Chapter 142 Cognizing the Universe

Over the following period, Hua Feng gained a deeper understanding of the explanations concerning the Six Realms.

Among them, directly beneath the second layer of the Six Realms of Rebirth was the "Hell Realm," depicted with pitch-black gates of hell where an ox-headed jailer was about to cast a "sinner" into a cauldron of boiling oil. This realm was a place of gathered suffering and extreme tragedy.

To the right of the "Hell Realm" was the Hungry Ghost Realm, carved with a starving ghost holding up a human and biting into its head. The hungry ghosts in this realm suffered the most among all spirits, enduring constant hunger and finding it difficult to obtain a single meal in tens of thousands of years. Even if they managed to acquire food, it would instantly be consumed by fierce flames and reduced to ashes. To the left of the "Hell Realm" was the "Animal Realm," carved with a lion, an ox, and a horse being driven by others and devouring one another. This realm was the gathering place of all animal kinds.

The sculptures of the third layer illustrated the basic content of the "Twelve Links of Dependent Origination," displaying the causes and manifestations of the suffering of all sentient beings.

In a small circular niche right in the center above the third layer was carved a Rakshasa general. Dressed in military attire, holding a treasured sword, he sat solemnly with a dignified posture. Proceeding counterclockwise from below, the carvings sequentially depicted: an old man sitting leisurely with a pottery wheel placed beside him; a monkey sitting in the full lotus position; an old fisherman steering a boat and catching fish; a spiritual practitioner meditating quietly; a pair of men and women caressing each other's hands; a woman standing and confiding in a seated man; a mother holding an infant; a youth kicking an earthenware jar and beating an elderly woman; an official in court robes displaying a wrathful expression; a pregnant woman; an attendant supporting an elderly person; a sick person; a coffin, with two women leaning over it and weeping bitterly; two men and women sitting together in conversation with sorrowful expressions; a man covering his face with both hands, harboring deep grief; a woman carrying a child on her back, bidding a reluctant farewell to a man; and a man tightly holding the reins, leading a horse without riding it.

These sculptures sequentially represented the twelve interconnected or causal links of human life within the "Twelve Links of Dependent Origination": ignorance, formations, consciousness, name and form, six sense bases, contact, feeling, craving, clinging, becoming, birth and aging (sickness) and death, along with sorrow, lamentation, pain, and distress.

To vividly illustrate the specific process of the transmigration of life and death, the fourth layer was divided into eighteen grids. Within each grid, housed inside tile-like cylindrical sleeves, were carved the images of various sentient beings undergoing the cycle of rebirth. Starting from the "Heavenly Realm" and proceeding counterclockwise, they were: human head and human tail, human head and beast tail (Heavenly Realm); wolf head and human tail, ox head and beast tail, lion head and beast tail (Asura Realm); bird head and beast tail, beast head and snake tail (Animal Realm); horse head and snake tail, fish head and human tail, snake head and beast tail (Hell Realm); human head and beast tail, beast head and beast tail (Hungry Ghost Realm); pig head and beast tail, dragon head and human tail, bird head and beast tail (Human Realm), and so on. This likely indicated the state of conception in life and death, with the head denoting the realm of birth and the tail denoting the realm of death.

After a person died, they underwent a transition period known as the "intermediate state" before transmigrating once again. The scope of transmigration remained within the Six Realms, namely the Heavenly Realm, the Human Realm, the Asura Realm, the Hell Realm, the Hungry Ghost Realm, and the Animal Realm. Rebirth within the heavenly, human, and Asura realms involved lesser suffering, and thus they were collectively known as the "Three Good Realms." In the hell, hungry ghost, and animal realms, suffering was immense, so they were collectively referred to as the "Three Evil Realms."

Regarding the doctrine of liberation within the Six Realms:

Chinese culture throughout successive dynasties took Confucianism as its mainstream, while Confucian doctrine regarded ethical morality as the essence of the Chinese nation's culture. The foremost foundation that nurtured this national spirit was the concept of filial piety. Confucianism criticized Buddhists for severing affection to leave their parents, shaving their hair and beards, burning bones and cutting flesh to leave home for ascetic practice as acts of great unfilial conduct.

