Viyahapannatti 13.4.581

13.4.581

"In this [space], Venerable Sir, of the medium of motion, the medium of rest, and space, is someone able to sit upon it, or recline upon it, or stand, or sit down, or lie down?"
"This meaning is not competent. But infinitely many souls are accommodated there."
"For what reason, Venerable Sir, is it said thus: 'In this [space] of the medium of motion, the medium of rest, and space, someone is not able to sit upon it, or recline upon it, or stand, or sit down, or lie down, but infinitely many souls are accommodated there'?"
"Gautama! It is just as if there were a gabled hall—plastered on both sides, guarded, with guarded doors, windless, deeply windless. Then a man, taking a thousand lamps, enters inside the gabled hall; having entered, he closes the door openings of that gabled hall on all sides, dense, packed, without gap, and hole-less; having closed them, in the exact center of that gabled hall, at the minimum he would light one, or two, or three, [and] at the maximum a thousand lamps. Indeed, Gautama, do the radiances of those lamps remain interjoined, touching one another, interjoined and touching one another, formed into one another?"
"Yes, they remain [so]."
"Is someone able, Gautama, to sit upon those radiances of the lamps, or up to lie down?"
"Lord! This meaning is not competent. But infinitely many souls are accommodated there."
"For that reason, Gautama, it is said thus: up to infinitely many souls are accommodated there."