavens.

Converting the lifespan of the Tushita deities into human years, they can witness the multiple formations, residences, and voids of human civilization on earth. It can be deduced from this that at the beginning of our generation of human beings on the earth, Shakyamuni Buddha had been teaching the Dharma to all gods in the inner courtyard of Dusitian for many years. At the same time, Sakyamuni also paid attention to the development of mankind with infinite compassion. At the best time when mankind on earth developed to be able to accept and uphold Buddhism, he saw the opportunity and his great disciples were born at the same time. Proclaim the righteous Dharma to the world and save all sentient beings. Later generations called this period the Axial Age of human civilization, which is in line with the classic saying that one Buddha was born and supported by thousands of Buddhas.

During this period, a number of great sages and teachers emerged in the east and west of the world. Under their guidance, human spiritual civilization has made major breakthroughs. In the Western world, Socrates appeared during this period. He, his student Plato, and Plato's student Aristotle are known as the "Three Sages of Ancient Greece" and are widely considered by later generations to be the founders of Western philosophy. In the Eastern world, Laozi and Confucius were born one after another. Their theories and teachings laid a solid foundation for the civilization of the Greater China region in the form of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. China has remained the world's cultural center for more than two thousand years. Great power status.

Mr. Fang Dongmei, a great modern Chinese philosopher, once said that Mahayana Buddhism is the highest peak of philosophy, and studying Buddhism is the highest enjoyment of life. In fact, why don’t gods like to hear the Dharma? Dr. Toynbee, the great modern British historian, also said that with the development of scientific and technological civilization, mankind soon entered the age of nuclear weapons, which gave human civilization the ability and possibility of self-destruction. The doctor has high hopes for ancient China, hoping that China can dominate the future world, because the doctor believes that only China's Confucius and Mencius theories and Mahayana Buddhism can save the world and bring hope and happiness to the future of human civilization.

Although Buddha Sakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism, was not born in China, his teachings, especially Mahayana Buddhism, have the deepest connection with China, which is no accident. Buddhism soon took root in China after it was introduced to China from ancient India. It has gone through many hardships over the past two thousand years. Although it experienced the "Three Martial Arts and One Sect" that destroyed Buddhism, it quickly recovered and has always been a guide for all living beings to achieve liberation. The ever-bright lamp has freed countless sentient beings from suffering and brought stability and peace to the world.

In the Axial Age of mankind, after this group of great sages, represented by Sakyamuni Buddha, left humans on earth to go to other worlds, on about the fifth day, there was another group of great gods from the mysterious world. They are born into the world. They are represented by Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, Tesla, etc. They are not from the same place as the great sages who were born on earth in the Axial Age. They have completely different opinions and abilities. Their biggest feature is that they ushered in the era of scientific and technological civilization of mankind. In this era, material civilization developed rapidly, and in one day they created more products than this generation of mankind has created since its birth. Total material wealth. At the same time, it also greatly stimulates human greed and desire. The great abundance of materials not only fails to improve human happiness index, but also makes human beings indulge in material desires and cannot extricate themselves. After experiencing two major world wars, a weapon capable of self-destruction was created, making it very possible for this human civilization to self-destruct. The development of scientific and technological civilization has made the blue planet on which human beings live full of holes, and the global climate is changing.

As the saying goes, if the east is not bright, the west is bright, the development of scientific and technological civilization is destined to originate only in Western Europe. Because most of the ancestors of Western Europeans were pirates, they followed the law of the jungle and advocated the law of the jungle. The so-called democracy they invented also originated from the pirate logic of uneven distribution of spoils, just to avoid internal war.

Because they have never talked about democracy for the entire human race. We all know that the United States is not the United States of America today. It was originally the homeland of the Indians. Since the Western Europeans discovered this land, they almost killed all the native Indians and then established the Western European Empire on this land. A country dominated by immigrants. Wasn’t our ancient China’s century-old history of humiliation brought to us by the Western powers?

