Sacred Texts: Buddhism

Buddhism in Translations - § 69. World-Cycles.

Henry Clarke WarrenPali Canon TranslationsTheravada Buddhism

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This is a doctrinal exposition from the *Visuddhi-Magga* ("Path of Purification"), a 5th-century Theravāda Buddhist meditation manual by Buddhaghosa, here describing the "Fourth High Power" — the ability to recall past lives. The text presents a hierarchical taxonomy of six classes of beings ranked by the depth and range of this power: from non-Buddhist practitioners (limited to forty world-cycles, dependent on step-by-step mental tracing) up through ordinary disciples, great disciples, chief disciples, Private Buddhas, and finally fully enlightened Buddhas, whose memory is unlimited in scope and direction. A notably distinctive feature is its extended use of sensory and locomotive analogies — blind men with sticks, glow-worms versus the autumnal sun, lion-strides versus groping — to make the qualitative differences between these levels vivid and graduated. The text then shifts into a practical meditation manual, giving step-by-step instructions for how a monk should develop this power: emerging from the fourth trance, tracing events backward in time from the present moment through to the moment of death in a previous life. It addresses the psychological obstacle of the gap between existences (described as "thick darkness") and counsels persistence through repeated trance-entry, using the analogy of a woodcutter resharpening his axe. The broader cosmological framework — world-cycles destroyed by fire, water, and wind; Buddha-domains spanning ten thousand to boundless worlds — situates individual memory practice within an enormous Buddhist cosmology.

Buddhism in Translations - § 69. World-Cycles.

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