Hungry ghost realm

Week 1: the hungry ghost realm

Remember to apportion your meditation session as follows:

• rest with the breath for 1/3 of your meditation time,
• do the following contemplations for 1/3-1/2 your practice session,
• gain rest with the breath for the balance of your session. 

The hungry ghost realm is the world of greed. Bring to mind an occasion when you felt greedy. Look at how greed expresses itself in your body. The body tightens. Hands and arms tense, preparing to grasp or hold. The throat constricts. The nostrils flare. The eyes dart here and there, scanning for something to take. You feel an impulse to reach out and snatch or grab what you can. 

Now look at what emotions accompany greed. Want, neediness, certainly. But also fear, harshness, and even cruelty. The stories, too, are all about “I have to have this,” “It’s mine,” “You can’t have any,” and so on.

When you are consumed by greed, you see the world as a desert waste. You cannot see or find anything to ease your hunger or slake your thirst. You search desperately, oblivious to others, scrambling, fighting, clawing to find something, anything, to ease the desperate need inside. If you find a crumb of bread or a desiccated pea, your mouth is so small you cannot eat it. When you pick it up, it rots in your hands. When you touch it to your lips, it scorches them. A drop of water becomes a fiery fluid, burning your mouth and your body from the inside out. Greed is so intense that if we do find a small piece of what we are looking for, our desperation is magnified.

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

Continue to do the hungry ghost meditation. In particular, feel how insatiable greed is. Greed arises when a want is mistaken for a need. No matter what you want, you can never have enough, not enough food, money, attention, affection, security, status, etc. Feel how greed is a blackhole, swallowing everything it can draw in, but without any satisfaction or satiation. 

During the day, for the first day, go about your life as a hungry ghost. Any time you notice that you want something or are attracted to something, make it a need. You have to have it! What is it like to live life that way? When you make everything a need— something you have to have for your survival, for your emotional well-being, or to establish who you are—how often are you able to get what you think you need? How do people look at you? How do you look at other people? With greed, we see others as objects whose only function is to fulfill our own needs.

What is the difference between the hungry ghost realm and the human realm? The human realm is based in want. You want things to be different from how they are. That want keeps you busy, but every now and then, you do get what you want. For a short time, at least, you experience enjoyment and relief. The want is satisfied, and that feels good. It doesn’t last, and you are soon back working for this or trying to get that. In the hungry ghost realm, however, there is never any sense of satisfaction, no relief, no moment of enjoyment. You are driven, driven, driven. You can never rest, and that insatiable sense of lack constantly prods you and keeps you moving. 

The next day, go about your life as a human. As a human, you always want things to be a little different from how they are, a little more of this, a little less of that. There are things you want, but you know you don’t need them, not at the level of survival, emotional well-being, or identity. When you have what you want, savor the satisfaction and enjoyment for a few moments, before you move on to your next project. When you are not able to get what you want, you feel disappointment and frustration, but you know you can live with it.

Again, alternate one day as a hungry ghost, one day as a human for the six days.

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

In your regular meditation sessions, continue to explore what it is like to be a hungry ghost, to be consumed by greed. In particular, feel how volatile it is, how it takes hold of you and so distorts your perception of what you need that nothing can possibly satisfy it. Let yourself feel the crazed volatile nature of greed, without letting it take you over.

During the day, on day one, go about your life as a hungry ghost. Everything you touch turns to dust. Nothing works out. You are driven by desperate need. You can never have enough. Any good words from others, any success or achievement, or any good fortune falls into the black hole of your need for attention and appreciation and makes no difference to how you feel. You desperately hold onto what little you have, even though you don’t find any of it in the least bit comforting or satisfying.  

The next day, go about your life as a titan. You have to be better than everyone else. Notice where others are better than you—athletic ability or artistic talent, good looks or popularity, money or status, fame or good fortune. Then work harder, play harder, exercise harder, do whatever you can to demonstrate that you are at least their equal. 

Envy and jealousy and greed and neediness are all hair triggers for reactivity. Almost all the demons in the Tibetan tradition come from one or other of these two realms. They represent emotional obsessions arising from a sense of lack, of not having enough.

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

Next 6 days: alternation between hungry ghost realm and god realm

In your practice sessions, continue to explore the hungry ghost realm, how you see and experience life when you are consumed by greed. From time to time, imagine that you have everything you want and everything you need. You are able to eat and drink. Food does not turn into a putrid mess when you touch it. Water or wine does not turn into a fiery fluid when you drink it. Your body goes not recoil or tense when you pick something up. You enjoy the pleasures of aromas and flavors. No matter how much you grasp, there is always more. As a hungry ghost, how do you react to this change?

During the day, go about your life as a hungry ghost, angry, frustrated, never able to get what you want  or need. The next day, go about your life as a god, swimming in luxury, every want or need fulfilled before the thought is complete in your mind, every person you meet there only serve your every whim, able to rest completely at ease in a bliss that seems to endure forever.

For the six days, alternate one day as a hungry ghost, one day as a god.

Remaining days of the month: awakening in the hungry ghost realm.

In the hungry ghost realm, Buddha, the possibility of waking up, is symbolized by Flaming Mouth, the queen of the hungry ghosts. When her greed is appeased by offerings from the monastic sangha, all her subjects in the hungry ghost realm are also appeased.

Again, enter the hungry ghost realm and let the experience of greed arise in you. Make it as vivid as you can, feeling the grasping quality in every cell in your body. Rest in that all-consuming greed. Now look at what experiences greed. You may experience a shift in which you touch a clear empty knowing that knows the greed and is at peace at the same time. Let that knowing permeate your whole being, your body, heart and mind. Let that knowing take the form of intense clear light that permeates everything you experience. The whole hungry ghost realm dissolves in that light.

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

During the day, notice when your inner hungry ghost asserts itself. Whenever you think, “I need that,” pay attention. As soon as you notice that kind of thought, check your body. What is happening in your body? Usually, you notice a bit of tension, and under that tension, a feeling of being threatened, threatened by lack, loss, or deprivation. Notice other reactive emotions that arise, anxiety, fear, harshness, even cruelty. These emotions may be fleeting, but any of them may be the door through which you step into the hungry ghost realm and are consumed by needing and grasping. When you feel any kind of grasping or neediness, ask these three questions:

• What am I trying to get in this situation?
• Do I have to get it?
• Is getting called for at all right now?

These questions break the enchantment of the hungry ghost realm. In particular, they put you in touch with how the impulse to grasp is almost always not in keeping with what is actually going on in the situation. Something has triggered the reaction of greed in you, and you have fallen under its spell. 

The aim of these meditations is not to make us averse to greed. It is to know the experience of greed, to know it so deeply that we know what it is, a movement in mind. When we experience greed as a movement in mind, we are in touch with a knowing that greed does not touch. As with other emotional reactions, greed loses its power as a drive. We have discovered the possibility  of experiencing it without either acting on it or suppressing it. That is freedom.