148 – Three Ingredients for a Generous Life in a Crazy World
150 - Zazen as the Dharma Gate of Joyful Ease

Understanding people’s actions can be difficult. Sometimes we can’t help but feel disbelief, judgment, or disgust toward people based on how they respond to the suffering of others – particularly regarding the problems we’re facing as a society such as the climate and ecological emergency, the serious undermining of democracy, continued racial injustice, an ever-widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. The Buddhist teaching about the Six Realms of existence can help us understand people’s mind states and motivations, hopefully leading us to greater patience, less judgment, and – most importantly – insight into what might work best to get through to people and help them change.

 

 

Quicklinks to Article Content:
The Relevance of the Six Realms to Modern Life
Introducing the Six Realms Teaching
Fundamentalist Versus Realistic Views of Karma
Six Realms: Where Do We Go from Here?
Understanding People’s Actions When They’re in the Hell Realm
Understanding People’s Actions When They’re in the Beast Realm
Understanding People’s Actions When They’re in the Hungry Ghost Realm
Understanding People’s Actions When They’re in the Asura Realm
Understanding People’s Actions When They’re in the Heaven Realm
Understanding People’s Actions When They’re in the Human Realm
Conclusion

The Relevance of the Six Realms to Modern Life

An image of the Six Realms of Existence

Just a quick overview of the Six Realms teaching in Buddhism. It’s about Buddhist cosmology. There’s not just heaven and hell in the Buddhist cosmology. There’s heaven and hell. Also there’s a human realm, an Asura realm–a realm of like jealous demigods– a beast realm and a hungry ghost realm. (See Episodes 29, 30, and 31 for a full treatment of this teaching)

  • Why do some of us respond to the issues in our world today with a sense of concern, empathy, and personal responsibility to help?
  • Why do some of us find it difficult even to pay attention to the problems?
  • Why do some of us target and blame others and do anything we can to cause strife?
  • Why are some of us so fixated on obtaining more wealth and power that we seem to have forsaken the simplest of human values like compassion?
  • Why do some of us spend most of our time moving from pleasant distraction to pleasant distraction, trying to ignore what’s going on around us?

This episode involves interpreting the Six Realms teachings in a particular way, in terms of how they’re reflected in our modern societies, whether we’re talking about individuals, or groups of people with similar circumstances and attitudes. Additional understanding in this sense of where people are coming from can lead to greater patience, less judgment and more importantly, insight into what will work best to get through to them, to help beings act in ways that will decrease suffering for themselves and others.

Introducing the Six Realms Teaching

In Buddhist cosmology, your karma – your past willful conscious behavior – determines which realm you end up in. Given the cosmology of rebirth, we are reborn after we die, and we’re not necessarily reborn in the same realm. We may end up transmigrating to a different realm depending on our behavior and our choices.

Even heaven in this system isn’t a permanent place of permanent state. Once your good karma runs out, then you fall out of heaven. But then again, hell isn’t permanent either. So the goal in Buddhist cosmology is not to get to heaven, but actually to get unstuck from any realm at all. And in each realm there’s a Buddha that offers/that teaches the way out of the realm. Buddhist cosmology like this is based on ancient Indian religion, religious social tradition, dating from before Buddhism. It’s not so much central to Buddhist teaching and practice in the sense that our practice is dependent on believing it. It’s similar to how Buddhism, if it arose in a Judeo-Christian context, might have just assumed God existed.

So Buddhism just assumed that there was this kind of background cosmology of rebirth. What’s useful, regardless of whether you believe in rebirth or transmat transmigration, is the mythology and symbolism of the Six Realms teaching. In particular, these six different realms can be seen as six different karmic situations leading to very different states of mind, motivations, behaviors, delusions, possibilities for learning, growth, and liberation. Kind of like personality types and other categories like that, the boundaries between different realms are not actually hard and fixed. But the teaching does point pretty uncannily to a cluster of features that we can experience over the course of our lives or even over the course of a day.

Fundamentalist Versus Realistic Views of Karma

Another note before I begin going over each realm is a note on karma or the law of cause and effect as it applies to conscious, willful human behavior. This is relevant because, as I discussed the Six Realms as a way to understand the actions and mindsets of people around you, I want to make it clear this isn’t about stereotyping or dehumanizing categorization or dwelling on blame. Now, some Buddhists in ancient times and even today believe everything that happens to you is due to your karma, that is the effect arising from the causes of your past actions of body, speech and mind account for everything in your life. This means you’re responsible for everything that happens to you–your illnesses, your apparent bad luck, your apparent good luck, the abuses of others, your situation in an unjust system.

