Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Are Six Realms Of Buddhism Real?!?
DaltheJigsaw
Mountain View Veteran
I personally do not believe that the six realms are actual "places" that exist outside of ourselves. That being said, I do not know for sure that they do not exist outside ourselves but I'd rather focus on the here and now then what "might" happen. I see these "realms" as states of consciousness being in our present awareness created by the power of our deluded minds. After all we are not just reborn upon our physical death--we are reborn a new each moment of our lives in the here and now. It seems to me that the concept of these realms being "out there" somewhere is a bit unskillful. That is because this idea appears to fortify the unskillful view that there are "places" that are separate from our existence in the here and now. There is no "out there." It seems to simply create worry and trepidation of ending up in a "Hell" which spurs people to follow the Dharma for the wrong reasons--out of fear and desire.
That being said I'd like to move on to the actual "realms" and show how they are working right here and right now.
First I wish to address the "God realm." This is the state of a false sense of "getting it." It is a false reality because there is nothing "to get." We experience this "realm" when everything is going our way. We have everything we could ever want or need--we lack for nothing. We avoid anything that doesn't being us happiness and affirm our feeling of permanent greatness that is manufactured by our ego-mind. This breeds arrogance and pride. We cease to follow and practice the Dharma because we feel that we have "arrived" and thus no longer need to meditate, etc. However, eventually that "happiness" fades and we are left with nothing to show for our "wealth" because we are preoccupied with nothing but our personal satisfaction. We have done nothing to help others with our great blessings and that leaves us feeling empty, hallow and lonely inside. When this realization occurs we struggle to maintain our God-like state by grasping. Thus, inevitably the more we do this the more we suffer which of course leads to falling into the "lower states of being" and the cycle of samsara continues.
http://thebuddhistblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/are-six-realms-of-buddhism-real_02.html
That being said I'd like to move on to the actual "realms" and show how they are working right here and right now.
First I wish to address the "God realm." This is the state of a false sense of "getting it." It is a false reality because there is nothing "to get." We experience this "realm" when everything is going our way. We have everything we could ever want or need--we lack for nothing. We avoid anything that doesn't being us happiness and affirm our feeling of permanent greatness that is manufactured by our ego-mind. This breeds arrogance and pride. We cease to follow and practice the Dharma because we feel that we have "arrived" and thus no longer need to meditate, etc. However, eventually that "happiness" fades and we are left with nothing to show for our "wealth" because we are preoccupied with nothing but our personal satisfaction. We have done nothing to help others with our great blessings and that leaves us feeling empty, hallow and lonely inside. When this realization occurs we struggle to maintain our God-like state by grasping. Thus, inevitably the more we do this the more we suffer which of course leads to falling into the "lower states of being" and the cycle of samsara continues.
http://thebuddhistblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/are-six-realms-of-buddhism-real_02.html
0
Comments
So, because we can see animals and humans - and some people claim to see ghosts (and we are simply taking their accounts on faith and we don't try to put any kind of scientific understanding to this phenomenon) then that is proof that the six realms (gods, demons, hungry ghosts, humans, animals, and hell beings) literally exist?? :scratch:
Actually these advanced teachings on the nature of phenomena make it fairly clear that everything we see now is an experience of the mind having no self existence but being dependently originated so one cannot argue that this reality we experience now is any less real then a Hell or a God realm one may experience after the mind exits the body at death. A proper understanding shows that the materialists who grasp at this appearence as being real if they where to investigate could not find any more valid existence to this then a Hell or God realm but it doesnt negate the fact that something without Inherant/Self existence is appearing to mind !
@caznamyaw Your analysis is very sophisticated, and I don't doubt that you're ultimately correct, however, this level of understanding is beyond the average Tibetan. My statement still stands, that many Tibetans do take them to be real. I think the answer to the OP's title question, is "all of the above" variations.
