the six realms

a buddhist teaching you may encounter is called the six realms (or sometimes the three realms). this is when taken literally a description of different planes of heavenly and earthly existence not unlike many religious traditions. but when taken more as a description of psychological states i find it generally helpful on a day to day basis.

click here if you’d like my quick summary.

the six realms as i learned them are the hell realm, hungry ghost realm, animal realm, human realm, god realm, and jealous god realm. they can be grouped into higher and lower realms. the first three here are the lower three (hell, ghost, and animal) and the latter are the higher realms. so as psychological states, think of these as places we find our mind from time to time perhaps lasting days or minutes or just an instant:

• hell realm: either cold, frozen, depressed or hot, angry, aggressive. when you find yourself in this realm it is considered to last the longest. marked by a feeling that if we just remove a certain irritant or problem then things will get better, but the sharpness of removing that irritant usually makes things worse in the long run or doesn’t solve the underlying issue. primary emotions here are anger or frustration.
• hungry ghost realm: marked by unsatiable appetite or desire. we just want things, but we never get enough. what sucks with this is that once we have what we’ve been craving it just makes our craving worse, the habit of trying to get happiness from satisfying desire gets stronger. the primary emotion here is desire.
• animal realm: marked by plodding ahead without really seeing the big picture, like a piggy just eating whatever is right in front of him. a sort of intuitive approach, ignoring the larger situation and just using habitual responses to situations to get through the day. it worked before so i’ll just do it again. primary emotion here is bewilderment.
• god realm: everything is pleasure here, like the life of a rock star or rich person. you get what you want. or just a perfect day that happens now and then. the problem with this realm is that it isn’t permanent. and the contrast of losing this state of mind is so painful usually you fall down all the way to the hell realm when it ends. the primary emotion here is ignorance like the animal realm but a little more intentional ignorance. pride is probably an issue here too. we’re think getting what we deserve.
• jealous god ream: this is the yuppy realm, that of ambition or trying to obtain the state of the god realm constantly. the primary emotions here are probably jealousy and perhaps also pride. silicon valley is soaking in this one. always needing a better car or house or what have you, always comparing yourself with others. i live in this one a lot personally, seeing how i measure up. the problem here is that you never know if you’ve made it or not, if you’ve really gotten what you were hoping for because you’re so speedy trying to get there and also because you’re so speedy you never enjoy the journey.
• human realm: marked by fickle desire. unlike the hungry ghost realm you get what you’re craving often but after awhile it’s not interesting any more. you’re fickle. so desire marked with dissatisfaction ultimately. it’s said this is the best state of mind to be in to hear buddhist teachings, because we have enough suffering that we’re motivated to look for a better approach but not too much suffering or conditions that make us unable to look for a better approach. similarly, we’re not lost in success or pleasure which would cut our motivation to look too.

so the three higher realms (god, jealous god, human) are marked with the suffering of change and anxiety. even when it’s good we’re nervous it will get bad, and when it’s bad we get used to that and suffer even when things get better. and the three lower realms (hell, ghost, and animal) are marked with a more basic suffering of pain and dissatisfaction.

cheery picture eh? it’s an interesting contemplation to see if these are a full description of ordinary life. are we generally in one or another in a given day, or cycling between a few even moment to moment? cycling might be not quite right, more like bouncing around in them like bubbles in boiling water.

the buddhists then say from this example, that it’s both good to get out of the lower realms to the higher realms, because it’s much easier to improve your life and gain insight into the whole process - undercutting the driving factors of suffering - than when you’re in the lower realms. when in the lower realms you just need relief basically. there’s just no room to gain insight down there, the suffering doesn’t have much of a break or gap to contemplate it. it’s more constant. so it’s good to get “things in order” as much as possible, to find relief or whatever you need to get out of the lower realms.

but then ultimately the higher realms don’t offer ultimate salvation from the cycle. you’ll fall back down again at some point. so the higher realms aren’t an ultimate refuge even though a god realm sort of situation or state is what we’re all usually trying to achieve. so they caution against that. the ultimate, non-conditional happiness comes from seeing the whole process intimately and then gaining insight to the root of it, what’s driving it all, so then the whole push pull bouncing around is undercut. we start to ask, why are we bouncing around these states to begin with? is it just the way things are or is there something underneath that?

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