What are regular kalpas?

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ozymandias
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Joined: Mon May 23, 2022 10:35 pm

What are regular kalpas?

Post by ozymandias »

Greetings everyone I'm new to Buddhism but I'm not interested in the healing nonsense. I truly believe in Buddhism.

I have some questions about the kalpas. My understanding is that there are 20 antarakalpas in every kalpa. And recently I read about regular kalpas that they're 1000x shorter than an antarakalpa, is this true?

I know that in every antarakalpa the human lifespan gets shorter and shorter until civic is reset once more. But what happens between regular kalpas, are they even canon?

Thank you :smile:
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Aemilius
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Joined: Sat Mar 27, 2010 11:44 am

Re: What are regular kalpas?

Post by Aemilius »

from the Lotus sutra school dictionary: "kalpa [劫] (;  kō): In ancient Indian cosmology, an extremely long period of time. There are various views on the length of a kalpa. According to The Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom, a kalpa is longer than the time required to wear away a cube of rock forty ri (one ri being about 450 meters) on each side, by brushing it with a piece of cloth once every hundred years. Great Perfection of Wisdom also defines a kalpa as being longer than the time needed to remove all the mustard seeds filling a city forty ri square, if one takes away one seed every hundred years. Nearly identical explanations appear in the Miscellaneous Āgama Sutra, where the length of each side of the rock is given as one yojana (about 7 kilometers), and the size of the city as one yojana square.
The word kalpa is also used in describing the formation and disintegration of the world. According to Buddhist cosmology, a world perpetually repeats a four-stage cycle of formation, continuance, decline, and disintegration. The periods corresponding to these four stages are called the four kalpas. Each of these four kalpas—the kalpa of formation, the kalpa of continuance, the kalpa of decline, and the kalpa of disintegration—lasts for twenty small kalpas. A small kalpa is defined in terms of cyclical changes said to occur repeatedly in the human life span during the kalpa of continuance. Over the course of a small kalpa, the human life span increases from 10 to 80,000 years and then decreases from 80,000 to 10 years. The increase of life span occurs at the rate of one year every hundred years, and the decrease of life span also occurs in the same way. During the kalpa of continuance, a world and its inhabitants continue to exist for twenty small kalpas, that is, while the human life span repeats its increase and decrease in this way. The time required for the life span to increase from 10 to 80,000 years is 79,990 years multiplied by 100, which equals 7,999,000 years. Exactly the same number of years is necessary for the decrease in life span from 80,000 to 10 years; that is, 7,999,000 is multiplied by two, equaling 15,998,000 years. Thus, this number represents the length of a small kalpa. Because a small kalpa is often described simply as a kalpa, 15,998,000 years, or about 16,000,000 years, is often given as the definition of the length of a kalpa."

From the Wisdom Library:
"Kalpa (कल्प) or Caturkalpa refers to the “four aeons” as defined in the Dharma-saṃgraha (section 87):

antara-kalpa (an intervalic aeon),
mahā-kalpa (a great aeon),
śūnya-kalpa (an empty aeon),
sāra-kalpa (an essential aeon).

"The Dharma-samgraha (Dharmasangraha) is an extensive glossary of Buddhist technical terms in Sanskrit (e.g., kalpa). The work is attributed to Nagarjuna who lived around the 2nd century A.D.
Source: Buddhist Door: GlossaryKalpa in Sanskrit, Kappa in Pali. It is a fabulous period of four hundred and thirty two million years of mortals, measuring the duration of world. It is the period of time between other creation and recreation of a world or universe. The four kalpas of formation, existence, destruction and emptiness as a complete period, is called maha kalpa or great kalpas. Each great kalpa is subdivided into four asamkhyeya kalpas or kalpas. Each of the four kalpas is subdivided into twenty antara kalpas, or small kalpas. There are different distinctions and illustrations of kalpas. In general, a small kalpa is represented as 16,800,000 years, a kalpa as 336,000,000 years and a mahakalpa is 1,334,000,000 years.
A Kalpa denotes a great period of time; a period during which a physical universe is formed and destroyed.

Asankhyeya denotes the highest sum for which a conventional term exists:

According to Chinese calculations equal to one followed by seventeen ciphers;
According to Thibetan and Singhalese, equal to one followed by ninety-seven ciphers.

Every Maha-kalpa consists of four Asankhyeya-kalpas.

Kalpa Skt.; world cycle, world age (Pali, kappa); term for an endlessly long period of time, which is the basis of Buddhist time reckoning. The length of a kalpa is illustrated by the following simile: suppose that every hundred years a piece of silk is rubbed once on a solid rock one cubic mile in size; when the rock is worn away by this, one kalpa will still not have passed.

A kalpa is divided into four parts: the arising of a universe, the continuation of the arisen universe, the demise of that universe, the continuation of chaos. In the period of the arising of a universe, individual worlds with their sentient beings are formed. In the second period sun and moon come into being, the sexes are distin­guished, and social life develops. In the phase of universal demise, fire, water, and wind de­stroy almost everything. The period of chaos is that of total annihilation.


1. According to Visuddhimagga, there are several explanations for types of kalpas and their duration. In the first explanation, there are four types:

Ayu-Kalpa,
Antah-Kalpa,
Asankya-Kalpa,
Maha-Kalpa.

2. In another simple explanation, there are four different lengths of kalpas. A regular kalpa is approximately 16 million years long (16,798,000 years), and a small kalpa is 1000 regular kalpas, or about 16 billion years. Further, a medium kalpa is roughly 320 billion years, the equivalent of 20 small kalpas. A great kalpa is 4 medium kalpas, or around 1.28 trillion years.

https://www.wisdomlib.org/definition/kalpa#buddhism
svaha
"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Sarvē mānavāḥ svatantrāḥ samutpannāḥ vartantē api ca, gauravadr̥śā adhikāradr̥śā ca samānāḥ ēva vartantē. Ētē sarvē cētanā-tarka-śaktibhyāṁ susampannāḥ santi. Api ca, sarvē’pi bandhutva-bhāvanayā parasparaṁ vyavaharantu."
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1. (in english and sanskrit)
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