ཚའ་མཐའ་མད intro.8

intro.8

The Sūtra on the Limits of Life does not provide us with a detailed account of the structure and the functioning of the universe. It rather presupposes the reader’s familiarity with such knowledge. The text’s main point, as its title indicates, is to present its audience with detailed information about the duration of life of the different forms of existence in the Buddhist universe. The Sūtra on the Limits of Life thus lists the five rebirth-destinies (those of the hell beings, pretas, animals, humans, and devas) together with their subcategories (the four continents inhabited by humans, the eight hot and the eight cold hells, and the different heavens of the form realm and the formless realm) and carves out in a systematic way the relationship between the lifespans in the heavens and the hells.