Outline of Buddhism, kalpa, aeon
How long is the kalpa? In a city 16 kilometres long and 16 kilometres wide, mustard seeds were sprinkled. If a person takes one mustard seed from the city every 100 years until the mustard seed in the city is exhausted, the time required is probably a kalpa. In such a long time, all beings are bound by love, circulating life and death, live and death from one to another, endless. Nirvana is just no longer reincarnate in it.
We are in Kalpa Xian right now. There are 20 minor kalpas in Kalpa Xian, and 1,000 Buddhas will appear in Kalpa Xian. At present, 4 Buddhas have appeared. No Buddha appeared in the 1st to 8th minors of Kalpa Xian. In the mitigation of the ninth minor kalpa, when human life was reduced to 60,000 years old, the first Buddha whose name is Kakusandha Buddha appeared. When human life was reduced to 40,000 years old, the second Buddha, Koṇāgamana Buddha appeared. When human life was reduced to 20,000 years old, the third Buddha whose name is Kassapa Buddha appeared. When human life was reduced to 100 years old, the fourth Buddha Sakyamuni Buddha was born. Therefore, a total of 4 Buddhas appeared in the ninth minor kalpa of the Kalpa Xian, and Sakyamuni Buddha was the fourth Buddha.
Maitreya Buddha will appear in the 10th minor kalpa of the Kalpa Xian, when human Life will be 84,000 years old, he will be the fifth Buddha of Kalpa Xian. In the subsequent 11th to 14th minor kalpas, no Buddha will appear. The 15th minor kalpa is the peak of the appearance of the Buddhas, during this period 994 Buddhas will appear. In the 16th to 19th minor kalpas, no Buddha will appear. Among the 20 minor kalpas, Skanda Buddha will be the last Buddha to appear in Kalpa Xian. There are 20 minor kalpas, and a total of one thousand Buddhas appear in this Kalpa Xian.
Among the thousands of virtuous Buddhas, Sakyamuni Buddha is relatively the most special. Because Sakyamuni Buddha chose to appear in the world of five dirties when human life is only one hundred years, and other Buddhas appear in relatively good times (the so-called five dirties refers to the dirty kalpa, the dirty experience, the dirty life, the dirty sentient beings, and the dirty worries).
This has a lot to do with Sakyamuni Buddha's brave and diligent practice. For example, in the "Diamond Sutra", it is recorded that when Sakyamuni was still a Bodhisattva, he was cut off by King Gori, the Bodhisattva was in a forbearance immortal and has no any anger at all. Moreover, the Bodhisattva also vowed that in the future, when he become a Buddha, the first person he will save is King Goli. And he fulfilled his vow when he became Sakyamuni Buddha.
Correction of moral defects is the basis for changing the destiny. Every time a moral defect is corrected, the destiny will develop a step towards a better direction. Away from sorrow and terror is the basis for learning Buddhism. Every time a dreadful delusion is put down, it is a step away from ego.
An experiment in the study of mirror neurons: The experimenters trained 6 macaques to learn to push switches to obtain varying amounts of food. There are 2 switches in total. If you push the A switch, they will get a lot of their favorite food; if you push the B switch, they will only get a small amount of bad food.
Macaques quickly learned to push the A switch to get a lot of their favorite food and get the biggest reward. No macaque chooses the B switch.
After maintaining this happy mode for a few weeks, the experimenters adjusted the experimental facilities and added a cage (connected to the electricity and triggered by the A switch), which contained a macaque.
That day when one of the six monkeys was hungry and decided to push the switch, something terrible happened: the macaque in the next cage received an electric shock and was in pain. All six macaques had seen it, they heard terrible screams, and looked at the macaque next to them with fear and trembling.
The 6 monkeys immediately changed their behavior: 4 monkeys decided not to push the A switch anymore. As long as they did not harm the other monkeys, they would rather push the B switch (the B switch does not promote electric shock) and eat less; the 5th monkey Do not push any switches for 5 days; the sixth monkey did not push any switches for 12 days.
In order not to let an unknown monkey be forced to suffer, they would rather go hungry!
This is the power of mirror neurons and one of the foundations of morality. Human morality has its innate foundation and is strengthened by acquired development. Higher animals can observe its traces.
Dead bees will automatically be cleared out of the hive by their living companions, because dead bees emit oleic acid, and oleic acid has a special smell.
But if a healthy bee is contaminated with oleic acid, it will also be forced out of the hive by its companion. After 120 million years of evolution, honeybees use oleic acid as the only criterion of death. Because of the effectiveness of this identification method, honeybees have not developed a higher analytical ability to identify whether oleic acid is produced by a corpse or contaminated by a healthy individual. The effectiveness of this identification limits the further evolution of bees, even after 120 million years there has been no progress.
When the geese hatch their eggs, they will move all the objects on the edge of the nest to the center of the nest. The purpose is to ensure that the eggs that accidentally roll out of the nest can be moved back to the nest in time to continue the incubation. But if golf balls or bottle caps are placed on the edge of the goose nest, these items will also be moved to the center of the nest by the geese that are hatching eggs. The evolution of the geese has not further improved the ability to analyze the items on the edge of the nest, because moving any item back to the center of the nest is enough to continue the geese population, and even 60 million years of evolution has not made any progress.
The selectivity of bees and geese that humans have observed during evolution also applies to humans themselves. The ability of human self-cognition may not have made any progress in the past 2.5 million years, and it is likely that human beings lack the urgent need for such cognition and finally give up the evolution of this cognition. Just like bees and geese.