I hope this post reaches you all in good spirits.
Please consider this quote:
(from "Teacher of the Devas" by Susan Elbaum Jootla, on A2I - http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/auth ... el414.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;)Susan Elbaum Jootla wrote: Let us now study some features of the chart. The lower beings and humans do not have fixed lifespans, but higher beings do. As you go up the chart from the sixth plane to the thirty-first, each successive group of deities lives longer than the group below it. The lifespans of devas are measured in multiple centuries. The duration of a brahma's existence can only be expressed in aeons. The Buddha defines these extremely long periods of time by analogy. An aeon is the length of time it would take to wear away a mountain of solid rock six miles high and six miles wide, rubbing over it with a fine piece of muslin once every hundred years. The highest brahmas of the immaterial sphere live for 84,000 aeons.
Okay, am I alone here in thinking: "I do NOT want to live for 84,000 aeons"?
I understand that the highest brahmas enjoy a pretty substantial level of pleasure, but in terms of having less of a chance to practice Dhamma than humans do, such a long life seems more like a curse than a blessing.
Could this be a matter of a thousand aeons to a human actually being a minute or two for a brahma?
84k aeons is hard to wrap my mind around. Just one aeon seems like an ungodly amount of time. Doesn't seem like there's enough to do in that amount of time!
Dhammakid