Titan Realm

Week 1: the titan realm

The essence of the titan realm is “I am better than you.” It’s about envy and jealousy. It is based in the belief that you have to prove that you are the best of the best, whatever arena you are in. If you can build a bigger business, have more friends, win more contests, be more famous, or make a better mousetrap, you can claim the place in the world that is rightfully yours. You are deeply jealous of those who you know are not as good as you, but they have more—more money, more friends, more status, more strength, or more fame. You are constantly comparing what you have or what you have done against what others have or have done. Whether it is status, wealth, or fame, power, intelligence or ability, good works, elegance or kindness, it is always a contest, a contest you never seem to win. What you do have in terms of money, property, regard or beauty feels empty. Know matter how much you achieve, the horizon of your ambitions constantly recedes and you are left struggling and striving, driven by an envy or jealousy that never lets you rest.

When you read through the more detailed traditional accounts of the titan realms, you will notice that the descriptions are usually the shortest. Envy and jealousy spread their poisons insidiously—Iago, in Shakespeare’s Othello comes immediately to mind—but there is little more that needs to be said. The poison of jealousy spreads through the resentment, anger and aggression that it engenders. In contrast to jealousy, which is about the threat of loss, envy is about the threat of not having or being enough. That internal sense of not being enough drives the ambition, the aggression, the ruthless need to achieve, whatever the cost to yourself or those around you

Next 6 days: alternation between titan realm and hell realm

During your meditation period, continue with the titan realm mediation, feeling how the the need to achieve, the need to prove yourself, tyrannizes your life. From time to time, recall instances during your life when you knew you were better than others, but they were promoted, they had the deals that made their lives easy, they were recognized for their modest (in your eyes) achievements, and they lived in ways that you could only dream about. 

During the day, on day one, go about your life as a titan. All you notice is where others have more than you. It may be athletic ability or artistic talent, good looks or popularity, money or status, fame or good fortune. It makes you angry, but you cannot do anything about it. The next day, go about your life as if you are in hell. Even though all may be well in your life, you cannot enjoy or even appreciate any of it. It does not matter how well your day is going, life is still horrible. Every interaction is a simmering conflict. You cannot trust anyone to do anything good for you. You seethe with rage at the unjustness of it all. Both realms have a common base in anger.

Alternate one day titan, one day hell being for six days. 

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

Continue to do the titan realm meditation and pay attention to envy and its counterpart jealousy.  In particular, notice how quickly reactivity takes over, how quickly you are to compare yourself with others, how quickly stories about injustice, unfairness, shame, and need jump into your mind. 

For one day, go about your life as a titan again. Be better than everyone else and show it in every way you can—work harder, play harder, exercise harder. Have the answer to everything and do everything in your day better and faster than anyone else. The next day go about your life as if you are an abject loser, a hungry ghost. Everything you touch turns to dust. Nothing works out. You are driven by desperate greed. 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 greed 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. Envy and jealousy and greed and neediness are all hair triggers for reactivity. 

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

Next 6 days: alternation between titan realm and animal realm

In your practice sessions, continue to explore the titan realm, a world based on competition, rivalry, and achievement. From time to time, consider that you are in a different world, a world without competition or ranking. There is no you are better than me or I am better than you. Who would you be? What would you do? Many people find the prospect disorienting. They lapse back to old patterns of behavior just to confirm their identities.

During the day, go about your life as a titan one day, striving and competing in everything you do. The next day, go about your day as an animal. You function automatically, doing what you are used to doing, what you are know how to do. Envy, jealousy, comparison, competition don’t enter your mind at all. You have no awareness outside your conditioning, You do what is right in front of you and what you need to do

For the six days, alternate one day as a god, one day as an animal.

Remaining days of the month: awakening in the god realm

A manifestation of Buddha (awakening) is traditionally pictured in each of the six realms. In the titan realm, Buddha takes the form of Takzangri, head of one of the titan clans. He holds a sword and with it, breaks the titans’ obsession with aggression and envy.

The point here is that even in all-consuming envy, there is still a clear knowing that is unaffected. You can touch that knowing at any time. 

Again, enter the titan realm and 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 titan realm dissolves into light. 

