SUKHAVATI: GOING TO HEAVEN AS TAUGHT BY THE BUDDHA
Sukhavati: Going to Heaven as Taught by the Buddha
Question
I own your book for several years now, and read it a few times over the years, but it is only recently that your words have struck home. I am particularly grateful for it and particularly for the way you link Buddhism's cosmological content with contemporary science. Your book is a gift to humanity and I hope that a lot of people like me will be able to receive this wonderful Dharma message. I do think you are a great Bodhisattva.
-- Jerome, France
Answer
I am glad that you have enjoyed and benefitted from my book "Sukahvati: Going to Heaven as Taught by the Buddha".
Indeed many people may think that what I have described in my book is too good to be true. Of course it is true. The Buddha, like all the greatest of spiritual teachers, never tell lies.
It is also very scientific. Indeed, all the great discoveries in science right from Galileo’s discovery that the world we live in is not the centre of the universe to latest discoveries in relativity and quantum physics have been told by the Buddha in sutras, though the writings in the sutras are very concise and without annotation not many people can understand them.
I honestly believe that I am not the author of the book, though I wrote it. I was only a conduit, and I was frequently inspired by Bodhisattvas in the writing.
Your mention of Buddhist cosmological content with contemporary science is a good example. Many people, including I myself before writing this book, cannot reconcile the Buddha’s teaching of the cosmic system with modern scientific knowledge. The Buddha teaches, for example, that the world we live in is surrounded by ocean, then islands, then ocean, then islands. I had difficulty relating this teaching with modern astronomy. Then all of a sudden, in a moment of inspiration, it struck me that the Buddha was looking at our world from space.
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