We have started the meditations on what will happen after we die, contemplating the type of rebirth we could have – either a better or a worse one. As we’ve seen, Buddhism asserts the existence of many different life forms, not just those found in the human or animal realms. Being reborn in any of non-human realms would entail having a body that would serve as a basis capable of sustaining more intense degrees of either happiness and pleasure or suffering and pain than the human body is capable of sustaining.
Of the better or worse states, the first ones that we consider in the lam-rim are the worst states of rebirth, starting with the so-called hell realms. We began the meditation on those realms last time. As I explained, I prefer to translate the Sanskrit word for these realms as the “joyless realms.” The Sanskrit word (naraka) has the connotation of “no pleasure,” “no joy” in this type of realm. The Tibetan word for it (dmyal-ba) has the connotation of “being trapped” or “difficult to get out of.” Hence, I call the beings in those realms as “trapped beings.”
We saw that the main cause for rebirth in the joyless realms is destructive behavior motivated by very strong negative states of mind. So, in our meditations last time, we looked at what we had done during the day as well as what we had predominantly done during our lives, taking account of how often we had become angry, thought ill of others, criticized, been negative. We also took account of how often we had been positive, engaged in constructive behavior, done what’s beneficial for others, as well as how often we had refrained from negative behavior having seen the disadvantages that follow.
Then we looked at the three factors that strengthen or weaken the karmic results of our actions: the intention, the way in which the action is carried out, and the attitude we have toward it in retrospect. We examined these three in terms of both the positive and negative things that we have done.
What Is the Purpose of Meditating on the Suffering of the Joyless Realms?
Understanding Cause and Effect
At the end of the last class, we started to discuss the purpose of meditating on these states of intense suffering. Most of us rebel against having to listen to the descriptions of these realms. Nor do most of us understand the point of meditating on them. We explained that Buddha’s motivation for teaching about these realms was one of compassion. We used the example of a mother who tells her child not to play with matches. Does she do it to frighten the child or to protect the child? Obviously, she does it to protect the child, being motivated by loving concern. Or when a doctor shows us a picture of someone with venereal disease, this isn’t simply to scare us; it’s to motivate us to take measures to avoid that type of problem. Similarly, if someone is committing crimes and we explain to them not only the difficulties of being in prison but the dangers that they could encounter there, such as being beaten, sexually abused by other inmates, etc., that person might begin to find crime much less attractive and start to understand cause and effect.
I think the main emphasis here is on understanding cause and effect in terms of the causes that bring about the sufferings of these lower realms. In other words, if we create a lot of suffering for others, we will experience similar suffering ourselves in the future. If we act under the influence of strong disturbing emotions, we will, in the future, be locked into experiencing the types of karmic consequences that follow from those types of actions.
Reducing Arrogance and Increasing Compassion
Also, as Shantideva points out, there are many advantages to thinking about suffering. He says in the sixth chapter of Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior (Bodhisattvacharyavatara):
(21) Furthermore, there are advantages to suffering: arrogance disappears, compassion grows for those in recurring samsara, negative conduct is shunned, and joy is taken in being constructive.
That’s something to think about, especially in terms of the hesitation or reticence that we very often have to think about others’ suffering and to get involved. Very often, if somebody is hit by a car, is bleeding and screaming in terrible pain, we are so freaked out that we can’t do anything. I think too of these nursing homes where there are a lot of old people with dementia and so on. A lot of people feel so terribly uneasy to be in such places that they won’t even go, even if it’s their parents or grandparents who are there. This is a major obstacle to developing any type of compassion – especially for a bodhisattva, who would definitely want to be able to help others in situations of terrible suffering.
Now, of course, it requires a tremendous amount of strength and courage to be able to face extreme suffering. But here, with these meditations, the emphasis is not so much on the suffering that others have in these states – although that also is something we need to work with – but on the suffering we ourselves would have in these states and how awful that would be and how much we would want to avoid creating the causes.
The first thing that I would like to examine here, though, is our reticence. Why are we afraid of looking at suffering and getting involved in situations where people are suffering, let alone thinking about experiencing suffering ourselves?
[meditation]
Questioning Our Aversion to Look at Suffering of Others
Participant: I sometimes have the feeling of not being able to cope. When I was on the train recently, I saw a man who was obviously sick. I could see that he was having a problem, but I didn’t know what to do, and I really didn’t want to get involved. Then, maybe a minute later, a woman asked him, “What’s the problem with you?” He said, “Oh, it’s fine. I just need a glass of water.” So, the problem was immediately solved. I don’t know exactly what the feeling that I had was. It was like not being in control and not being able to cope with the situation.
