Source Material for Descriptions of the Six Realms

The first step in this sequence of practices is to become thoroughly familiar with the six realms. To that end, I suggest you consult these sources:

• The Jewel Ornament of Liberation, Gampopa, any of the translations available.
• The Words of My Perfect Teacher, Patrul Rinpoche. In either of these books, consult the chapter on the shortcomings or defects of samsara.
• Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, by Chögyam Trungpa, pg. 138ff
• Wake Up to Your Life, by Ken McLeod, pg. 138-151 (Audio versions available through CD Baby https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/kenmcleod Also available on Spotify)
• Podcasts with transcriptions by Domyo Burk https://zenstudiespodcast.com/sixrealms1/   Podcasts 29-31
• There are many other descriptions available on the web, too many for me to review them all.

Gampopa and Patrul give complete traditional accounts of the six realms, going through the varieties of beings in each one. Not poetic, but thorough and comprehensive. These accounts should be read as descriptions of the subjective experience of emotional reactions. Interpret the imagery as a description of uyour internal state when this reactive emotion arises in you. For even more detail, consult other lam-rim (stages of the path) texts. 

Trungpa’s account is poetic and the imagery is vivid. He explicitly connects the kinds of beings in each realm to human behavior. For many people, his description was the first account of the six realms that they could relate to at all. It lacks details of all the different varieties in each realm, but this is a small price to pay for an effective introduction.

My own accounts in Wake Up to Your Life follow the traditional descriptions more closely. I condensed much of the material you would find in The Jewel Ornament of Liberation or other lam-rim texts. My aim was to provide people with a comprehensive but manageable account that they could easily call upon for meditation purposes. 

Domyo Burke’s accounts are comprehensive and detailed and much more readable than the classical literature. They also touch on the kind of karma that evolves into each kind of being and the potential for awakening in each realm. 

I encourage you to learn the traditional imagery. You do not need to learn it all at once. You can go realm by realm, month by month. But do learn it to the point that you can easily call up the imagery and the feeling of the realm in your meditation practice.