However, under the cycle of the Six Realms, a wife might be one's mother from a past-past life, a father's wife might be one's wife from a previous life, and a beloved dog might be one's husband from a past life, continuing an unfinished bond in the present existence. The meat consumed by humans might belong to blood relatives from countless lifetimes. Thus, all sentient beings could potentially be one's parents and relatives from past lives. As Patriarch Zhigong stated: How strange, how peculiar, a grandson marries his grandmother. Pigs and sheep sit on the heating kang, close relatives boil in the pot. A daughter eats her mother's flesh, a son beats a drum made of his father's hide. Everyone comes to offer congratulations, but I see only true suffering!

Faced with Confucian reproaches, Buddhism on the one hand made compromises and integration, promoting the ideology of unifying ascetic discipline and filial piety, combining karmic retribution with the path of filial piety. Through describing the various hell sufferings awaiting unfilial individuals and the various heavenly blessings to be gained by those who uphold filial piety, Buddhist scriptures warned the world from both perspectives that people should revere and believe in the Triple Gem and be filial to their parents. Afterwards, the idol worship of the Child-Giver Guanyin was integrated with Buddhism and the Confucian notion that "of the three unfilial acts, having no posterity is the worst."

On the other hand, Buddhism maintained that the ultimate purpose of Confucianism lay in material provision, ensuring parents lived in peace and comfort during their present lives with sufficient food and clothing, thereby bringing honor to their ancestors. This form of Confucian filial piety was narrow and minor, an earthly doctrine of filial piety practiced solely toward one's present-life parents. Only the transcendent filial piety of Buddhism constituted true great filial piety, a permanent filial piety.

This was because Buddhist filial piety demanded guiding parents to study the Buddha-dharma, enabling them to cut off the karmic stream of ignorance and afflictions, transcend the suffering of the Six Realms' rebirth, and realize the ultimate joy of Nirvana. Furthermore, it sought to save past parents and relatives across myriad kalpas—whether human, animal, insect, or ant—so that they might equally share in the benefits of the Dharma and ascend together to the Land of Ultimate Bliss.

A few days later, the study of the Six Realms finally came to an end. At the same time, the study of cognitive understanding of this world began.

The universe is an astronomical term. In a broad sense, the universe is a general designation for all things, representing the unification of time and space. In a narrow sense, the universe is defined as the space and matter existing beyond Earth's atmosphere.

The "universe" in "space navigation" refers to this narrow definition of the "universe," meaning navigation in the space beyond the atmosphere.

As for the essence of the universe, there are currently three general concepts.

The idealistic universe of consciousness, the materialistic universe of matter, and the universe of laws.

Ancient definitions of the universe include the statement from the Western Han text *Huainan Zǐ*: "That which goes from the past to the present is called *Zhou* (time); that which extends in all directions—up, down, left, and right—is called *Yu* (space)."

Observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation have revealed that our universe has been expanding for 13.82 billion years, and the latest research suggests that the diameter of the universe can reach 96 billion light-years, or even more.

The fraction of the universe observable by humanity is composed of approximately 4.9% ordinary matter (the matter forming stars, planets, gas, and dust) or "baryons," 26.8% dark matter, and 68.3% dark energy. Baryonic matter forms the "cosmic web" across interstellar space.

Dark matter and dark energy manifest their existence through the gravitational effects they exert on ordinary matter and by driving the accelerated expansion of the universe, respectively. If dark energy did not exist, the universal gravitation between matter would slow down the expansion of the universe, but astronomical observations indicate that our universe is undergoing accelerated expansion. The universe is composed of all celestial bodies.

