Буддалық космологиядағы орталық әлем тауы – Меру

Central world mountain in Buddhist cosmology

Mount Meru (also Sumeru (Sanskrit) or Sineru (Pāli) or Kangrinboqe) is the name of the central world mountain in Buddhist cosmology. Etymologically, the proper name of the mountain is Meru (Pāli Meru), to which is added the approbatory prefix su , resulting in the meaning "excellent Meru" or "wonderful Meru". The concept of Sumeru is closely related to the central Mount Meru of Hindu cosmology, but it differs from the Hindu concept in several particulars.

Certain traditional Buddhist ideas about the world are incompatible with modern science and have been abandoned by numerous modern Buddhists. One of the most well known of these ideas is Mount Meru. According to Donald S. Lopez Jr., "the human realm that Buddhist texts describe is a flat earth, or perhaps more accurately a flat ocean, its waters contained by a ring of iron mountains. In that ocean is a great central mountain, surrounded in the four cardinal directions by island continents." As Lopez notes, as early as the 18th century, Buddhist scholars like Tominaga Nakamoto (1715–1746) began to question this classical Buddhist cosmography, holding that they were adopted by the Buddha from Indian theories, but that they were incidental and thus not at the heart of Buddha's teaching. While some traditional Buddhists did defend the traditional cosmology, others like Shimaji Mokurai (1838–1911) argued that it was not foundational to Buddhism and was merely an element of Indian mythology. Others like Kimura Taiken (1881–1930), went further and argued that this traditional cosmography was not part of original Buddhism. The issue of Mount Meru was also discussed by modern Buddhist intellectuals like Gendün Chöphel and the 14th Dalai Lama. According to Chöphel, the Meru cosmology is a provisional teaching taught in accord with the ideas of ancient India, but not appropriate for the modern era. Similarly, the 14th Dalai Lama writes that "my own view is that Buddhism must abandon many aspects of the Abhidharma cosmology". The Dalai Lama sees the falsehood of this traditional cosmology as not affecting the core of Buddhism (the teaching of the four noble truths and liberation) since it is "secondary to the account of the nature and origins of sentient beings".