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

During the day, recall that envy arises from comparing who we think we are and our position in the world to others. That envy drives us to try to achieve what we think we should have. Whenever you recognize that something you say or do is about achieving, bring these three questions to mind, one after the other in this sequence:

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

These questions break the enchantment of the titan realm. Depending on the situation, they may open up new possibilities or leave you dazed and confused. Whatever arises, stay with your intention to experience how envy and jealousy operate in your life—without being taken over by them. Do not be distracted by your own reactions. When you step out of the world of comparison, competition and achievement, you see the world differently. You may discover a quiet joy in taking care of the simple things in life, a joy that has always been there, but to which you paid little attention.

God Realm

Week 1: the god realm

The essence of the god realm is “I am right, and that’s just how it is.” It’s about pride. You are above it all. You are so far above it all that you feel you do not have to pay attention to what is below you. There is not the slightest question about your abilities, who you are, what you know, what you can do, everything about you. If someone does question you, it’s just a mistake on their part, their own confusion. Whether it’s the wealth you enjoy, your status in the world, where you live, what you eat, your talents or capabilities, or the beliefs you hold, you and those with whom you associate are right. There is nothing more to say. Your pride and conviction lift you higher and higher. When you ascend far enough, your thinking becomes increasingly subtle, to the point of subsiding completely. Your whole being is at ease in physical and mental bliss. It permeates your whole being, as if your spine was made of gold coins. The bliss becomes so intense you are scarcely aware of your body, of your mind, of space, of even your own existence. Beyond all question, you are above it all. 

When you read through the more detailed traditional accounts of the god realms, note how precise they are in describing the subjective experience of different degrees of pride. For instance, the lower level gods still have to deal with the periodic forays of the titans, those who would like to become gods, just as when you newly part of the elite, you still experience challenges from those who aspire to the same goal. The next higher level gods, however, can ignore such incursions, leaving them to the lower gods to take care of. Similarly, the accounts of the gods in the form and formless realms describe the subtler and subtler preoccupation with what you are experiencing that you encounter in meditative absorptions (Skt. dhyana, Pali jana). 

Next 6 days: alternation between god realm and animal realm

During your meditation period, continue with the god realm mediation, feeling what it’s like to be a god. From time to time, recall instances during your life when you felt so completely superior that any question of your understanding, ability or worth was ludicrous. 

During the day, go about your life as if you were a god. Miranda Priestley in the movie The Devil Wears Prada demonstrates one way. The next day go about your life as if everyone in your world is a god. You, on the other hand, are just a lowly domestic animal. You do whatever anyone asks you to do, never questioning anything, never offering the slightest objection.

Alternate one day god, one day animal for the six days.

Next 6 days: alternation between god realm and hell realm

Continue to do the god realm meditation and pay attention to the passage of time. How quickly does time pass as a god? How aware of time are you? How aware of yourself are you?

During the day, on day one, go about your life as a god again. You are so far above it all that there is no conflict in your life. If anything like conflict arises, you rise above it. It’s beneath you to engage it. The next day, go about your life as if you are in hell. Everything you encounter has to be opposed. You may not know why it has to be opposed. You just know it has to be opposed. Everything you do is extraordinary difficult. You encounter opposition at every turn. Nothing comes easily. You struggle with one task, one situation, and if you do manage to work through it, the next one is just as difficult. 

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

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

In your practice sessions, continue to rest in the god realm, but be aware that your time in the god realm is coming to an end. The blissful peace you experienced is beginning to dissipate. You feel yourself dropping level by level. Unfamiliar and nagging wants assert themselves. For you, they are needs. You have to have whatever you want. Your identity, emotional well being and survival demand it. But your wealth, abilities, companions and enjoyment steadily decrease and you are aware that you are not going to be above it all for much longer.

During the day, go about your life as a god one day. On the alternating days, be a hungry ghost. You are riven by greed. You can never get enough. You are so fearful of not having enough to meet your needs that you have to have more than your fair share and you’ll do anything to get it. You know everyone else is thinking and doing the same, so fair is fair, right?

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

Remaining days of the month: awakening in the god realm

A manifestation of Buddha (awakening) is traditionally pictured in each of the six realms. In the god realm, Buddha takes the form of Indra, the king of gods. He is pictured playing a lute, drawing the gods out of the thrall of wealth, luxury, bliss and superiority. 

The point here is that even in utterly suffocating pride, there is still a clear knowing that is unaffected by pride. You can touch that knowing at any time. 

Again, enter the god realm and 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 god realm dissolves into light. 

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

During the day, recall that pride is about maintaining who we think we are and our position in the world, whether high or low, good or bad, competent or incompetent. Whenever you recognize that something you say or do is about maintaining your identity, your sense of self, or your position, bring these three questions to mind, one after the other in this sequence:

• What am I maintaining in this situation?
• Do I have to maintain it?
• Is maintaining called for at all right now?