Now this is a pretty grim view, closely related to the ancient and to some extent modern Indian ideas supporting the caste system. So no matter where you ended up, even if you got a really shitty deal, that was just due to something that you did in the past. So in a way, you are to blame for your situation. On the other hand, you could look at this view of karma as being very human centric and wishful thinking because it means you have control over everything that happens to you in the future. You might say that this is a fundamentalist view of karma and it’s possible, I would argue, much more rational, reasonable and compassionate to have a more realistic view of karma, more nuanced, complex, and according to a more realistic view of karma, your current circumstances are due to innumerable causes:

  • The choices of your ancestors in terms of mates, lifestyles, emigration.
  • The results of occurrences that intersected with your ancestors they had little or nothing to do with, like storms, accidents, and wars.
  • The evolution of our larger society and culture, which is the result of choices of an uncountable number of people.
  • The forces of greed, hate, and delusion, which are active within every human heart and certainly within our communities, societies, and nations.

Certainly your past choices and behaviors have had a profound effect on who you are and your circumstances – where you live, whether you’re married or have kids, whether you have a lot of education or a lucrative job, whether you have a lots of bad habits or a strong moral bent, whether you have an overall positive attitude about life, or get stuck in depression, whether you’ve taken care of yourself physically or suffer from health problems stemming from a bad diet or inactivity.

Yet even considering our karmic situation, things get complicated.

  • Do you have a genetic disposition toward depression, or optimism, or a particular illness, or robust good health?
  • Did your early family experiences have a profound effect on your personality and lifestyle habits?
  • Did you experience trauma at some point that has affected you ever since?
  • Are you part of a group of people who have been marginalized or oppressed in our society, limiting the options and opportunities you’ve had?

The list goes on. In short, we end up who we are and where we are, what realm we’re in, if you will, due to causes and conditions, myriad causes and conditions. And many of those – perhaps most of those – we had little or nothing to do with. We don’t have complete control over the future.

But human choices do make a really big difference – our own choices, those of our families, those of our society, our nation, our global community. So you could call this personal karma, family karma, social karma, national karma, human karma. Karma is about willful behavior–conscious choices we make that often have helpful or harmful consequences. Karma matters a lot. It’s also the only element in this big equation of causes and conditions that we can do anything about. So that’s primarily why we focus on it so much. Buddhism is about what we do from here on out, not about trying to untangle karmic causes and assign blame. This is important to keep in mind as we’re thinking about the Six Realms

Six Realms: Where Do We Go from Here?

Buddhism is about what we do from here on out, not about trying to untangle karmic causes and assign blame. The Buddha said there are a small handful of things that will drive you crazy if you think about them too much, and trying to figure out the exact workings of karma is one of them.

So, as we consider the Six Realms, try to think about them in terms of helping understand the experience and motivations of the beings in those realms (including ourselves), their particular challenges, and how beings stuck in those realms can free themselves. (And therefore, how we might skillfully assist them in that, how we might speak to them, get through to them, what we might reasonably expect of them.)

I’m not going to dwell here very much on how beings got to each realm or on the imagery or mythology associated with each realm, because that’s available in my other podcasts on this topic.

Understanding People’s Actions When They’re in the Hell Realm

Let’s start with the hell realm. There are three lower realms, if you will, it’s the cosmologies pictured as a six-part circle with heaven at the top, hell at the bottom. There are three more fortunate realms toward the top and three lower realms toward the bottom.

In the hell realm, beings have said yes to hatred and anger. We all experience some aversion, anger, even hatred. But to be in the hell realm, beings have enacted aggression and intentionally hurt others, whether physically, verbally or otherwise. Hell beings have gone down that path. Their habits and mind states are overcome with hatred, anger, aggression, fear of being similarly attacked.

This is an incredibly difficult state to break free from. Everything you encounter seems to reinforce your view of the world, in which you are under attack and you need to become the aggressor in order to save yourself. Even if other people aren’t trying to physically or personally attack you, they are a threat due to their position or choices. Anger and hatred beget anger and hatred in others, and the resulting conflict only strengthens the hell-beings’ attitudes.

Who are those in our society who are likely in the hell realm? I would suggest those who commit violence, aggression, those who knowingly hurt others, those who dwell in resentment and hatred for other people or other groups of people like the folks in Q-anon against liberals, the Incel Association against Women, overt Racists. Those who advocate oppression and inhumane treatment of immigrants or Muslims or Jews or transgender people, et cetera. Sometimes we hear what people like this say or see what they do, and we just cannot imagine where they’re coming from; can’t imagine what is going on within them.

