Lectures on the Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (Pitāputrasamāgamanasūtra) (18)

How is the earth element destroyed when it is about to perish? The first is destruction by the great fire. When the fire calamity arrives, it burns all the way up to the First Dhyāna Heaven of the form realm, and everything below the First Dhyāna Heaven is gone. The six heavens of the desire realm and their heavenly palaces are all gone, Mount Sumeru is gone, the four great continents are gone, and the earth is gone. When the world is about to perish, once the great fire blazes up, the earth is burned out of existence. How does the earth disappear? First two suns appear, then three, four, five, and six suns, and finally seven suns come out, and everything below the First Dhyāna Heaven is burned to destruction. When two suns appear, all life on earth vanishes without a trace—needless to say with seven suns. With just one sun, we can hardly bear it when summer arrives; if two suns come out, can life still exist? When seven suns appear, the waters of the four great oceans all dry up, the earth catches fire directly, and is burned out of existence. The fire rises up to the heavens, Mount Sumeru is burned away, the entire six heavens of the desire realm are burned away, and the First Dhyāna Heaven is gone as well. Gold, silver, and jewels are burned away long before; the seven treasures, which are even harder than gold and silver, are likewise burned to nothing.

The second is the water calamity. After everything below the First Dhyāna Heaven has been burned away, torrential rain pours down from the heavens, each raindrop as large as an elephant. It rains for seven days and seven nights without cease, and the water rises all the way to the Second Dhyāna Heaven of the form realm. The six heavens of the desire realm are gone, the First Dhyāna Heaven is gone, and the water rises further to the Second Dhyāna Heaven, submerging it entirely. Such is the severity of the water calamity—the devas from the Second Dhyāna Heaven downward cannot escape it.

The third calamity is the wind calamity. When the great wind blows, it blows all the way up to the Third Dhyāna Heaven of the form realm, sweeping the Third Dhyāna Heaven away. If the earth has not been burned away by the great fire, it can be instantly scattered by the great wind. The six heavens of the desire realm are all blown apart, leaving not a trace to be found. Whether composed of the seven treasures or a hundred treasures, everything can be blown apart; no matter how hard a thing is, it cannot exist, cannot endure—such is the magnitude of this wind's power. There is only one thing that fire cannot burn, water cannot submerge, and wind cannot blow away, and that is the tathāgatagarbha.

After the three calamities pass, only the heavens from the Fourth Dhyāna Heaven upward remain. The Fourth Dhyāna Heaven has four levels, and together with the four formless heavens—the heavens of the formless realm—none of these heavenly realms can be reached by the calamities. This is because from the Fourth Dhyāna Heaven upward there is purity of neutral feeling and thought (upekṣā); there are no thoughts, and the mind abides in a state of tranquility (praśama), so no disasters can occur there. Within the meditative state of the Third Dhyāna there is still breathing, and breathing is wind, so it can attract the wind calamity; the wind calamity can rise to the Third Dhyāna Heaven and destroy even that heaven. After the entire trichiliocosm (three-thousandfold great world) has completely disintegrated, there is silence without remainder—destroyed so thoroughly that not even a speck of dust can be found, nothing at all remains. Therefore it is said that the world is indeed illusory.