January 13, 2025 at 9:45 am
#53216
Keymaster
Getting answers to the questions you raised requires understanding the following:
1. Suppose a Deva dies and is born a human; when that human dies, he/she is reborn a Brahma. The human existence between Deva and Brahma existences is called “human bhava;“ it can last thousands or even millions of years. During that whole time, the essential part of the human is a subtle, invisible body called “manomaya kaya” or “gandhabba.” Thus, human existence is maintained by the gandhabba. It is born simultaneously with the death of the Deva, and at its death, a Brahma is born in this example.
- Within that human bhava, the human gandhabba can enter a womb and be born with a physical body (like ours); that birth with a physical and dense human body is called “jāti.” (Thus, many jāti can occur within a bhava, each time born with a different physical body.) The lifetime of that dense human body can vary from about ten years to about 100,000 years. That depends on the physical environment. Some physical environments can sustain a physical, dense human body for 100,000 years, and when the conditions are bad, it can be as low as tens of years.
- The change in environment is not linear. For example, even though a dense human body these days lasts about 100 years, it will decrease to about 10 years and then increase again to about 20,000 years (as I remember) before the next Buddha (Buddha Maitreya) appears.
- The “Mahāpadāna Sutta (DN 14)“ is another reference for those lifetimes during various Buddhas. The difference between bhava and jāti is discussed in “Bhava and Jāti – States of Existence and Births Therein.”
2. You asked: “Why did Gautama Buddha choose to be born in a time when the human lifespan was naturally shorter?”
- A Buddha (more correctly, a Bodhisatta) does not have control over when he attains Buddhahood. He may be born when the physical lifetime is long or short. Such things are “dhammatā,” which happen according to nature.
- That answers your third question, too.