In traditional Buddhism six realms are recognised. The realms of Hell, hungry ghosts, animals, asuras, human beings, and heavenly beings.
Once again, in traditional Buddhism we transmigrate through these realms according to our karma/acts/thoughts.
(Nirvana is not "heaven")
Whether or not these realms actually exist after death, they certainly exist within human society and inside each of us.
"Hell is when people live together and make each other suffer. Everything each one does irritates the others. This sort of thing often happens even within ourselves: two conflicting parts of us argue and fight. We have a constant internal struggle. That’s hell"
Hungry ghosts are beings consumed by unsatisfied craving. Usually they are depicted in Buddhist symbolism as fat bellied beings with very slender necks!
Animals are happy when they are fed; they feel content and go to sleep, while others are made to work, work, work.
Asuras are fighting spirits. When we believe we are right, we criticize others based on our own concept of justice. If necessary we fight with others until we win. Exterminating people who oppose us becomes the purpose of our lives. Asura cannot be satisfied without enemies.
Human beings seek fame and profit. Animals are satisfied when their stomachs are full, but we with our human minds are never full, because we think of our future.
Heavenly beings are those whose desires are completely met. They need nothing; they seem happy, and yet they are not.
Many modern Buddhists relate all this to the changing moods and emotions of our daily lives. Each day we can "visit" each realm. A revolving wheel.
How to escape the wheel?
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@fakable Maybe. But you never know! The Dharma sees birth as a human being as a precious opportunity to escape the wheel, suicide would be seen as a waste.
@SW-User maybe to each his own one man's way out, another man's not
SW-User
@fakable My apologies, I feel a ramble coming on. There's something about McDonalds and a coffee that brings out the "best"in me.....mental health wise, I nearly always feel so positive, and I've stopped asking why or applying any analysis. Just accept the positive mood and give thanks, be grateful.
Well yes, to each his own....or her own......but the result of suicide is not like a preference for daffodils rather than tulips. Death is THE END or it is not. Our choice/preference doesn't really come into it.
Rambling on, I'm always surprised by the sheer lack of imagination of some "born again" fundamentalist Christians who have said things like:- "If you are wrong, you will be in hell. If I am wrong I won't know anything about it." They seem to think the only alternative to the playing out of their very own precise beliefs is oblivion, pure and simple!
But just perhaps Allah will confront them, scimitar in hand, demanding why they never fulfilled the Five Pillars of Islam. Or maybe they will, at death, then immediately feel the slap on their bum of the midwife, greeting them back into this world. Or they will find themselves drifting in some ethereal nether-world, desperately looking for a friendly face and finding none. Not to mention the possibilities of parallel universes.......Such a lack of imagination.
I'm more with Thoreau and his comment made just days before his death. An old friend, knowing that Thoreau was close to death, asked if he had any sense of what was to come. Thoreau's reply was, “One world at a time.”
I think one world is enough and that the only real extension to the present is intensity, depth, or as Dogen says, "intimacy". As I see it, too much preoccupation with the "next life" will always involve some betrayal of this one. I think knowing this life deeply, to the full, is perhaps preparation enough for anything that may or may not come after.
Then there are some Dharma teachings, expressions, scriptures that in poetic fashion speak of another concept of "time" - as not simply linear, but in a sense, as "all at once". Time is there so that all things don't happen at once, as some wag once said. This sort of thing is also the subject of many of today's so called "popular science" books.
Getting a bit technical and philosophical, greater intimacy with our present Reality, dispensing in a way with linear time, has the effect of combining ontology, epistemology and soteriology. Things are channelled into "now". All that hippy guff about "live in the now man!" can actually begin to be an existential reality.
All this, at least as I see it, speaks of Faith. Calls for Faith. As I have said before, in my own Pure Land way Faith (known as shinjin) is everything. Not salvation by faith, but that Faith (shinjin) is salvation. It is not belief in anything at all, but simple trust in Reality. That all things, no matter what, work together for the good of all - no matter so much that can seem to point otherwise. Faith, now, will be able to confront Allah or anything else when the time comes, or doesn't come.....😀
The path - if it can be called that - is simply saying "thank you" to everything. It can become instinctive. Good or bad - "thank you". Which is the poor mans way of bringing to be the words of the Hsin Hsin Ming ("Faith in Mind"):-
The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When like and dislike are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for, or against, anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind. When the deep meaning of things is not understood, the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail.
As far as Christianity is concerned, Meister Eckhart once said that if the only prayer we ever said was "Thank You" it would be enough. Enough for what? Who knows, love has no why (which he also said)
And Thomas Merton of course, from his "Study of Chuang Tzu":-
The way of Tao is to begin with the simple good with which one is endowed by the very fact of existence. Instead of self-conscious cultivation of this good (which vanishes when we look at it and becomes intangible when we try to grasp it), we grow quietly in the humility of a simple, ordinary life, and this way is analogous (at least psychologically) to the Christian “life of faith.” It is more a matter of believing the good than of seeing it as the fruit of one’s effort. The secret of the way proposed by Chuang Tzu is therefore not the accumulation of virtue and merit but wu wei, the non-doing, or non-action, which is not intent upon results and is not concerned with consciously laid plans or deliberately organized endeavors: “My greatest happiness consists precisely in doing nothing whatever that is calculated to obtain happiness … Perfect joy is to be without joy … if you ask ‘what ought to be done’ and ‘what ought not to be done’ on earth to produce happiness, I answer that these questions do not have a fixed and predetermined answer” to suit every case. If one is in harmony with Tao—the cosmic Tao, “Great Tao”—the answer will make itself clear when the time comes to act, for then one will act not according to the human and self-conscious mode of deliberation, but according to the divine and spontaneous mode of wu wei, which is the mode of action of Tao itself, and is therefore the source of all good.
Rather a long quote, but every word seemed pertinent.
Well, I must go. Sorry, I did say a ramble was coming on.
@SW-User thank you for sharing your thoughts with me
i agree with everything you said
everything you said is the essence of studying the major religions and philosophy of buddhism
i could have told you the same thing
i hold that the self is a property of the layer arising from the illusory division of the whole into parts
the property of this layer is the observer of the self
by me, as well as by the omnipostal, which seems to be separated from the whole, the whole observes itself
this is how being is created
this is my piece of nonsense
any particle is similar to this node
the rope is what it is
if you pull on the ends of the rope, the knot will come undone and disappear
that was life
that was you
SW-User
@fakable Thanks. That rope and knot is a potent image to my mind/heart! That thought of a tangled mess of entwined cords, then the quite simple pull on the two ends resolves everything!
"Who shall untangle this tangle?" begins the Theravada Visuddhimagga (the Path of Purification) Enter the Buddha, stage right!
The scope of effort has often been a question of mine.