These questions break the enchantment of the god realm. Depending on the situation, they may be quite helpful or terribly inconvenient. Whatever arises, stay with your intention to see the operation of pride in your life. Do not be distracted by your own reactions. The point of these practices is to create the conditions for you to see clearly what is going on in and around you and open a way to the clear knowing which pride or any other emotional reaction does not touch. Whether that helps you in your life is beside the point.  

Introduction to Six Realms Practice

The purpose of this set of practices is three fold: 

• To develop the capacity and insight to recognize basic emotional reactions, 
• To develop the insight and capacity to recognize the worlds generated by these reactions, 
• To develop the insight and capacity to step out of their thrall.

User beware

• The aim of these practices is to clear out the undergrowth that prevents you from knowing experientially what you are. If you take them seriously, they will clear out that undergrowth with a certain ruthlessness. 
• These are not easy practices. Engage them only if you are serious about changing how you experience life. 
• You should have at least one year of basic meditation and a healthy dose of meditation on death and impermanence. 
• These practices challenge unspoken assumptions about how you relate to life, to the people in your life and to yourself. They may bring up old memories and unwanted feelings. It is a good idea to check in with your teacher from time to time.

Undertaking

This series is based on the six realms, gods, titans, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and the denizens in hell. Each of the next six months is dedicated to one of the realms, beginning with the god realm. At the beginning of each month, read or listen to a description of the realm. See the list of sources at the end of this article. 

To follow the sequence, do one practice session of at least 30 minutes a day. 45-60 minutes is better. For the first third of your practice time, rest attention on the coming and going of the breath. For the second third, do the six realm practice. For the last third, rest attention on the breath again.

Order
Most classical presentations start with the hell realm, the solidified end of the solidification spectrum, and then work with each realm in sequence, moving to progressively less solidified. In this set of practices, however, you are working as much with the relationships among the realms, how they reinforce, mirror, or flip into each other. Thus, even though I present them in terms of increasing solidification, starting with the god realm, it probably makes little difference where you start or in what order you practice them. What is important is that you do each realm.

For example, when one student, a highly volatile and aggressive head hunter, started on the realms, he related to the titan and the hell realms very easily. He wanted to work on those. He dismissed the other realms as being irrelevant to his difficulties, with himself, his work and his family. At first he resented my insistence that he work with each realm. A few months later, he came to appreciate that all six realms were relevant: he could be blissfully out of touch with others, he was constantly looking for satisfaction in his life, he could see where he went on automatic pilot, and even had to acknowledge his need for attention and recognition, a factor that contributed to his volatility.

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. 