Dr. Berzin: So, there’s a feeling of helplessness, a feeling of not being able to deal with the situation. What else?
Participant: I had two thoughts. One is that dealing with the suffering is much easier when the difficult situation a person is in doesn’t make that person uneasy but makes him or her change in a positive way. I thought about my grandma. She was very sick in the end. She was suffering, but she also changed in very positive ways. We saw the suffering, but we could handle it much, much more easily because she was so thankful and all these kinds of things. So the suffering changed her in a positive way.
Dr. Berzin: So, you were thinking instead about the advantages of suffering.
What I was thinking was that when I see somebody suffering in real life and it’s somebody who’s a total stranger, I have this problem of “do I want to get involved? What will happen if I get involved?” Being here in Germany where I don’t know the language that well, there might be a problem if I can’t understand the person. Then, too, one usually has to deal with the police, make reports, and things like that. So, there’s a certain hesitation. I don’t want to get involved, not so much because I can’t handle the suffering of the person but because I can’t handle all the other things that come with it. And what happens if I do something wrong? There’s that hesitation as well.
But I was thinking even more about how I don’t like to see horror films or really violent movies. The kind of violence that we see in a movie or on television – somebody being tortured or things like that – is not something that we normally see every day. Why is it that we turn away from that? This was the topic, actually, that I had in mind.
I find that, for myself, it’s a protective type of thing, which is actually very selfish or self-centered. I know that if I watch this, I won’t be able to get it out of my mind, that it will haunt me, that I’ll have nightmares, etc. So, I really don’t want to watch. The expression that I use, which is really quite a terrible expression, is that I don’t want to “pollute my mind” with this. Just as I wouldn’t want to pollute my mind with pornographic images, I don’t want to pollute my mind with images of horror, torture, and violence. Well, what’s behind that? The reason is not so easy to discover. Is it self-preservation? Is it fear? If we don’t even want to experience these things in a nightmare or in a movie, how about actually experiencing them in real life? I find this very difficult. We can sit here and do these meditations, but our visualizations aren’t terribly vivid – at least mine aren’t. But to actually watch somebody being tortured by having their fingernails pulled out or being burned alive – I would find that unbearable to watch.
This, I think, is something that one has not only to examine but, probably, to work on. I don’t mean that we have to go out and watch films of people being tortured or burned alive but that we need to somehow deal with our fear of facing suffering. I think that one has to transform that fear into a strong determination not to produce the causes that would lead to that kind of suffering and also to resolve not to have a cold-hearted attitude toward those who are experiencing it.
What do you think? I find this a very difficult topic.
Participant: Sometimes I push myself a little bit to look. For example, the first time I was in Varanasi and saw outdoor cremations, the burning corpses, my first instinct was to look away. But slowly, slowly, I looked. Of course, some curiosity is involved because this is real life. And, actually, there’s nothing ugly about it. So, you look at it just a little bit, just to observe what’s going on with your mind. You push yourself a bit to do it because this is reality.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Slowly, one can learn to deal with such things.
I’ve seen cremations. When I was in Dharamsala I was involved in the cremation of a Canadian. I had to help carry the dead body, which was like carrying a cold, dead fish, to the cremation site. Actually, it was a very moving experience, I must say. But watching a dead body being burned is very different from watching a live person being burned. A dead person doesn’t feel anything. It might not be very pretty, but it’s easier than if it were a live person. This is what I would find very, very difficult.
It’s an interesting thing. If I have to face pain, let’s say some root-canal work, I of course want anesthesia. But I also find the whole experience a bit fascinating. I’m not repulsed by it. But seeing people being tortured or burned alive – these medieval things with torture chambers and stuff like that – is something that I find very difficult. And this is what is involved with these hell meditations – to imagine that we’re being dragged into the torture chamber, in a sense. So, I think a great deal of our reticence has to do with fear and self-protection.
Participant: If you see suffering on TV or in a movie, there’s nothing you can do. But with the people around you, there’s sometimes something you can do to help. If there’s an accident in the street, or the car catches fire, either you can do something yourself or you can call the police or the firemen. Sometimes you really can’t help. If you see a house burning and a person burning in it, you know you can’t do anything. So, you feel helpless. But I think you would take whatever steps you can, like calling the fire brigade.
Dr. Berzin: So, if it’s in real life, it moves us more. And a lot of what moves us is a feeling of helplessness.
