Practice Guidelines. for the Six Realms

During your regular meditation period, rest with the breath for 1/3 of your meditation time. Then do the following contemplations for 1/3-1/2 your practice session. Then again rest with the breath for the balance of your session. During the day, observe and note in yourself  the characteristic struggles associated with each realm. 

Human Realm

Week 1: the human realm

During your regular meditation period, rest with the breath for 1/3 of your meditation time. Then do the following contemplations for 1/3-1/2 your practice session. Then again rest with the breath for the balance of your session. During the day, observe and note how wanting and the struggle to be satisfied arises in you, and in others. In particularly, note the arising of like, dislike, and don't care in you. Note how they translate into attraction (wanting), aversion (wanting something else), and indifference (can't be bothered).

The human realm is about wanting. You want this, you want that. You seek enjoyment, the feeling of fulfillment, warmth and relaxation that arises when your desires are satisfied. Without it, there is a sense that something is missing. Whether its sexual desire, hunger, or thirst, that enjoyment does not last very long. When you buy something that you have wanted for a long time, enjoyment typically lasts three days. Three days! Maybe you enjoy status or recognition. Maybe you enjoy the feeling of safety, security, or fulfillment. The story is always the same—if I had this, I would be happy. But it's not true. You always want more of something, and if not more, then something different. There are many kinds of wanting, but there is no end to it. 

In the classical texts, the human realm is characterized by the four great struggles—birth, old age, illness, and death. Most of us don't remember our birth, but it probably isn't very pleasant. We are squeezed through a narrow channel and dropped into a totally new environment. We have no idea how to function and we are utterly dependent on others. The struggle begins. 

Our life is largely made up of the four lesser struggles of the human realm—not being able to have what you want, not being able to keep what you have, not being with those you want to be with, and being with those you don't want to be with. Most of your time and energy goes into trying to resolve these struggles. Even if we manage to procure what we want, our enjoyment is only temporary. If we manage to be with the people we want to be with, problems and disagreements inevitably arise. As human beings, we have an extraordinary ability to make a mess of good situations, and it's almost always because of wanting, wanting things to be different from what they are. 

Old age is not something we choose. It is something that happens. If old age is a distant prospect for you, you only have to look at how the elderly struggle to know that it's not much fun, either. If it isn't a distant prospect, you know the struggle of old age already, and there is nothing more to say. Illness in the modern era is something that most of us encounter only occasionally—the exception more than the rule. It wasn't always so, and the advent of a pernicious virus has now woken us up to the struggles and anxiety that illness has always brought to the human condition. As for death, we are biologically, psychologically, socially and culturally conditioned to avoid death. Everything in our being moves us to struggle against it. 

If you dig a little deeper, you may find that a sense of missing something pervades everything you experience, except for those brief moments when you find enjoyment. But if and when you find a respite from that missing, how long would you or could you stay there?

Next 6 days: alternate between human realm and hungry ghost realm

During your meditation period, continue with the human realm mediation, feeling the wanting that arises from the feeling of something missing and savoring the enjoyment that comes when your want is satisfied. From time to time, bring to mind how your life has been shaped by wanting, whether it is want for human connection, for relationship, for a job, a book, a car, a dress, or a good conversation. 

The difference between the hungry ghost realm and the human realm is that the hungry ghost realm is based in need (real or imagined) while the human realm is based in want. If you do not have what you need, you do not survive. If you do not obtain what you want, you may be inconvenienced, but your life and well-being are not threatened. When a need is fulfilled, you may experience relief but you do not experience enjoyment. When you have what you wanted, you do experience enjoyment, at least for a time. 

During the day, on day one, go about your life as a human. In particular, take note of how much time and energy go into wanting what you don't have, wanting to keep what you do have, wanting to be with certain people, and wanting not to be with other people. Whenever you feel enjoyment during the day, savor the feeling. Take note of how much time and energy you put into seeking enjoyment, assuaging that feeling that something is missing. Explore how long you are able to stay with the enjoyment. What happens in you when it dissipates?

The next day, go about your life as if you are in the hungry ghost realm. Take every want as a need. You need this. You need that. You have to have it! Without it, you are not going to survive, you are going to be crushed emotionally, or your sense of who you are, your identity, is going to be damaged beyond repair. You feel threats at every turn. You grasp whatever you can and even as you hold it in your hands or stuff it down your throat, it's never enough.

Alternate one day human, one day hungry ghost for six days. 

Next 6 days: alternate between human realm and animal realm

Continue to do the human realm meditation and pay attention to how you the experience of wanting. What are the body sensations associated with wanting? What emotions come up? What are the typical stories that run? What happens when your desire is fulfilled? How do you experience enjoyment in your body, emotionally, and in your mind? Also, take note of how long the feeling of enjoyment lasts and how it dissipates and is replaced by another want. 

What is the difference between the human realm and the animal realm? An animal, in general, acts on what it perceives it needs in the moment. Humans, again generally speaking, are more able to project their desires into the future and figure out how to satisfy them. They plan, scheme, and work at fulfilling their desires. 

