When the Buddha was very ill and close to leaving this earth (for the last time), he gave several teachings over the course of a few days. One of these teachings was to his secretary Ananda as to what causes earthquakes.
The Buddha was very sick and the evil spirit Mara came to him and urged him to let go of life, that he had done great things and it was time for the final passing away. In actuality, Mara just wanted the Buddha gone from the world so that his teachings would begin to decline. The Buddha told Mara to stop troubling himself, and that his death was imminent. At this point, the Buddha renounced his will to live and there was a great earthquake.
Ananda came to the Buddha and asked why had such a great earthquake occurred. The Buddha told of 8 reasons an earthquake appears:
The first reason was because of natural conditions- I will use the Pali Text Society translation (it is far more widely accepted amongst scholars than the Access to Insight translation in the picture above)-
"The great earth Ananda, is established on water, the water on wind, and the wind rests upon space. And at such a time, Ananda. as the mighty winds blow, the waters are shaken by the mighty winds as they blow, and by the moving water the earth is shaken." (you can see the discrepancy between translations between the picture above and the Pali Text Society, Apo is regularly translated as water, above it is translated as liquid. Vayo is regularly translated as wind, above it is translated as atmosphere).
Both Pali Text Society, Digha Nikaya Vol 2 page 114, and Maurice Walshe, Wisdom Publications, Digha Nikaya, page 247, translate Apo as water and Vayo as wind in this very same explanation of earthquakes given by the Buddha. (Note, these are the two main translations of the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, I know of no scholar that would use the translation in the picture above).
The second reason was because a great man or a deva had concentrated on the earth element in meditation.
The third through eighth reasons involved the life of a Buddha from conception to death, including the moment a Buddha renounces his will to live.
Looking back at the first cause, one must understand this explanation within the context of the time, and from the perception of a culture 2600 years ago. The Buddha was in fact describing the earth (sub-continent of India) as a plate floating on a "pool" of water. This whole "pool" was then surrounded by wind and that wind surrounded by space. You can see in the actual words of the Buddha that this is what he meant. Earth upon water, water upon wind, wind upon space. This does not, in no way, imply earth surrounding lava in a planet and that planet being surround by atmosphere and space in the modern understanding of reality, as the top picture seems to be implying.
Distorting the Buddha's words, or misunderstanding them in order to fit the modern conceptualization of the world is not necessary, and it is quite harmful. It takes away from the insight the Buddha actually had. The Buddha understood enough, within a culture that thought the very air we breathe is magical and that the growth of plants and trees was supernatural, that earthquakes are caused by natural conditions, first. We need to understand that he was developing these teachings from examination and extraordinary reasoning skills, but he most certainly did not understand the materialistic reality of the universe the way we do now. Saying so diminishes his teachings to a cold, plastic, empty explanation of matter.
It is folly to take a teaching that starts off with natural conditions (from a remarkable understanding of nature at the time) yet continues on with divine reasons for earthquakes as some equivalent to modern science. It seems to be completely missing the point of his lessons and turning the Dhamma into a sterile mode of predicting particulars instead of the teachings of what reality is in itself.
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