Technology itself is neither good nor evil. However, when technology emerged in the West, it inevitably had a predatory character. Westerners use technology, bully the weak, and plunder the world's resources. If they fall behind, they will be beaten, or even annihilated. The older generation of Chinese people should have personal experience, right? To the predator, the weak have no reason at all. Since there is no reason to argue, we can only treat others in their own way.

Under this historical torrent, ancient China was also forced to embark on the road of rejuvenating the country through science and technology. China is forced to develop science and technology, not proactively. The Chinese are forced to develop science and technology just for self-preservation and for peace. From this point of view, it is essentially different from the predatory nature of Westerners who use technology to bully the weak. Although the Orientals have thrown away their clothes and will never return to the past, they should not forget that they are descendants of Yan and Huang with black hair and yellow skin, descendants of saints. Confucianism talks about filial piety, brotherhood, loyalty, trust, propriety, righteousness, integrity, and shame, while Buddhism talks about refraining from doing evil and practicing good deeds. As early as the time of Buddha Sakyamuni, the Chinese sage Lao Tzu taught the principle of "the great road of inaction" and left the ancient classic "Tao Te Ching" to future generations. Therefore, it can be said that the ancestors of the Chinese people knew thousands of years ago that technology is not a good thing. It has great side effects, causing humans to lose their nature due to addiction to materialistic desires, and accelerating the process of humankind's collective destruction.

Why does this situation occur?

Let us analyze the difference between science and Buddhism from the perspective of a practitioner.

Science teaches people to do addition, and develops more advanced science and technology based on continuous learning and inheriting the scientific and technological achievements of the predecessors. Buddhism teaches people to do subtraction, constantly see through and let go, use precepts to generate concentration, use concentration to open up wisdom, restore the original nature, and save others by oneself.

Science focuses on the exploration of the material world. Modern technology is changing with each passing day and has almost reached the point of being omnipotent. However, the limitations of scientific development become increasingly obvious. For example, the development of science and technology cannot bring greater joy and peace to mankind. On the contrary, it is easier for human beings to indulge in material enjoyment and lose their original spirituality and inner peace.

Buddhism pays more attention to the exploration of the inner self, constantly seeing through and letting go, eliminating the false and retaining the true, until the original nature is revealed and eternal liberation is obtained.

Science pays attention to experiments, and the characteristic of experiments is repeatable verification. Therefore, the transformation of the material world by science and technology is more easily recognized and accepted by the public.

Buddhism can only be accessed by faith, and can only be known by experience, so Buddhism pays more attention to personal experience. Buddhism explores the truth of the universe. The living beings it talks about are not limited to carbon-based life. The space explored by Buddhism is not limited to one, two, three dimensions or the three realms and six realms. It also includes worlds beyond time and space. This is something we don’t understand. It is unimaginable for Buddhists.

We are now in the technological era of mankind, and science and technology are the primary productive forces. Technology seems to dominate everything. Material civilization is highly developed and changing with each passing day. Atomic energy, cloning, the Internet, VR, AI, human beings seem to be omnipotent. However, this is not the case. Faced with the vast space-time distance of hundreds of millions of light-years in the vast universe, human beings are really too small, and human technology can always be left behind. But traveling through time and space is a piece of cake for practitioners who have achieved fruition.

Science is like the name of a child who will never grow up, wielding a double-edged sword. He seems to represent the future of mankind, has created countless miracles, and has brought great benefits to mankind. Countless surprises. However, when the energy of this double-edged sword becomes stronger and stronger, it will have the ability to destroy human civilization itself, thus making the fate of the entire human race full of uncertainty and the possibility of instant destruction.

If a highly developed technological civilization does not have a matching spiritual civilization to dominate human behavior, the future of mankind will be unimaginable and full of crises.

Science uses desire as the driving force and teaches humans to learn competition from an early age. The further escalation of competition is struggle, and the further escalation of struggle is war... To be continued

——Chengcheng Lay< /p>