From Ancient Times to Modernity:

Ancient Chinese people once proposed the theories of *Gaitian* (enveloping heavens), *Xuanye* (diffuse night), and *Huntian* (concentric spheres). During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, folk legends of Chang'e flying to the moon already existed, and the Han dynasty scholar Zhang Heng also proposed the infinite universe concept that "the outer boundary of *Yu* has no limit, and the extremes of *Zhou* have no end." The *Huntian* theory posited that the shape of heaven and earth was like an egg, with the relationship between heaven and earth resembling an eggshell enclosing the yolk. Zhang Heng believed that the *Huntian* theory better accorded with actual observations.

In the 7th century BCE, the Babylonians believed that both heaven and earth were arched, that the great earth was surrounded by oceans, and that a high mountain stood at its center.

Ancient Egyptians imagined the universe as a giant box with the sky as its lid and the earth as its base, with the Nile River situated at the center of the earth.

Ancient Jews believed that the Earth was the center of the universe, surrounded by a ring of celestial bodies, beyond which other heavenly bodies were sparsely distributed. A stationary celestial sphere existed, within which stars maintained their respective positions and rotated ceaselessly.

Earth Was Originally Approximately Spherical:

The ancient Greeks were the earliest to recognize that the Earth was spherical. In the 6th century BCE, Pythagoras, proceeding from aesthetic concepts, maintained that among all three-dimensional figures, the sphere was the most beautiful, and argued that celestial bodies and the Earth were both approximately spherical. This concept was inherited by many later ancient Greek scholars and was confirmed in the early 17th century by Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe.

Geocentrism, Heliocentrism, and the Law of Universal Gravitation:

In the 2nd century CE, Claudius Ptolemy proposed the world's first planetary system model—geocentrism. The Earth was positioned at the center of the universe. Moving outward from the Earth in sequence were the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, each revolving around the Earth in its own circular orbit. To account for the uneven motion of the planets, he proposed that planets rotated on epicycles around their centers, while the centers of the epicycles revolved around the Earth along deferents.

In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus published *De revolutionibus orbium coelestium* (*On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres*), formally putting forward the "heliocentric" view.

He argued that the Sun was the center of the planetary system, with all planets revolving around the Sun. The Earth was also a planet, rotating on its axis like a top while simultaneously orbiting the Sun like the other planets. In medieval Europe, Ptolemy's geocentrism long held a dominant position because it met the needs of the theological ruling theory.

To defend heliocentrism, numerous benevolent and righteous people engaged in successive struggles against dark theological ruling forces, paying the price in blood.

In 1609, Johannes Kepler's three laws of planetary motion revealed that the Earth and all planets revolved around the Sun in elliptical orbits, advancing heliocentrism and laying the foundation for Isaac Newton's formulation of the law of universal gravitation. Following Hans Lippershey's invention of the telescope in 1608, Galileo immediately modified it and turned it toward the vault of heaven.

In 1610, Galileo published his epoch-making work, *Sidereus Nuncius* (*The Starry Messenger*). The hazy Milky Way turned out to be a boundless sea of stars, the bright moon was unexpectedly covered in craters, the brilliant Sun harbored sunspots, and the phase changes of Venus alongside Jupiter's four moons furnished the most reliable evidence for heliocentrism.

In 1687, Isaac Newton discovered the law of universal gravitation, providing Copernicus's theory with an even firmer scientific foundation.

The birth of the astronomical telescope brought about the first revolution in astronomy. With the advent and improvement of observational and analytical instruments such as astronomical telescopes, humanity's understanding of the universe became increasingly clear and rich. Every development and breakthrough of the telescope fostered major astronomical discoveries and leaps in human understanding of the universe, exerting a profound impact on mathematics, physics, and other natural sciences while advancing the course of human civilization.

Life flowed onward, slowly turning along the river of time, tireless yet seemingly endless. Standing on the platform outside the underground city, Hua Feng gazed at the starry sky above, feeling the vast emptiness across the icy plains, his mind drifting far away.

"I wonder when I will be able to end all of this and do things that my heart once yearned for, rather than merely living for survival." Hua Feng silently indulged in this reverie within his heart.