Remembering 2 Remain Human in The 6 Realms
A Tibetan Buddhist saying warns that the bandits of hope and fear come to rob us of the present. The present being the precious moments that comprise our life. The true gift of opening this present is that it’s not only where we find our life, but it is the only place where spiritual awakening is possible.
In short, no matter how we apply ourselves, we will never awaken some day. We can only awaken now. Imagining what might occur if we keep working for it is fruitless unless we are present to experience it when it happens.
And we can only experience the present now.
Hope and fear are deeply ingrained in us. Hope can be exhilarating when it lifts our mood and makes new possibilities seem real. But hope will not get the job done. And if the desired result fails, our exhilaration can collapse into defeat. Fear constricts us from the other direction, narrowing our world and limiting our choices.
The six realms of Buddhist cosmology offer a useful map of human experience. Whether we understand them as literal worlds, social structures, or psychological states, each realm shows a different relationship to hope, fear, and the present moment.
The god realm is a state of sustained pleasure in which we feel comfortable and untouchable. Yet when the conditions supporting it disappear, the fall can be dramatic. Much like secret passages leading from the study to the kitchen in the game “Clue,” the god realm seems to have a trapdoor leading directly to hell. When a seemingly perfect life collapses, the shock can plunge us correspondingly into anger and despair.
Just below the realm of the gods—past the velvet ropes, inside the VIP world that most people on the ground level never see—is the jealous-god realm. Like the nouveaux riches standing impatiently at the velvet rope. They may get past the ropes, but they’ve got to work so hard to look and act right to get there. These poor jealous gods have so much to be grateful for, if they could only stop looking over their shoulders. Hope drives us forward while fear warns that someone else may be gaining on us.
At the center is the human realm. Interestingly, in the Buddhist system, gods are not in the ideal position because they lack the impetus for moral reflection. The human realm, with all its pain and uncertainty, is considered the ideal position for growth. Here we possess the courage to engage with others and participate fully in the world. The human experience becomes more stable as we learn to work with hope and fear. We can acknowledge fear, letting it wake us up, without allowing it to control us. We can recognize our hopes and ambitions without allowing them to fool us with insidious desert mirages. The more we long for water, the more water falsely appears.
As we get sucked in by the seduction of hope, or chained by the restriction of fear, we can notice and return. Just as we practice in meditation. Just like a fisherman employing “catch and release.” Notice our thinking just as it is. And then offer it back to the stream.
Even “higher” meditative states can be mere distraction if they keep us from encountering ourselves. Human experience involves the whole of reality: pain, sadness, and suffering, as well as joy, inspiration, and bliss. If we choose to “spiritually bypass” these, we become attached to the hope of a higher plane in fear of being tainted by an actual life. The Buddha said that life is suffering. When we bypass pain, we bypass life.
Thus, the human realm is said to be the most painful, as we are fully aware of our pain and the possibility of its cessation. And it is so easy to letour awareness slip and have hope steal us away with the promise of higher realms, or fear drag us down.
Below the human realm is the animal realm. Animals have tremendous wisdom and so much to teach us. But their existence is servile and contained in a shuttered awareness. Psychologically, it is a condition in which our options seem limited and our behavior becomes habitual. We repeat familiar patterns because they feel safer than the unknown. The animal realm can offer a kind of security, but it is the apparent safety of narrowed awareness rather than freedom. We enter it when we want nothing beyond what we already know, and when anything unfamiliar feels threatening.
Next is the hungry-ghost realm. Hungry ghosts are traditionally depicted with enormous mouths and bellies but impossibly narrow throats. They crave nourishment yet cannot receive it. We inhabit this realm whenever we cannot get enough. We may eat, smoke, shop, scroll, or surround ourselves with stimulation and still feel empty. Compulsive consumption is often an attempt to compensate for fear, loneliness, or trauma.
We are not enjoying what we consume; we are trying to fill something that consumption cannot reach.
This hunger can also take a visual form. I once walked down the street with a friend I was dating on the first warm day of the year. Everyone seemed beautiful, and my eyes kept wandering. Finally, she turned to me and said, “You look ridiculous when you do that.”
“Do what?” I asked.
“Continually give yourself away,” she replied. “It’s weak.”
She was right. I was giving my attention away repeatedly while receiving nothing but more hunger in return. Looking had become another form of hungry grasping.
Then comes the infamous hell realm, a state of such intense pain and/or depression that we cannot imagine escaping it. Hope and fear have collapsed into the black hole of anger and self-hatred. We encounter this when we are so enraged or despairing that neither light nor reason can reach us. Buddhist texts tell us the experience lasts until its karma is exhausted. Psychologically, it persists until we surrender hope and fear and accept what is.
If we do this, in time, the affliction will open just enough to afford us the space to remember our basic goodness. Once we recognize precious we are, and how precious this life is, we might see how much we are hurting ourselves. Then can begin to let go.
It’s important to note that we are talking about acceptance and release, not grasping for a hopeful mirage that, after a brief respite, will only lead back into the dark. Acceptance and release. Staying in the pain, and knowing – knowing, not hoping – that is will pass.
In this way we are remembering to stay human.
The human realm offers a middle way: remaining as open-hearted and present as we can be, remaining present between hope and fear. It is natural to imagine what we hope for, and worry about, what frightens us. But we need not let these bandits steal the present—and with it our agency and our lives.
Hope and fear usually exist outside of the present. Our practice is to not be taken away by fantasy, but to remain present and human as best we can.