The buddha in the hell realm carries a vial of water, representing the cooling effect of patience and forgiveness. He also carries a flame, symbolizing the fire of practice which can purify karma – taking responsibility for one’s own actions of body, speech, and mind, and practicing with them to break free of hell. Only when a hell being is able to unconditionally let go of his or her anger and hatred can he or she become free of hell. This is extremely difficult to do, even though, in theory, it is possible at any given moment.

So what does the Six Realms teaching tell us about hell beings and working with hell beings? I guess one of the main messages is they are very, very stuck and they are in hell. They are in pain. It is unpleasant to be them. And this isn’t meant to make us feel sorry for them or excuse their behavior. But it does give us perspective. If someone is in hell, perhaps we can find a way to help them glimpse what it’s like not to be in hell. Maybe we can help them just taste what it means to relax that hatred and aggression. Just for a moment.

Understanding People’s Actions When They’re in the Beast Realm

On to the beast realm. Beings in the beast realm for one reason or another have succumbed to laziness and the most basic level of self-interest. Again, this isn’t about blame. I mean, it’s easy to end up here when our circumstances are very difficult. Maybe we’re struggling with poverty or stress or ill health.

Beasts in this mythological kind of sense, the those in the Beast realm, care only about sleeping, eating, basic physical safety, pleasure and sex.

Beasts tend to sink into dullness and oblivion when they have what they want. They engage in willful ignorance, tuning out anything except for their small realm of egocentric concern. Beasts will often harm others or themselves through their actions, just ignoring karmic consequences: stealing, hoarding, deceit, maybe overeating. But this is done with an unwillingness or an inability to reflect on or take responsibility for or care about the consequences as opposed to the willful aggression of hell beings.

Beasts are disinterested in self-awareness and just disinterested in reflection. Virtues like compassion, generosity, moral restraint are just irrelevant to them. Always at the mercy of their desires and fears focused on me and mine, when some particular desire is being thwarted, that becomes the focus of their obsession. That’s the only time that they really have any energy, is when they’re just going for some of their desires.

The Buddha of this realm carries a book of scriptures. The way out of the beast realm is knowledge and understanding, particularly of the laws of karma. Learning the value of moral conduct and restraint, self-discipline. Beings in the beast realm have to learn how to look up from their tunnel vision of self-interest and consider the effects of their actions and the experiences of others – to take a wider view of life. Obviously, in our world today, people who might be at this moment in the beast realm are those who simply act selfishly and don’t seem to care about the impact that their actions have on other people. They don’t seem to care at all about the suffering of others. People can seem very, very small minded and it might appear morally reprehensible, yet we can think about people being in the beast realm and thus that their sphere of concern is very small, and centered on self.

What does the Six Realms teaching tell us about how to relate to beings in the Beast realm? (Again, it could be us at certain times.) Patience? Gentleness? Encouragement to expand thinking and concern just a little bit? It’s probably not reasonable to expect beings in the beast realm to suddenly embrace a grand concern for all living beings and a willingness to make sacrifices on their behalf. But perhaps they can expand their sphere of concern just a little bit to a neighbor or to someone in the next town, or perhaps someone with a different color skin than they have, something like that.

This isn’t all of this isn’t meant to sound patronizing, but realistic. If you witness someone who seems utterly shameless in their self-interest and completely small-minded in the scope of their concerns, it helps to recognize what state of mind this being is probably in. You’re definitely not going to get through to them by trying to attack or shame them. They don’t operate by the same values you do. We should take the approach of the beast realm’s Buddha and patiently try to educate, perhaps seeking to increase empathy without seeming to threaten the person’s well-being.

Understanding People’s Actions When They’re in the Hungry Ghost Realm

On to the hungry ghost realm. Hungry ghosts are also very self-concerned, but they are focused on a sense of lack. This leads to compulsive stinginess and grasping. The desires of a beast are fairly easily met: Food, sleep, sex, pleasure. But the desires of a hungry ghost can never be met. There’s never enough. And whatever they perceive as potentially filling the gaping hole of their desire, they will constantly try to get more of–perhaps through manipulation, scheming, selfish behavior, hoarding.

This realm is often associated with addictions to many different kinds of things, to things that give a rush of satisfaction. The hungry ghosts want not just pleasure, but that rush of satisfaction. They don’t want things that just numb you out as the beasts would like. Hungry ghosts go from one thing to another: Social interaction, acquisition of new stuff, pleasurable or exciting experiences, food, alcohol, drugs. Hungry ghosts are never satisfied. Their need can become anguished. They feel empty most of the time.