The Feeling of Helplessness Can Motivate Us to Develop Bodhichitta
I think that this leads us to the Buddhist idea of bodhichitta, thinking of all the beings who have all this suffering and wanting to attain enlightenment in order to be best able to liberate them from it. Of course, on this initial level, our focus is on wanting to be free of suffering ourselves. So, we then develop the determination to turn away from the causes because we don’t want to experience that suffering. But from a Mahayana point of view, it is exactly this feeling of helplessness that motivates us to think, “What do I need to accomplish in order to be able to help these people? Well, if I were a Buddha, I would be able to help them.” And, then, one has to have a realistic idea of what it means to help them. Is it to jump into the burning building? Well, that’s one thing. To teach them methods so that they don’t bring upon themselves the causes for being trapped in the building is another thing. But in any case, that feeling of helplessness motivates us to develop ourselves to the point where we can be of as much help as possible. So, we don’t just stay with the feeling of helplessness. Instead, we are moved to develop bodhichitta.
Participant: I think that for me, it’s healthier to stay with the suffering of the people around me – learning to handle that suffering and using it to become a good bodhisattva – than with the suffering I see on TV, which isn’t real.
Dr. Berzin: Right. It’s not really necessary to watch it on TV, especially when it is in its most extreme forms. I completely agree with that.
I find that it’s very helpful to try to become more aware – this is in the vein of exchanging self with others – of the various people one sees on the street. When I was in Moscow the other week, I saw these people who work as attendants in the pay toilets along the street or in these unbelievably tiny spaces, selling some useless things in the underground metro station where the air is terrible and people are just rushing by and nobody’s buying anything. There’s a toilet attendant who sits there all day long collecting the ten cents from the people who come by. It’s freezing cold. The toilets are not at all heated. And she just sits there for who knows how many hours. What a horrible life.
So to look at these various people whom we see in the street or in the metro and to think seriously about what it would be like to be like them helps us to develop some sort of empathy, some sort of compassion. And as Shantideva says, the advantage of thinking about suffering is that arrogance disappears. If we ourselves were like that, how could we be so arrogant as to think, “Oh, I’m so wonderful”? And because that type of suffering is not something we would want to experience ourselves, we would want to avoid whatever would cause us to land in that type of situation. But I think the main thing is that it opens our hearts to others and causes us to start taking others seriously.
Now, it’s difficult to take the suffering of others seriously when it’s something we just see in the news on TV – let’s say, the suffering of those who are in a war zone, an earthquake, or a mudslide.
Participant: That’s much easier to take seriously than what you might see in a movie because it’s real.
Dr. Berzin: But imagine being in one of these countries that has Sharia law and actually having to watch people’s hands being cut off in public, being flogged with a whip, or stoned to death. Or these people in Africa who are forced to either shoot their parents or watch their parents being killed – it’s unbelievable.
Participant: I know there is torture in Iranian prisons, but there is not the slightest thing I can do about it. I can protest or sign some petition, but I don’t think it helps.
Dr. Berzin: Right. We can be aware of what goes on in the world, but there’s often nothing that we can do about it. But, as Shantideva says, thinking about suffering and viewing it can cause us – if we think in terms of karma – to avoid the negative actions that would bring this about for ourselves in future lives. And, certainly, it can help us to develop some sympathy and compassion for those who are experiencing it. Can we actually do something? At this point, not very much, but at least we can try – if possible.
Last year, there were these uprisings in Lhasa. I was in India with His Holiness at the time. There was a bunch of us who were there at this special conference, and we felt there had to be something that we could do. We did something in terms of writing letters to the UN, etc. We passed them around to all the representatives of the various countries and asked them to speak with the Chinese leaders. Did it do anything? No. But at least we had the feeling that we were doing something rather than just sitting by.
Participant: Sometimes complaints and protests are actually quite successful. Look at the event of the Berlin Wall coming down.
Dr. Berzin: That certainly is a good example of how, when faced with a difficult situation, even though one might feel helpless, doing something can have results. Results are due to many, many causes and conditions, not just what we ourselves might do. That’s another factor. But it certainly helps to try.
This is a very difficult topic, I think. It says here:
If we toured a medieval castle and saw a torture chamber in active use, we might feel some revulsion at what we saw, but more than likely we would regard it as only a gruesome drama or horror show and not take it seriously. If, however, all of a sudden, we were dragged into the scene and were chained and flogged, we would change our attitude drastically.
I’m thinking of the example of a Zen teacher in America, Bernie Glassman. He has his students – those who are willing – be homeless on the streets of New York for a week. They have no money, no credit card – nothing. They just go out on the streets to see for themselves what it’s like. Then one actually develops a true understanding and compassion for such people. That’s also something to think about: Would we be able to do that? Being homeless on the streets of New York is one thing. How about being homeless on the streets of India during the monsoon or in the hottest month of the summer, or being homeless on the streets of Moscow in the winter?