During the day, for the first day go about your life as a human again. When you want something, figure out a way to satisfy your desire. What needs to happen for that to come about? Wait until the conditions are right? What is it like to wait? When the conditions are right, put your plan into action and see what unfolds. If you are successful, savor the enjoyment. How long do the feelings of enjoyment and satisfaction last?

The next day go about your life as if you are an animal. As soon as you feel you need something, try to bring it about. Here, you are not acting like a hungry ghost, driven by insatiable greed. You want something and you try to get it. If you can't, you give up and try to get something else, or you just accept that you can't get it right now. If you are hungry, for instance, experience the hunger. If you have nothing to eat, what is it like to wait until food comes along? Life is in the immediate present. You are only aware of what is right in front of you and right around you. You cannot project your wants or needs into the future. Right here, right now, but limited to what you have been conditioned to notice and seek. 

Again, alternate one day as a human, one day as an animal for the six days.

Next 6 days: alternation between human realm and hell realm

In your practice sessions, continue to explore the human realm, a world based on satisfying wants and desires, satisfying that feeling of missing something, and constructing more and more elaborate systems to do so. From time to time, consider that you are in a different world, a world in which you want for nothing, a world in which that feeling of missing doesn't arise. Everything you could possibly want or need is readily accessible and available. Would you enjoy such a world? What would you do in it? 

During the day, go about your life as a human one day, feeling your desires, satisfying them to the extent possible, and savoring the feelings of satisfaction and enjoyment. The next day, go about your day as if you were in hell. Whatever you want, something or someone blocks your way. Your wants bring you into conflict. The world is against you in every way. Take note of what body sensations, the emotions, and the stories that arise. 

For the six days, alternate one day as a god, one day as a being in hell.

Remaining days of the month: awakening in the human realm

A manifestation of Buddha (awakening) is traditionally pictured in each of the six realms. In the human realm, Buddha takes the form of Buddha Shakyamuni, the buddha of our age who lived 2500 years ago. In the human realm, Buddha Shakyamuni sought freedom from the struggles of old age, illness, and death. He found a peace in which he could experience desire, anger, and all the other emotional reactions and know directly that these emotional reactions were movements in mind, that, like everything else in the world, they come and go on their own. In that knowing, there is a wholeness. There is no sense of something missing.

Again, enter the human realm and touch your desires. Then touch that knowing. Let that knowing permeate your whole being, not only your body, heart and mind, but everything you feel and everything you experience through the senses, everything you see, hear, taste, touch or smell. Some people find it helpful to let that knowing take the form of light which permeates everything they experience, light so intense that the whole human realm dissolves into light.

Dissolve the human realm into light two or three times, and then rest in the light.

During the day, recall that wanting arises from a feeling that something is missing. Enjoyment arises when our desires are satisfied. In that enjoyment, we feel whole and complete. Most of us build our whole lives around the dream of enjoyment, in one form or another. Whenever you are aware of wanting or desiring, consider these three questions, one after the other in this sequence:

• What am I missing in this situation?

• Do I have to miss it?

• Is missing called for at all right now?

These questions break the enchantment of the human realm. You may feel that someone threw cold water in your face, or that you are waking up from a dream or deep sleep. You see the world differently. You are content in a way that you may not have experienced before, and there is a peace and freedom in that contentment.  

What are the six realms?

The question "Do the realms actually exist?" is, to be a bit technical, a category question masquerading as an ontological question. Consider the question, “Are the six realms products of the human imagination?” Few would argue that they are not. Thus they exist, at least as products of the human imagination. The better way to phrase this question is: in what category do we put the 6 realms? Are they possibilities of actual experience? Are they descriptions of actual beings? Are they metaphors for subjective experience? Are they a nexus of energy in which we are caught, a bottomless pit from which there is no apparent way out, otherwise called samsara?

It is very hard to say definitely what is or is not for the simple reason that we cannot know what this experience we call life actually is. Chuang Tzu pointed this out a couple of thousand years ago. "Am I Chuang Tzu dreaming that I am a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that I am Chuang Tzu?" I love how the end of Box Trolls takes a look at this problem, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h7p0NckTKc

A friend and colleague of mine says that we don't have to believe that these realms exist, but we should practice with the idea that it is possible that they do. Is this a version of Pascal's gambit? Not really. It’s more about not believing that what we know through our senses, through our reasoning, or through our conditioning is the final word on everything.

For the purposes of the meditation  I describe in these postings, I am definitely interpreting the six realms as metaphors for the subjective experience of emotional reactions and the worlds they project. In the same vein, rebirth can be seen as a metaphor for how we move from one projected realm to another, many times every day, as different emotional reactions come and go. For most people in our culture, it is a big step to consider the six realms describe possibilities of existence. That resistance makes it more difficult for us to engage viscerally the experiences of the six realms. It all feels a bit like make-believe. On the other hand, if we take the realms as descriptions of the subjective experience of the emotional reactions, it is easier for us to move right into the experience of realm: feel the grasping quality of greed, how anger burns us from the inside out, how hate makes the slightest movement excruciatingly painful, etc. We don’t get hung up on wondering “Is it real?” We can move into the physical experience of emotional reaction. To change our relationship with these emotional reactions, to free ourselves from their tyranny, we have to be able to not only recognize but stand in and experience the visceral physical operation of the reaction itself.