"Which parts of the Pali canon deal most directly with meditation?"
A paper worth reading:
Gethin, Rupert (1997) Cosmology and Meditation: From the Aggañña Sutta to the Mahayana', History of Religions 36, pp. 183-219.
Which cites Visuddhimagga XIII "recollection of past lives and world cycles" as the best summary of Buddhist cosmology. This has to one of the most beautiful passages of poetry and literature in the world as well as a serious religious text. Here is how it begins:
"He directs, he inclines, his mind to the knowledge of recollection of past life. He recollects his manifold past life, that is to say, one birth, two births, three births, four births, five births, ten births, twenty births, thirty births, forty births, fifty births, a hundred births, a thousand births, a hundred thousand births, many aeons of world contraction, many aeons of world expansion, many aeons of world contraction and expansion; there I was so named, of such a race, with such an appearance, such was my food, such my experience of pleasure and pain, such the end of my life span; and passing away from there, I reappeared elsewhere; and there to I was so named, of such a race, with such an appearance, such was my food, such my experience of pleasure and pain, such the end of my life span; and passing away from there, I reappeared here; thus with its aspects and particulars he recollects his manifold past life" (Bhikku, ~Naa.namoli, Vissudhimagga,
page 451-55)
And then it goes on to speak of the cataclysmic cycles of creation and destruction over billions of years.
With metta,
Jon Fernquest
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