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BUDDHIST HEAVENS.
cessive Grand Lamas. He presides over the temporal well-being of all human beings, ghosts, and animal spirits. He is termed "God of mercy," "Lord of the world," etc., and is prayed to very frequently in bodily danger or disease, as well as for relief from future re-birth. He is generally depicted with several faces and arms, the former pyramidally placed in three tiers, two hands folded in adoration of Buddha, and two others holding the lotus and the wheel. Often he greatly resembles Vishnu. Vajra-pani (the thunderbolt-handed) is a sort of Buddhist Siva, controlling and destroying evil spirits; while Manjusri (he of glorious beauty) is possibly a deification of the Brahman who introduced Buddhism into Nepal.
Later still a new mystical worship arose, worshipping the Dhyani-Buddhas, or Buddhas existing in the higher The Dhyaniworlds of abstract meditation, Buddhas. corresponding to the earthly Buddhas and representing them. Each of these was supposed to give off a Dhyani Bodhi-satva, to preside over and protect Buddhism between the death of one Buddha and the coming of the next; and before long, the Dhyani-Buddha corresponding to Gautama, namely Amitabha (diffuser of infinite light), was worshipped as a personal god. Some of the Nepalese Buddhists developed a still more advanced theory of a primordial or Adi-Buddha, the source of all things, out of whom the Dhyani-Buddhas proceeded, and corresponding to the Hindu supreme Brahma. But neither AdiBuddha nor Amitabha were regarded as creators of the world out of nothing.
Buddhist
The elaborate descriptions of the twenty-six successive Buddhist heavens, in which many of the Hindu gods were fabled to dwell and reign, we cannot reproduce. Six are inhabited by beings still heavens. liable to sensuous desires; sixteen by those in successive stages of abstract meditation, called the worlds of the
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TIBETAN PRAYER
WHEEL.
