However, he stated that if the person lived 100 years or more, they don’t go thru the judging process and proceeded straight to heaven (or nirvana). My wife’s gradmother lived to 101 years old. Interesting belief. A free ticket to heaven regardless of what type of person you were, as long as you lived to 100 or above. What sect of Buddism teaches this?
He’s most likely referring to the
Chinese Buddhist version of the Theravada Buddhist sutra
Milinda-Panha. In Chinese, the sutra is known as
The Sutra of Nagasena, and the Chinese sutra has sections not found in the (more likely original) Theravada sutra. One section goes like this:
…[T]he Sutra of Nagasena (in Chinese: Nasien King)…[is] a Chinese version of the Milinda-panha which is cited earlier. There is encountered an expression metaphor, earnestly commented upon, which the Chinese authors loved to quote, and which is found likewise in the Japanese Ginshin and Honen. King Milinda [whose original Greek name “Menander”] still sceptical, questions the old monk Nagasena: “You say: Men who in one existence have done evil for up to a hundred years, if they think of the Buddha at the moment of death will all obtain after death rebirth in Heaven above. I can’t accept that. You say furthermore: Let one kill a single living being, and at death he must go to hell (niraya). I can’t accept that.”
Then Nagasena asked the Kind: “If you take a little pebble, and lay it on the surface of the water, O King, will it float or sink?” The King replied: “The pebble will sink.” Nagasena went on: “If you take a hundred boulders, and lay them on a boat, O King, will the boat sink?” “It will not”, the king said. [That is, one can build a boat big enough to carry a hundred boulders.]
Nagasena explained: “On account of the boat, the hundred boulders laid on it do not sink. Although a man have a thoroughly bad karma, let him think once of the Buddha, and on account of this thought he will not go to hell, but will be reborn in Heaven. The little pebble which sinks to the bottom is like a man doing evil and ignorant of Buddha’s sutra: after death, he will go to hell.”
The King then said: “Excellent! Excellent!”
It should be noted here that merely living past a hundred, won’t mean you will take rebirth in a heaven. What matters is whether one is sincerely remorseful and willing to change – such an intention can help balance even a hundred years of evil-doing. What all this implies, moreover, is the spiritual power that exists if one has faith, or trust (Pali: saddha; Sanskrit: shraddha), in the Buddha.
It should also added that the heaven referred to here, is not the “final goal” of nirvana, but one of the many levels of higher spiritual realms, or heavens, into which one may take rebirth. But once reborn in these realms, one must continue to practice compassion, wisdom, and morality, if one wishes to realize the “final goal”. These higher spiritual realms are pleasant, but they are not permanent.
The hell, or niraya, realm, referred to is likewise not permanent. It is possible to be stuck in a hell realm for a very, very long time (eons, even), but it is not ultimately permanent.