Participant: My experience is with illnesses. If I get a new illness and then talk to other people who have the same illness, I feel very close to them. There’s a real understanding. But before, it was like, “Hmmm, that’s interesting.” I had no idea.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Before you have the illness yourself – whether it is cancer, AIDS, or whatever – it’s just theoretical. You have no real idea. But once you have it yourself, you go into various support groups and meet other people who have it and who sometimes have to face some kind of terrible treatment. You also meet the spouses and others who support the people who are in treatment. I see this with my nephew who is recovering from colon cancer. He went through an operation, chemotherapy, and so on, and he’s met many people who have gone through that. So, if you experience that yourself, you develop much more compassion. Or what it would be like to live in a refugee camp in Palestine or be in a war zone in Iraq?
These are things that we can think about for a few minutes. Would we really be willing to be in a homeless situation, a refugee camp, etc.? Be honest with yourselves. It would be very difficult, wouldn’t it? This is how one develops compassion.
Bernie Glassman also takes people to Auschwitz every year. He has them stay there and do retreat. Although it’s not actively being used, the atmosphere of the place is nevertheless quite something – if you’ve ever been there, which I have.
So, let’s think about this. Would I be willing – though I’m not suggesting that we actually all go out and do this – to be homeless in the streets of Calcutta or New York?
Participant: Or Bihar. I spent the night in a train station in Gaya. It wasn’t pleasant, but all sorts of people lived there, and I wanted to know what it was like to live in this train station.
Dr. Berzin: You did it just to have that experience? That’s wonderful.
So let’s think: Do I have the courage to try to experience something like that, and if not, why?
[meditation]
I think that the point that Bernie Glassman was making when he spoke about his experiences living on the streets like a homeless person and staying in Palestinian refugee camps and Nazi concentration camps was that we can develop compassion for others and the ability to help them much more effectively when we’ve experienced something of what they’ve suffered. If we know first hand what it’s actually like to be in those types of situations, it’s much easier to be of help to those who are in them.
Developing the Determination to Be Free of Suffering and Its Causes
The main point, though, at this stage of the lam-rim – particularly, here, where we’re focusing on the most extreme example of suffering, the hell realms – is, first, to imagine having these sufferings ourselves and feeling the strong repulsion that we have even just imagining them and, then, to transform that repulsion into a strong determination to avoid those sufferings at all costs and to learn what the causes are so that we can avoid creating them. So, our thinking is going in the direction of renunciation. When thinking about the suffering of others, our thinking goes in the direction of compassion. Compassion is just the same wish that we, with renunciation, have for ourselves to be free of suffering and its causes directed outward toward others.
On another level, when we are considering the suffering that we ourselves do or could have, I think it helps to think, “No matter how much suffering I have now, it could always be worse.” There’s a woman who goes to the water aerobics class that I go to at the fitness club. She is a thalidomide victim. Her mother took this chemical when she was pregnant, and that caused her to be born with a birth defect. Her arms are almost nonexistent. Her hands are sort of like flippers coming out of her shoulders. Here’s a woman who’s obviously in her fifties. She does water aerobics; she doesn’t just sit and act like an invalid. One wonders how in the world this woman puts on or takes off her bathing suit, how she deals with shoes, how she deals with anything. Seeing her – the way that she climbs out of the pool and how she does everything by herself – is very, very inspiring. So, no matter what problems I might be having that day, if I see her, I think, “How can I feel sorry for myself?” So this is very, very helpful.
Another thought that came up was that, even if we were to find ourselves in difficult situations – although it would, of course, be better to avoid the circumstances that would bring us into those situations – we are very adaptable. We could find ways to deal with them.
I was, as I said, just in Russia for almost three weeks. The conditions outside of Moscow are very much like they were during the Soviet times. I was in the Kalmyk Mongol Republic, by the Caspian Sea, attending a conference. There were these important professors from Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Some of them were complaining bitterly about the conditions – that the hot water didn’t work, etc. At another place outside of Moscow where I was for another weekend seminar, it was below freezing. There was no heat in the building that we were staying in and people complained.
