Mount Meru (Sumeru, Sineru)
DPPN: Sineru. A mountain, forming the center of the world. It is submerged in the sea to a depth of eighty-four thousand yojanas and rises above the surface to the same height. It is surrounded by seven mountain ranges — Yugandhara, Sadhara, Karavīka, Sudassana, Nemindhara, Vinataka and Assakaṇṇa. On the top of Sineru is Tāvatiṃsa, while at its foot is the Asura-bhavana of ten thousand leagues; in the middle are the four Mahā-dīpā [great islands or lands or continents] with their two thousand smaller dīpa.
Sineru is often used in similes, its chief characteristic being its unshakability (suṭṭhuṭhapita). It is also called Meru or Sumeru, Hemameru, and Mahāneru. Each Cakkavāla [world system] has its own Sineru, and a time comes when even Sineru is destroyed.
"... nay I had removed its very stone to the back side of Mount Káf."1
1 Popularly rendered Caucasus (see Night cdxcvi): it corresponds so far with the Hindu "Udaya" that the sun rises behind it; and the "false dawn" is caused by a hole or gap. It is also the Persian Alborz, the Indian Meru (Sumeru), the Greek Olympus, and the Rhiphæn Range (Veliki Camenypoys) or great starry girdle of the world, etc.
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1, pg 72, translated by Richard F. Burton, Printed by The Burton Club for Private Subscribers only, 1885.
A vision attained by those who 'see', Mt. Meru is not a physical place in the ordinary world though it is a representation of a real perception from 'on high.'
To toss something beyond Mt. Meru (Mt. Káf) is to cast it out of this world.
