Mahākalpas
Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia is now 14 years old
Our Encyclopedia recently received a wonderful opportunity for a major renewal on its 14th birthday . After many years of growing our Encyclopedia had become bit slow and sometimes even decided not to answer when people knocked on the door.
A very big thank you and blessings to Dmytro Rudiy (rudiy.nl) for his great work in upgrading the server, website and all of the infrastructure and helping make TBE fast and reliable again for everyone! 🙏🙏🙏
We kindly ask our readers to help us cover the cost of this important upgrade and also help with the ongoing costs of keeping the Encyclopedia alive and freely available.
or card
Every little donation helps and every one is deeply appreciated. 🙏🙏🙏
OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM 🙏🙏🙏
May blessings shower down on all of yous 🙏🙏🙏
A mahā-kalpa (Skt. mahākalpa; Tib. བསྐལ་ཆེན་, Wyl. bskal chen) is equal to 300,000 saras and one sara is the time required to exhaust the sands of the seven Ganges (each Ganges being 500 yojanas or 2250 miles in length, 2¼ miles in breadth, and 50 dhanus or 100 yards in depth), at the rate of putting 100 years for the removal of one grain of sand.
Maha kalpa (Sanskrit; kappa in Pali) Maha means "great." Kalpa is a reference to an extended expanse of time, an age, or a "day of Brahma."
Traditionally, it is said that there are four kalpas: formation, existence, destruction and emptiness (each portion is called asamkhyeya-kalpa). All four together are the lifespan of a world, and collectively are a complete cycle, called mahakalpa. Each of the four principle 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 maha-kalpa is 1,334,000,000 years. Yet, these numbers are symbolic, not literal.
"Truthfully, the quantities of years assigned to a Cosmic Day are symbolic. The Cosmic Night arrives when the in gathering of the perfect souls is complete, which means, when the Cosmic Day is absolutely perfected."