Do not throw away Buddha's teachings they are born of insight and correct understanding, Throw away your own Ignorance and seek better understanding of what the Buddha is teaching.
the real is unreal
http://www.aolnews.com/2010/10/28/dream-recording-and-playback-comes-closer-to-reality/
"So we have six realms. Loosely, you can say when the perception comes more from aggression, you experience things in a hellish way. When your perception is filtered through attachment, grasping or miserliness, you experience the hungry ghost realm. When your perception is filtered through ignorance, then you experience the animal realm. When you have a lot of pride, you are reborn in the god realm. When you have jealousy, you are reborn in the asura (demi-god) realm. When you have a lot of passion, you are reborn in the human realm." ~Dzongsar Khyentse (2005), p. 2-3.
And from Khandro.net:
Khenpo Karthar, abbot of Karma Triyana Dharmachakra, has said that "From the Buddhist perspective, such a thing as a hell does not exist in absolute reality." Nevertheless, he continues, alluding to the law of karma, "As long as we have serious patterns of aggression, no matter how strongly we might like to believe there is not such a realm or psychological state, we will still experience it because we have the cause for the consequences."
Khenpo Karthar goes on to say that it is similar to beings in other realms trying to understand the human one. It is difficult to accept because their existence [their kind of suffering] seems real to them, and ours does not.
At least in the human realm we have the possibility of seeing the nature of illusion; for those in the hells, experience is " ... so continuous, so intense and claustrophobic, that it does not even give them a break where they could think, 'Maybe this could be different.' "
And, a transcript of a teaching by Khenchen Konchog Gyaltsen (Drikung Kagyu):
"There is no special place called 'vajra hell.' It is no different from the hell realms described earlier. This is simply terminology used in the Vajrayana system for emphasis. You will see things like vajra master, vajra disciple, Vajrayana, vajra samaya, and vajra seat. Don't take these things so literally. " ~ courtesy Ani Trinlay
http://www.khandro.net/doctrine_hells.htm
"[T]here is a discussion in Buddhist cosmology of the six states or classes of beings in Saṃsāric existence. To take one example, the hell realms are described as realms of intense torment and suffering. The Buddhist teachings point out that the direct cause of such rebirth is anger in our own mind.
In a way, there is a connection that we can see. Whenever you get angry with someone, you feel hot all over. Your temperature rises. You go red in the face, and you can even give yourself a headache. In the short term, there are very disturbing effects to anger. When that becomes such a habitual pattern that it produces rebirth in hell, the being there experiences, as a result of that pattern, an environment that is on fire, an environment that is totally hostile, totally destructive. We should not consider this as an external place where people are sent as a punishment. It is a distorted appearance or projection in the minds of beings in those states, caused by their karmic patterns." (pp 206-7)
Every day they are beaten, starved, etc., within the walls of that prison. Yet the guards are also within the walls of that prison, and they are not beaten or starved.
Where is "hell?" Only in an individual's cell, then? Yet, when a guard or janitor enters the cell to work or clean, he does not personally experience hell, so hell can't be in the cell, either. Hell must be to a large extent, then, in the daily experience of the person experiencing hell.
But even then, not everyone experiences the same things the same way. Someone used to eating very little may experience less suffering when being underfed, than someone who has never missed a meal. So even the same, exact outer cause cannot be said to be the same experience for two different people.
So, a great deal of suffering must be in the mind itself.
Even in modern terms, we can see that defining hell as a "place," rather than an experience in the mind, is difficult.
I can recommend a good book on the various views on emptiness: Khenpo Gyamptso Tsultrim Rinpoche's: Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness.
I'll just conclude by saying that if you view buddhism through the lens of scientific materialism you really have a tough job and you'll really have to kind of invent your own buddhism. Of course it is not bad to do just that! The dalai lama said that if science proves buddhism wrong (conclusively) then buddhism will have to change.
Last note: I am not saying that there is a 'real' hell. I am saying the whole notions of 'real' doesn't really say anything. Of course experience is mental. Name one thing you have ever experienced that was not mental!
I do think that there is a form skanda associated with hell. But that form skanda is not real in any case. Hell is actually created via attachment to skandas. Hell itself is actually just a deeply twisted nature of clarity. Anger when transformed is always a clarity to work with obstacles. For example I am angry at my bank. When I passify my anger I can open to the situation and find the needed information and people to solve my problem. I attain the vision needed to solve problems.
