Lecture Notes on the Sūtra of the Collection of the Father and Son (Pitāputrasamāgamanasūtra) (30)

The Process of the Water Element Drying Up

Original text: 又此世。界将欲坏时。有二日出。二日出已。小河泉流。悉皆枯涸。三日出时。无热恼池。所出四河。亦皆干竭。四日出时。大海水减。一踰缮那。或二或三。渐次减至。十踰缮那。或二十踰缮那。次第枯竭。至八十踰缮那。有余水在。或深至一多罗树。或深至胸臆。或深至牛迹。乃至少水。如指面量。当尔之时。大海水中悉皆干燥。净尽无余。

Explanation: When the Saha world is about to be destroyed, two suns appear. In summer, even one sun is already unbearable, let alone two. When two suns appear, the small rivers, springs, and ponds are all dried up by the heat; when three suns appear, the four great rivers flowing out of Lake Anavatapta also dry up. When four suns appear, the water of the four great oceans recedes by one yojana, or two, or three, gradually diminishing to ten yojanas, or twenty yojanas, drying up in sequence until it recedes to eighty yojanas. (A yojana is an Indian unit of measurement; one yojana is forty li.) The four great oceans refer to the four great oceans beneath our Earth—they are not on our Earth. Lake Anavatapta is likewise not on Earth; both are countless times larger than our Earth.

The seawater on Earth has long since disappeared, and the water of the four great oceans keeps diminishing—by two yojanas, three yojanas, ten yojanas, twenty yojanas, eighty yojanas—until only a little water remains, with a depth of only the height of one tree. It continues to recede, until the water is only as deep as a human chest, then diminishes further until it is merely the amount that would fill the print of a cow's hoof, and finally only enough remains to cover the flat surface of the fingers of an outstretched palm. The water of the four great oceans, countless times larger than our Earth, is scorched by the sun until only the amount in a cow's hoofprint remains, and then until the water is just enough to barely cover the fingers, until finally it dries up completely, and the great earth becomes so dry that not a trace of moisture is left.