Kalpa (mythology)

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Kalpa ( Sanskrit : कल्प , kalpa ; world period, aeon, Pali : kappa ) denotes a very long period of time, which is the longest unit of time in the cyclical cosmology of Hinduism and Buddhism . A kalpa denotes the time it takes for the universe to arise, to pass and to return to the very bottom of the cosmic ocean, which is formless and undifferentiated.

Hinduism

In the Puranas , kalpas are related to the gods Vishnu and Brahma . After each kalpa, Vishnu sleeps on his bed prepared from the serpent Shesha . There is nothing left of creation but the ocean, not even the gods exist, all worlds are darkened. Out of Vishnu's joy in the divine game , Vishnu's navel becomes a lotus in which Brahma appears. Vishnu explains to Brahma that he is the origin and dissolution of all creation. Brahma also declares that he is a creator. Vishnu enters Brahma's belly and sees all worlds there. Brahma then enters Vishnu's stomach, but sees nothing there, since Vishnu has closed all doors.

According to the Indian doctrine of the universe, Kalpa is also a day of Brahma, which covers a period of 4,320,000 years, whereby Brahma's life lasts one hundred Brahma years (a Brahma year consists of 9.259259 × 4,320,000 = 40 million human years ). The most famous cosmological calendar of Hinduism are the Yugas . A kalpa, although there are different calculations, lasts a thousand world ages (mahayugas), the 12,000 god years and 4,320,000 human years, which are distributed over the four yugas.

A day of Brahma and a night of Brahma create a cosmos from creation to the extinction of the cosmos, at the end of which there is the dissolution of the world, which then rests undeveloped until a new creation emerges.

After 100 Brahma years (40 billion human years) the world will finally end and dissolve into the subtle primordial matter until a new cycle begins either by divine power or by itself.

Next referred Kalpa one of the so-called. Tools of the Veda , the Vedangas . It is Hindu ritual literature that arose from the need to compress the rules for the sacrificial rituals in a shorter and clearer form in order to be more suitable for the practical needs of the priests ( brahmins ).

Buddhism

In Buddhism, Kalpa denotes an aeon of mythological calendar.

A kalpa is divided into the following four periods:

  1. End of the world (samvatta-kappa, "waning world")
  2. Persistence of Chaos (samvattatthāyī)
  3. Creation of the world (vivatta-kappa)
  4. Persistence of the created world (vivattatthāyī)

To illustrate the duration of such a period, the following parable from the Samyutta-Nikaya is often used.

“If there were, oh monk, a boulder made of a single mass, a mile long, a mile wide, a mile high, unbroken, unsplit, fissured, and every hundred years a man would like to come and do the same with a silk handkerchief rub, then verily, O monk, the rock consisting of a single mass would rather be worn away and disappear than a world. That, O monk, is the duration of a world. Of such worlds, O monk, many have vanished, many hundreds, many thousands, many hundreds of thousands. But how is that possible? Incomprehensible, O monk, is this round of existence (samsāra), unknowable the beginning of the beings who, sunk in delusion and shackled by desire, wander through the births, hurry through the births.

- Samyutta Nikaya 15-5

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nyānatiloka: Buddhist Dictionary. Concise handbook of Buddhist teachings and terms in alphabetical order . Beyerlein & Steinschulte, Stammbach 1999, ISBN 3-931095-09-6 .
  2. ↑ palikanon.com: kappa