11. The Suffering of the Three Upper Realms

[WFGS pp. 148–50]

THE SUFFERING OF THE HUMAN REALM

Ignorance itself is the cause of the suffering of all the realms. Any being who has no realization of emptiness can have no clear recognition of their own mind and so will suffer.

Every human being is still in samsara and so will experience the various sufferings of a human. There are eight types of suffering:

• the suffering of birth
• the suffering of sickness
• the suffering of aging
• the suffering of death
• the suffering of encountering what is unpleasant
• the suffering of separation from what is pleasant
• the suffering of not getting what we want
• the suffering of having deluded aggregates

In our samsaric life, from birth to death we experience these eight types of suffering. We are under the control of old age, sickness and death, not knowing how to control our death, unable to take a better way at the time of death. We suffer from not finding beautiful objects and having to experience unpleasant, ugly ones. Everyone’s life is involved in suffering.

The beggar and the billionaire—both are in the prison of the twelve links and beset by the eight sufferings. Ordinary people think that suffering only means lacking material things, but for humans the mental suffering is just as terrible. To think that poverty is the only cause of suffering is to misunderstand what suffering is. It’s not that the rich are happy and the poor are miserable. The actual meaning of suffering is having an ignorant mind, a negative mind, one lacking understanding.

Some people think that because they have many possessions and a big family with many relatives, a beautiful house with a garden, because they have all this, they are happy and without suffering, so why should they practice the Dharma? They don’t need the Dharma. This is a really deluded way of thinking. They think only poor or crazy people need the Dharma.

If possessions brought us satisfaction without depending on the Dharma, there would be no need to follow the Dharma, no need for it to exist. If having possessions was the sole criterion for being satisfied, all the rich people in the world would be so satisfied and happy. Their wealth seems to keep them trapped in worries and unhappiness; worries they will lose their wealth or jealousy that others are wealthier. They are also trapped in the twelve links, their lives going around and around, out of control. Begun by ignorance, their lives are also under the control of the eight types of suffering. Despite their wealth, they are bound to sickness, old age and death and the other sufferings, with no idea at all what to do at the time of death.

If they deny that their lives are suffering, they are cheating themselves. Already caught in the prison of the twelve links, each second of their human life is on the way to the end of that set of twelve links, to death. Before completing this result, they are already caught in so many other twelve links, already trapped into countless more lives of suffering. Just as the fish in the net waits to be finished by the fisherman, to be cut, cooked and eaten, this person also waits.

To think that we are not suffering, that our life is perfect, is to utterly delude ourselves. We need to see that we are already caught in so many countless sets of the twelve links, ready to experience those many other sufferings in future lifetimes. When we can recognize ourselves more clearly, we can come to understand the different layers of suffering that are our life.  Before this, we felt happy and comfortable, but that is a great mistake. It’s like seeing a mirage of a river and feeling so happy because we long to jump in and swim, but there is no water there; it’s only a mirage. The samsaric happiness we chase after is just such an illusion.

THE SUFFERING OF THE DEMIGOD REALM

The beings of the demigod realm (asura) are very cruel. Even though they are so much richer than the richest human, it’s like they live their life consumed with jealousy for the desire realm gods who have so much more than they do. They feel they have been somehow excluded from the god realm.

Because of coveting the wealth of the gods, they are constantly fighting with them. They are considered higher than us humans, but really they are very ignorant, their minds greatly obscured by jealousy and avarice.

On Mount Meru there are eight levels, four above the water and four below. The demigods live in the levels below the water and go up to the god realms to fight the gods. It’s said that when the humans on earth follow the Dharma and lead more virtuous lives than nonvirtuous ones, the gods have the upper hand in the fight between the gods and the demigods, but when the teachings degenerate on earth and people become more deluded, creating more negative karma, the demigods start winning the fight.

THE SUFFERING OF THE DESIRE REALM GOD REALM

Usually, the bodies of these samsaric gods and goddesses emanate light. Their bodies are beautiful and smell sweetly. The gods are always surrounded by many hundreds of goddesses, always enjoying themselves greatly.

At their time of death, however, this changes completely. Even though they have only ever smelled sweetly for the eons that they have been alive, in the time just before they die, they become aware of their impending death and their body starts to smell very badly. Not even the closest relatives will go near them. All their lives they have worn flower garlands that have never wilted, but now they do. Seeing the flowers wilt and die is very shocking for the gods. Their body gets dirty for the very first time.

They experience great worry as karmically they see clearly that they will be reborn in the hell realm. They start to look very ugly; the beautiful light their body has emanated fades. None of the other gods will look after them and their goddess girlfriends desert them. They feel very lonely and suffer so much.

The lesser gods are under the control of other gods who have more possessions. Those with little power and few possessions are thrown out of the god realm.

They are always fighting with the demigods. If any part of their body is cut, it grows again. However, if their neck is cut, they die. This is their karmic creation.

THE GODS OF THE FORM AND FORMLESS REALMS

A being takes rebirth in the world of form as a result of getting bored with the enjoyments of the objects of the five senses, becoming attached to the sublime ecstasy that practicing the samadhi meditation brings.

When the meditator has achieved samadhi through the nine stages of the shamatha (zhi nä) meditation, they are still not completely satisfied and see that having a corporeal body is 
holding them back. Through more meditation, they are able to transcend the form realm and take rebirth in the formless realm. Again, the being progresses through the stages of the form realm with meditations of ever-increasing subtlety. Without a form, having just the four mental aggregates, the formless being is completely unconscious from birth until just before death.

In the form realm there are seventeen categories; in the formless realm there are four categories. The first is limitless sky, where the being thinks the whole of existence, whether matter or not, is void, like the sky or empty space. Then there is limitless consciousness, where there is just mind appearing to the being. Then, nothingness, and finally neither existence nor nonexistence, also called the tip of samsara.

Whenever a being is born in samsara, it’s always in the twelve links, suffering the eight different sufferings and all the sufferings of the different realms. We must not be attached to any samsaric rebirth, even the human rebirth. The principal thing to do is to get out of samsara altogether. But if we can’t get out this lifetime, we should strive to take a human life next time, as a bridge to escape. Just as the bridge we used to cross a river is no further use once we are across, once we have escaped samsara, there is no need for another human rebirth.

The purpose of meditating on the sufferings of samsara is to understand how there is no real enjoyment from samsaric pleasures or possessions, that they are in fact a form of suffering. Unless we can see this through meditation, we will be unable to overcome our attachment to taking a samsaric rebirth and so we’re tied to suffering. As long as we are in samsara, no matter how much we might crave to be the wealthiest human being, we will be up and down in samsara, sometimes in the upper realms, usually in the lower realms.

As long as we have negative mind, we suffer. Without seeing living in samsara as like living in the middle of a blazing fire, we can’t renounce attachment. Then, it’s impossible to get out of samsara.