The Wheel of Life (Bhavachakra) is a diagram that portrays the six realms of being. Here, the realm of the Devas is shown at the top, followed clockwise by the realms of the Asuras, the Pretas, Naraka, Animals, and Humans. Note that the Buddha is present in every one of these realms.
Buddhist cosmology posits these six realms as worlds that we are born into. As in many eastern worldviews, there is an essential element of each of us that travels from body to body, transmigrating or reincarnating through many lifetimes. Each time we take on a new body, we are born into one of these six worlds, and when we die, we are reborn into the same or a different world, depending on how much good and bad we have wrought through our actions, words, and thoughts.
Stay with me here, because I am not a believer in reincarnation, but there’s something really useful buried in this model of the Wheel of Life…so first, a brief description of each realm on the Wheel.
The Six Realms
Deva-gati
Asura-gati
Preta-gati
Naraka-gati
Tiryagyoni-gati
Manusya-gati
Deva-gati: realm of blissful beings
These beings are godlike, with wealth, power, long life, and happiness. But they are full of pride and self-satisfaction, and they are blind to the suffering of others, so no compassion or wisdom develops, and thus they do not extend themselves to others. They will be reborn to another realm. Doing good got them to this pleasant place, but they cannot free themselves from the wheel because they are no longer doing good for others.
Asura-gati: realm of the fallen gods
These demi-gods are full of envy and jealousy, because they can see the devas and wish to be in that realm. Since they want to be superior, they belittle others. They live in a more pleasurable situation than humans, but their envy and jealousy keeps them riled up. They got here by intending to do good in the past, but winding up doing harm to others.
Preta-gati: realm of hungry ghosts
These beings are depicted with huge empty stomachs, but pinhole mouths and skinny necks. They are perpetually hungry and thirsty, but cannot ever satisfy those cravings. This is the realm of craving, hunger, addiction, obsession, compulsion.
Naraka-gati: Hell realm
This is the most terrible of the realms. These creatures are angry, aggressive, driving away any who show love or compassion, seeking only other hell beings’ company. The only way out is time—they have planted karmic seeds by hurting others, and those seeds must bear terrible fruit for them to experience, and then they can be reborn to another realm.
Tiryagyoni-gati: animal realm
These creatures are ignorant, prejudiced, and complacent. It is not that they do not know, it is that they mis-know, they are incorrect in their thinking and content to remain that way. They are mostly concerned with avoiding discomfort and have no interest in understanding better, seeing more clearly, or doing good.
Manusya-gati: human realm
This is the only realm from which escape from the wheel of samsara is possible. Enlightenment is at hand…but only a few awaken to it. It is characterized by doubt, desire, but also inquiry and reflection. YOU SEE YOU ARE IMPERFECT, YET YOU DO THE RIGHT THING ANYWAY. You can see others’ suffering and respond with compassion, accruing great karma—which takes so long in any other realm. It is from this realm that you have a chance to jump off the wheel of habit, of doing the same thing over and over, of creating suffering in yourself.
Imagine you grow up hearing of these realms as worlds you inhabit over lifetimes. At the end of each life, your karmic accounting is done and according to its results, you are kicked into one of these realms to work out some more of your s**t. Very useful story for your society, which keeps you working to do good, yes? Pretty useful for you, too, as doing good will help you in the present moment, anyway.
Now imagine you find a teacher who tells you that, in fact, in each moment we are in one of these realms, and in fact, the wheel is constantly turning. These realms are a model for our emotional states as they shift and change over minutes and hours. And we put ourselves there, no one else does it for us. Moment by moment, we make ourselves blissful, envious, endlessly craving, angry, ignorant, doubtful. We do it in the way that we react to what is happening here and now. And in this moment—not in our next lifetime—we have opportunities to transmigrate into a different realm, by changing our response to how things are.
It is hard, to be sure, because our conditioning keeps us doing/saying/thinking the same things. But we always have a chance to change the realm we are in…and when we are in the human realm, of doubt, desire, inquiry, reflection…that is when we have a chance to let go of the whole darn cycle altogether. A chance to stop reacting and just stay aware. Each time we loosen the grip of samsara (conditioning) on our thoughts/words/actions, and perceive a new way of being, we are closer to freedom. It doesn’t take lifetimes. The moment is now.
I love this esoteric interpretation of the Wheel of Life. It doesn’t discount that it may, in fact, take more than one lifetime to really do this work (which I also agree with; I’m just not sure that we’ll get that next lifetime), yet it emphasizes that it starts right NOW. And big things can happen right now.
When the person at work or at home does something that arouses anger, or prompts a feeling of superiority, or even makes me feel happy because of my external circumstances...that's not a bad thing. (Remember, the Buddha is present in each realm!) But can I see that I have put myself into this realm of Hell, or of the Asuras, or of the Devas? Can the dramatization of the Wheel of Life help me find a little distance from the play of emotions on this stage?
We can change the ruts that our wheels have gotten stuck in, gradually creating new paths, and eventually roaming free of roads, paths, and ruts at all. And sometimes our wheels take a big jump off the beaten track! But most often, we have to work at moving this way and that, slowly nudging ourselves into new territory. New ways of moving the body, softening the heart, opening the mind.
Krishnamurti reminds us: “Enlightenment is an accident. But we can do certain things to make ourselves accident-prone.”
You know what those things are. Back to the mat.
(And doesn’t this kind of interpretation make you wonder about western cosmologies and metaphysical stories? The ones with equally unlikely chances at being literally correct, yet ripe with metaphorical possibilities?)
No comments:
Post a Comment