The point is that if we deal with suffering in a realistic way, then we see, “Of course I would prefer to avoid this situation. But if I’m in it, rather than complain – which just makes it worse – I’ll adjust.” It’s freezing cold? Well, then, put on a lot of clothes and sleep with a lot of blankets. There’s no hot water? Well, don’t bathe, or bathe in cold water. One doesn’t die from it; one can adapt. I lived in India for twenty-nine years with no toilet and no water in my house. I collected water in a bucket when it was available, which was just for half an hour or an hour in the mornings and evenings. That was it. One learns to deal with it. One learns to survive. Even if we were homeless and had to beg, we would somehow manage. And, as Shantideva says, it does help to lessen arrogance – thinking, “I’m too good for this” and this type of thing. This is especially true when we are sick and need to rely on others even to go to the toilet, to roll over in the bed, whatever. For people who have a lot of arrogance, that’s very difficult.
We just have to try to make the best of things. If we have a hip problem or something like that, that we’re going to have it for the rest of our lives – well, we just deal with it. Rather than feeling sorry for ourselves and complaining to everybody, we just deal with it.
Participant: It’s something you have to work on every day.
Dr. Berzin: Right. I know that you have a physical problem that probably will be with you every day for the rest of your life. Certainly, complaining and feeling sorry for yourself doesn’t help. One just adjusts.
In many ways, what we’re doing with the tonglen (gtong-len, giving and taking) type of practice, taking on everybody’s suffering and giving them happiness, is setting an example of how to deal with this or that type of physical problem with dignity and without getting really down or depressed – which is very important. This is what I saw with this woman with the thalidomide condition. Incredibly, incredibly inspiring.
The Hot Hells
Going on with the topic of the joyless realms, there are what are known as the “Hot Hells.” Adjacent to the Hot Hells are the Cold Hells. Then, there are the Occasional Hells. There’s a long list of these joyless realms. I don’t know that we really want to go through them one by one. The point of meditating on them is just to imagine that we are experiencing these types of sufferings ourselves and, then, when thinking about the causes for them, to develop the strong determination not to experience any of this at all and to avoid creating the causes. Even if we haven’t, in this life, committed the types of actions that would cause us to take rebirth in these realms, perhaps we’ve committed them in past lives, in which case, we could wind up there.
The Reviving Hell
Let’s just look at the first of the Hot Hells. It’s called the “Reviving Hell” (Sanjiva). Here:
We are so filled with hatred that, at the mere sight of any other being also trapped here, we attack viciously. We hack each other to pieces with various types of weapons, and we feel extreme pain not only in the trunk of our bodies but also in each of the severed limbs and even in the blood we have shed. We massacre and kill each other like this five hundred times each joyless-realm day, but we never really die. We just faint in a swoon each time. A voice then says, “Revive once more.” At this, a cool breeze blows and revives us. All our severed parts reassemble, and the next round of slaughter begins.
A rebirth in this type of joyless realm is the result of having been either a soldier who ruthlessly kills others in battle, a murderer, a mugger, or someone who constantly picks fights, holds grudges with intense hatred and plots revenge. If we have acted in any of these destructive ways, we will be reborn here with the types of weapons we used to accumulate our negative potential.
That’s the first joyless realm. We can perhaps imagine what that’s like by extrapolating from the movies we’ve seen of Roman armies or the armies in medieval times. Everybody’s running around with swords, killing each other. People are screaming and dying left and right. There would be a tremendous amount of fear and hatred. Then we would be chopped to pieces and put back together, over and over again, almost endlessly. How horrible that would be. As a result, we would seriously want to avoid killing others or harming them with weapons – even with our fists – in the future. If we have actually engaged in this type of behavior ourselves – gotten into fistfights, beaten others up – we would especially want to see that this is the type of consequence that would follow. We certainly wouldn’t want to be subject to that for thousands or hundreds of thousands of years.
We don’t even have to think of such ancient examples. Just imagine being in Afghanistan or Iraq and being given a machine gun and having to go out to shoot people and having other people shoot at you.
[meditation]
What came to my mind was that if you’re in a violent situation in which others are shooting at you, throwing rocks at you, coming at you with knives, and things like that, it’s very difficult not to reciprocate with hatred, anger, and violence yourself. You and the other person feed off each other, generating more and more hatred and violence. It’s very easy, then, to understand how, once in this type of situation, one gets trapped in it and how very difficult it is to get out.
What we really want to do, before we even get into any kind of violent situation, is to avoid as much as possible having thoughts of violence, thoughts of hatred, thoughts of anger – these types of things. We have, at least in English, sayings like “I could wring your neck,” or “I could kill you.” Do we really mean it? Well, not really. However, it’s not a very nice thing to wish, is it? And there’s some sort of truth behind it. So, these are things that we really need to try to avoid.