People in the world today, perhaps ourselves, are certainly addicts of various substances and things, including those of us enacting materialism – always living in the future, when we will get this, achieve that, experience this, go for that vacation. We does this in small ways when we’re dependent on even relatively simple pleasures for happiness. But in the meantime, we’re rather self-absorbed or stingy, feeling kind of empty inside, like we need to keep busy, keep moving, keep entertained, or the sadness will overwhelm.

It’s difficult, again, not to sound judgmental, but surely we’re in the hungry ghost realm when we drive by homeless camps on our way to get a new toy at a Black Friday sale. The Buddha of this realm carries a vial of celestial nourishment and teaches the virtue of generosity and sacrifice. The idea is that the only thing that will truly satisfy us is the Dharma. Is essentially the truth. But to use the idiomatic phrase, we keep “looking for love and all the wrong places.”

Buddha: Vial of celestial nourishment, teaches virtue of generosity and sacrifice. Idea is that the only thing that will truly satisfy is the Dharma, is the truth, but we keep “looking for love in all the wrong places.”

What does the Six Realms teaching tell us about dealing with Hungry Ghosts? I guess we can have sympathy with their longing, and encourage curiosity in them about filling that longing other ways, such as with spiritual practice, acts of generosity, sacrifice, or simplicity. Being satisfied with simpler things, learning to see this life as sufficient. Once again, responding to the hungry ghosts with compassion instead of judgment. Thinking about what it is they really want and trying to redirect that natural motivation into a more healthy direction.

Understanding People’s Actions When They’re in the Asura Realm

he asura realm is one of the higher, more fortunate realms where beings, the asuras, are kind of jealous demigods. Sura means a God and a means not. So they’re not gods. They’re fairly fortunate, but according to the cosmology in the assurer realm, they can see the base of the amazing wish-fulfilling tree that fruits only in the heaven realm. They can see this tree go up into the heaven realm where all the goodies are harvested by the gods and are inaccessible to the asuras. Therefore, asuras are driven by resentment, jealousy and competition.

Asuras are similar to the hungry ghosts in that they’re never satisfied, but they actually have all they need and even want. Still they’re obsessed by what others have compared to them or are afraid that what they have will be taken away. There’s lots of envy and quarreling and ambition. Asuras are too busy for spiritual practice. They’re tormented by paranoia and insecurity. They think there’s limited resources. There are winners and losers, and we’re going to make sure we’re not the losers. It’s a dog eat dog world, and you can’t trust anyone.

Who might be in the asura realm in our world? Many of the folks behind Wall Street? Those behind the political and economic machinery that places profit over life, based only on competition? Those who brandish guns at BLM protestors from inside their mansions? Those with reasonably comfortable lives who refuse asylum to suffering, starving, oppressed people from other countries and feel better knowing those undocumented immigrants are locked up just for crossing the border?

Like Beasts, asuras look out for numero uno, but their appetites are more ambitious, their paranoia farther reaching, their actions cleverer and more treacherous, their impact greater because of their greater power.

The Buddha of this realm carries armor and a sword and teaches virtue of moral restraint and order. In a book on the Six Realms by Chogyam Trungpa, Trungpa explains that this buddha is “speaking the language of the asuras in an enlightened way” (Trungpa p.232).

We try to encourage the asuras to recognize acquisition, hoarding, defending territory is ultimately fruitless and wasteful. There will always be someone with more and always a risk you will lose what you have. Instead, asuras can use their strength and fortune and energy for good, for others, for justice for all, and ironically, justice for others also means a greater sense of safety and security for you, for us. Like beings in other realms, asuras have to step outside of their selfishness. The sword that the Buddha carries slices through that cycle of envy, jealousy, the self-perpetuating delusion of insecurity. Maybe asuras need to realize in a sense, the best things in life are free. If we’re an asura, we need to recognize our good fortune, and cultivate gratitude.

What does the Six Realms teaching tell us about dealing with asuras? Again, we start with trying to understand the being, understanding the inner turmoil, the constrained and fearful perspective of an assurer which can help us generate compassion instead of judgment or fear. Hopefully an assurer can be encouraged to question whether greed and paranoia is the way they want to live. Maybe they can be encouraged to experiment a little bit at a time with the rewards of trust and sharing.

In the meantime, we can constrain asuras with laws, to at least get them acting with restraint and order even when their hearts aren’t there yet.

