Six Realms of Existence

In ancient Buddhist (and pre-Buddhist) cosmology, a view of life being divided into six realms: heaven and hell, plus the asura (demigod), beast, hell, hungry ghost, and human realms. It was believed that beings were reborn after death, over and over, in one of the six realms; therefore the six realms as a whole were referred to as the Wheel of Life, or the wheel of samsara.