I think many members on our forum actually make the point for why these teachings don't get to everyone. To a lot of people they do not take to emptiness teachings. They are very difficult. Its even part of the bodhisattva vow not to teach them in a case when the would destabilize the recipient. Having your 'world' kicked out from under you can lead to even more kleshas (hells) and wrong views. I recently read some scriptures in which the lineage (teachers, sangha, energy) is appealed to in order to dismiss kleshas and dispell wrong views. Its important to find the support needed to challenge 'business as usual' ego/gaining mind.
I guess I was only saying simple folk have simple beliefs. Whether or not that means that the realms are "real", just because some people believe they are is a different question. Maybe what traditional Tibetans believe isn't that relevant to the OP.
"Are the Various Realms Real?
This question, although natural enough, is hopelessly naive. Before we can even begin to answer it we need to get some inkling of what exactly "reality" is anyway. And that is far from a straightforward question.
We could turn this question on its head and ask just how real is this familiar human realm we live in? It is a plain fact that everything we know and experience is a product of our sense organs. We never know the external world itself, but only our fabricated image of it, built up by the mind from incoming sense data. The ultimately real remains an elusive abstraction.
Some writers have tried to explain away the various realms as purely psychological states. There may be some truth to this, so long as we are consistent enough to include the present "reality" as well. It is certainly true that we can access heavenly and hellish mind-states while in the human form. But that does not at all preclude the possibility of arising after death into a more intense and inclusive form of those states.
To deny categorically the possibility of heaven and hell being, in some sense at least, real, is to be very narrow-minded. Who can say what possibilities exist within the universe? Why should the limit of the familiar be the limit of the real?
Finally, it should be noted that the Buddha himself was quite clear on this question.
Since there actually is another world, one who holds the view "there is another world" has right view. (Majjhima 60)
It is known to me to be the case, that there are gods. (Majjhima 100)
There can be no doubt of the sense in which the Buddha taught about karma, rebirth and the various realms.
But I agree that when we talk about mountains/realms, we're all likely to refer to them as things and places. Even the teachers often refer to them as places, while accepting that they're states of mind:
"In fact I have seen some extraordinary cases of masters, like one master called Kunu Rinpoche...so when [Kunu Rinpoche] went to ask about the different bardos, like the ones that are spoken of in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, this lama came back to say that what was extraordinary for him...the way he spoke, it was like as if he was there. It was like somebody living in London giving a direction to Central Park West, or somebody living in San Francisco giving directions to Golden Gate Bridge. It was as if he was actually there...what was the greatest teaching for this lama was that if you really understand and go deeper into your own mind, in fact life and death and all the different bardo states are nowhere but in the nature of your mind. Unfortunately at this juncture we only understand a very partial, superficial aspect of mind, and we only understand a little bit about mind. We have not really delved into the depths of consciousness, of the nature of mind." (Sogyal Rinpoche, interview with Jeffrey Mishlove)
Another confusing factor might be the proposed existence of other world systems, but that would be different from the issue of realms here in our own world system.
And again, at their root, all these things are projections and the result of misunderstanding reality; it's simply that our minds tend to project things this way.
I think one reason we might get depressed in the West is due to our cultural tradition of hell being a place of eternal suffering, whereas no condition in Buddhism is eternal.
That's a good discussion to have with Tibetan teachers - the different picture "hell" conjures in the mind of a (Christian-influenced) student.
I think one reason we might get depressed in the West is due to our cultural tradition of hell being a final, inescapable place of eternal suffering, whereas no condition in Buddhism is inescapable or eternal.
That's a good discussion to have with Tibetan teachers - the different picture "hell" conjures in the mind of a (Christian-influenced) student.
They're definitely real in the sense of various pleasant and unpleasant mental states that we mentally take birth into, which is something we can easily observe for ourselves. For example, BuddhaNet's introductory essay, "Introduction to Buddhism," gives a good explanation of the realms in this way: And this psychological interpretation is supported by the suttas themselves. For example, we find passages like these in AN 4.235 (notice the qualifier 'like'): As for the literal existence of these realms, I can't say. It's certainly possible, and it's often fun to speculate about them (I've even heard stories of people who could see beings from these others realms); but I think it's ultimately more useful to focus on what we can experience for ourselves, in the here and now, and use our practice to try and find a true and lasting happiness inside.