Vajrayana and Archetypal Imagery

In 1986, I was translating for my teacher, Kalu Rinpoche, at a retreat in Big Bear, a scenic resort area high in the San Bernardino Mountains outside Los Angeles. About a hundred people attended the retreat. A couple of days into the retreat, Rinpoche opened the morning teaching with the following remarks, which, as his translator, I had to translate. “When Ken came to Los Angeles, he was clever. He taught meditation on the breath. Many people liked this kind of meditation. It made them feel better. And the result of Ken’s way of teaching is that you are here in this retreat here today. So, I think Ken was very clever and he did a good job.” Then, after a pause, he continued, “Maybe he was clever. Maybe not.”   A ripple of nervous laughter spread through the hall. People glanced at me, a quizzical look on their faces. What was going on? Was he teasing me? Where was he going? “Maybe he was just afraid,” he said. “Maybe he was afraid to tell people the truth, afraid of what would happen if he told them the truth, afraid that they might run away.” Now the hall was dead silent.   “Well, I’m not afraid,” he continued, grinning from ear to ear. “I’m not afraid to tell you the truth, the truth about samsara, the truth about the workings of karma.” He then launched into an exposition of the sufferings of the six kinds of beings, from the denizens in the hot and cold hells to the gods in the form and formless realms and everything in between, immediately followed by another exposition of how the workings karma stack the deck against any chance of happiness in endless cycles of birth and death, let alone freedom. His talk left people a bit confused. Most of them had not heard these kinds of teachings. Was this the Tibetan Buddhist version of fire and brimstone? Or was it something else?  Looking back, I see this talk as an example of the kind of traditional teaching that confuses people in the West. What do you do with these ancient cosmologies? On the one hand, modern astronomy has rendered the ancient cosmological maps obsolete. On the other hand, they provide a different way of looking at our place in the scheme of things and they are often the framework for certain Vajrayana teachings and practices. Reincarnation is deeply embedded in the culture of many societies, but not so much in the West. Do you have to believe in reincarnation and an endless sequence of lives to practice?  In his introduction to Myriad Worlds, Elio Guarisco writes that a culture’s cosmology reflects its psychology. The six kinds of beings and their abodes may not be an accurate description of the universe of matter as we understand it, but they are descriptions of the worlds projected by emotional reactions. They are precise and accurate descriptions of how we experience emotional reactions and attachments if we know how to understand them. When we picture the formless gods with the subtlest of physical bodies resting blissfully in profound meditative absorptions far removed from the perpetual struggles of life in the desire realms or the hungry ghosts wandering in barren deserts, constantly searching for a drop of water or a crumb of food that gives them any sense of satiation or satisfaction, the imagery speaks to us in the way poetry speaks to us. Something goes right in, despite the blocks and deflections of the conceptual mind and our own cultural conditioning.  Having a background in math and physics, I never took Tibetan cosmology as an actual description of the material universe. However, I did use this framework in many practices, notably taking and sending practice and meditation on Great Compassion (Chenrezi). In these practices, as in many other Vajrayana practices I put myself in the worlds described in the practice texts. Most of us are not used to putting ourselves in an imagined world. We don’t see the point, and even when it is explained, most of us are still unable to let that imagined or visualized world become vivid and real to us.  For instance, imagine you are sitting on a small grass island in the middle of a large lake. You sit at ease. Your body is as light and clear as light itself. Dense jungle grows on the shores of the lake. From time to time, you can just hear large animals crashing through the trees of the jungle. As you sit there, relaxed and at peace, you gradually become aware that there are eight white elephants roaming randomly around the lake. They are there, but what they are doing does not disturb or trouble you. You continue to sit, relaxed and completely at peace, resting on the grass of this small island in the middle of this lake. This image is from the Mati tradition of White Manjusri, a practice I was taught many, many years ago. Manjushri is the bodhisattva of awakened intelligence. Even now, as I write these words, the image elicits a profound sense of peace and presence in me. In terms of symbolism, the eight elephants represent the eight consciousnesses--the five consciousnesses associated with each of the physcial senses, the consciousness of thought, the emotional consciousness and the basis-of-experience consciousness. The image portrays a crystal clear direct knowing (Manjushri) as present in but unaffected by the ordinary operations of mind. You imagine or see yourself as this direct knowing. Through the island and the lake, the image tells us how different this knowing is from ordinary consciousness. However, a conceptual understanding of the image is not necessary--indeed it contributes virtually nothing--to the sense of peace and presence the image elicits. The image acts on much deeper parts of us to instill or imprint the possibility of peace and freedom beyond both the conceptual and the emotional mind. How it does so is a bit of a mystery, but this is one of the key aspects of vajrayana practice.  Much is made of the three components of creation phase practice: clarity, recollection and divine pride. Clarity is the ability to hold the image clearly in your mind. Recollection is the ability to know what each aspect of the image represents. Divine pride is the ability to hold the sense of being the deity, or, to put it in different words, to let the spirit of the deity take over in you. Of these three, I’ve found the last to be the most important. In the case of White Manjushri. I let the sense of being Manjushri, being completely at peace and present, soak into me.  This is not a cognitive process. I feel the peace and ease in my imagined body. This is an important point. Unlike Western thought and speculation of a mind existing apart from a body, in Vajrayana theory and practice, whether alive in this world, floating between death and birth, or in dreams, you always have a body. In fact you always have all three, mind, breath (or speech) and body.  As Manjushri, I am on an island at the center of a lake, and enjoy the peace and freedom from disturbance that that place affords. I am aware of the elephants roaming randomly through the jungle on the shores of the lake. They don’t bother me, they don’t disturb me, as they go about their business. And over time, something changes. The change is not brought about by an act of will. It takes place more by letting something happen to me, letting the practice work on me. The practice works on me in its own way, often at levels I am not aware of. My job is to do the practice as best I can as it was given to me. Something changes only when I spend time in this image and feel it viscerally in every part of my being. The visceral connection, I think, is the key. That visceral connection is also the key to working with the six realms. In the next few newsletters, I will go through each of the six kinds of beings, how to work with each of them from a vajrayana perspective, and what they have to say about our life and how we interact with others.