Understanding People’s Actions When They’re in the Heaven Realm

What about the heaven realm? Beings get here through good behavior, moral behavior, spiritual practice, even. Beings in the heaven realm have all their needs met, heaven realm is pleasant and peaceful and untroubled beings are happy and satisfied. They don’t suffer and they don’t see any need for spiritual practice. Eventually, though, according to the Buddhist cosmology, their good karma runs out and their time in heaven draws to a close and they can see it coming. And apparently seeing the end of your time in heaven is like torture. In the meantime, though, heavenly beings enjoy themselves and it seems like their good fortune will last forever.

What beings are in the heaven realm in our world? This describes me pretty well, at least at times, and many of the people I know. It certainly seems to describe the many people of privilege in developed countries who are caught up enjoying their lives while countless beings suffer and die around them, and the planet’s natural life support systems are breaking down. Those of us with privilege who seem deaf and dumb, sometimes, to the experiences of marginalized groups. It isn’t that we’re without a conscience, or without compassion, it’s just that life is lovely and the terrible things are mostly happening off in other realms…

The Buddha in this realm plays a stringed musical instrument, patiently waiting until the sound gently draws the heavenly beings away from their distractions. Maybe once they see their time in heaven is ending. In the meantime, then the heavenly beings may be able to learn a little something as they descend out of the heaven realm. Maybe they’ll be able to avoid the asura realm or one of the lower realms.

What does the Six Realms teaching tell us about dealing with beings (us?) in the heaven realm? Clearly Heaven Realm beings need to become aware of the suffering in the world. Their pleasant bubble needs to be burst, for their own sake as well as for the sake of others. At the same time, how is a deva going to respond if you’re too aggressive with the bad news, especially if you try to shame them for their previous inattention? The deva will probably withdraw even further into their realm of pleasure. So, getting heaven realm beings to help beings in other realms, and also to prepare themselves for the fact they won’t always be in heaven, means getting a little tough with them but also being skillful.

Understanding People’s Actions When They’re in the Human Realm

Finally, what about the human realm in Buddhist cosmology? The human realm is a mixed bag, always changing–like a little bit of all the other realms–but with constantly shifting circumstances, pleasure and pain, peace and strife, gain and loss, bliss and horror. Humans, the beings in the human realm, suffer from loss and anticipation of suffering to come. In particular they long for intimacy and belonging, and this is very related to sexuality and a desire for things to keep going as they are. Humans have a sense, though, that life should be something more than it is.

The human realm is considered the ideal realm for spiritual practice. Kind of like the middle-sized chair for Goldilocks. We don’t have to imagine what it means to be a human in our world because we know. But maybe we could say those of us in the human realm are those of us who cycle through each of the other realms regularly and don’t spend a lot of time stuck in one.

The Buddha in the human realm holds a begging bowl and teaches spiritual practice and renunciation of whatever leads to suffering. What does this teach us about dealing with humans? It might be most skillful to share, to somehow communicate or demonstrate, that the greatest lasting peace and satisfaction comes not from conditional things we need to try to grasp or hold onto, but in accepting impermanence. In doing spiritual practice in order to ground ourselves in a deeper kind of reality. And in finding that the greatest intimacy and peace and reward is not found in pursuing conditional things. With all beings, it’s probably best to teach by example and then just do our best to give help when asked.

Conclusion

The next time you encounter someone or hear about someone speaking or acting in some negative or harmful way – and you just don’t understand or can’t accept, if you find yourself reacting with judgment, disgust, frustration or horror, (and you might be reacting to your own thoughts and behavior that way) – I invite you to try reflecting on what “realm” the person might be operating in at the time. Again, this isn’t meant to encourage judgment or arrogance, as if we can guess what another person’s inner experience is, and then consign them to a dismissive category. This is meant to make you curious, to imagine what someone else might be going through, what their perspective at the time might be.

Beings suffer in all six realms, and it is possible to get unstuck from any one of the realms. Buddhas and bodhisattvas practice compassion and skillfulness in order to free living beings from the different realms of existence – and even if we’re not quite ready to venture into other realms and try to rescue people from their hatred, ignorance, fear, greed, longing, or complacency, at least the six realms teaching can help us understand and be more patient with beings, including ourselves. As a consequence, we might be able to be a little more creative about how we might communicate with troubled beings and encourage them to change.

 

148 – Three Ingredients for a Generous Life in a Crazy World
150 - Zazen as the Dharma Gate of Joyful Ease
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