Lam-rim 63: Suffering of the Desire Realm Gods

There are 27 classes of gods. The gods live on one or another of the three planes of existence, sometimes called the three “realms.” It’s difficult to find good terms for these. Are they different dimensions? That’s very, very hard to say. 

The Three Planes of Existence (The Three Realms)

There is what’s usually called the “desire realm” (‘dod-khams). It’s a plane of sensory objects of desire. A consciousness having form in such a realm is preoccupied with desire for objects of the senses and of the mind. The first six classes of gods, known as the “gods with desire,” live in this realm. “Gods” is what they’re usually called. Sometimes I call them “divine beings” in order to get away, in a sense, from any strange connotations that the word “god” might have. 

Then there is the form realm (gzugs-khams). This is the plane of ethereal forms. The forms there are subtle forms; they are not the gross forms that we have in the desire realm. A consciousness having such a form is preoccupied with meditation. The next 17 classes of gods live in this realm. 

The four highest classes of gods live in the formless realm (gzugs-med kham). That’s the plane of formless beings. They have very, very subtle forms, subtler than those of the form realm. A consciousness there is also preoccupied with deep meditations, deeper than those in the form realm.

To say that the beings in the form and formless realms are preoccupied with meditation doesn’t mean that they meditate all the time. They do other things as well. But one of the main causes for rebirth in these form and formless realms is having very strong clinging and attachment to the practice of being deeply absorbed in meditation and to the states of mind that one achieves, but at the same time, having either no understanding or a faulty understanding of voidness. Obviously, if they had a correct understanding of voidness, they wouldn’t have attachment to these states. 

Location of the God Realms 

In the abhidharma, there is a description of where these god realms are located. As His Holiness the Dalai Lama says, Buddha didn’t come to teach us geography, so the description of them is according to general Indian beliefs. Each of the systems of Indian thought seems to have its own version of where all these realms are actually located, the shape of the continents and Mount Meru, and so on. However, they all have the same basic features; just the details differ. 

Mount Meru is said to be in the center of a world system. A world system consists of four island-worlds (continents) around Mount Meru. There are some rings of hills and stuff around Mount Meru before one gets to the continents, and there are two sub-continents beyond each continent, which are like further little islands, sort of like Sri Lanka off the coast of India. I think that’s the model that they used for the four continents.

Between the rings of hills and Mount Meru there is an encircling river, and the asuras (the anti-gods) live on the banks of this river. Mount Meru itself has four levels going up its slopes. On the first three levels is where the lower guards live. The bucket-bearing guards live on the first level. They use golden bowls to prevent the waters in the surrounding rivers of the anti-god territory from flooding Mount Meru. The rosary- or garland-bearing guards (the word for “rosary” and “garland” is the same word) live on the second level. On the third level is where the intoxicated guards live. They are always exuberantly drunk. Not very useful, I guess. Then, on the fourth level is where we find the first class of the gods of the desire realm, the kings of the four directions. They are the more serious upper guards of the celestial realms.

According to abhidharma, the sun, the moon and the heavenly bodies rotate around Mount Meru at this fourth level. On the flat top of Mount Meru, above this fourth level, is the Heaven (or divine realm) of the Thirty-three Gods of the pan-Indian pantheon. This is where the Indian gods live. Whether the Greek gods or any of the gods from other non-Buddhist system are there – who knows. In any case, this is where these gods are located.

Participant: The Greek gods are more like the asuras, in a sense, because of all the water and all the violence involved.

Dr. Berzin: Well, they do fight with the asuras. And the Greek gods? I suppose, they also fight with each other. Do they fight with men? I don’t know. I’m not very up on Greek mythology. 

Anyway, Indra is at the head. He’s the king of the gods of the desire realm. 

The Suffering of Having to Fight the Anti-Gods

The four kings of the four directions on the fourth level of the slopes of Mount Meru are in the first class of divine beings in the desire realm, and the gods in the Heaven of the Thirty-three Gods on the flat top of Mount Meru are in the second class of divine beings in the desire realm. These first two classes of gods are the ones that the anti-gods wage war against. Where exactly the battles are fought is unclear. It’s interesting, in order to be angry enough to fight back against the jealous anti-gods, these gods go to the Garden of Agitation in which there is a lake, the waters of which produce great anger in those who drink of it.

Participant: Do they go purposely?

Dr. Berzin: Well, this is interesting. The gods are so mellow. They just sit around enjoying their sensory pleasures, and the anti-gods are sort of like annoying insects. So, these gods can’t really be bothered. But somehow they feel that they have to do something about these anti-gods because they are quite persistent. So, then they have to go and take something like a drug in order to get themselves agitated enough to fight – like taking a super shot of adrenaline or testosterone. That’s interesting. What’s interesting about it?

Participant: Well, there's one disturbing emotion that’s pretty much missing.

Dr. Berzin: Right. They’re not completely free of anger. If they were completely free of it, they couldn’t get angry by taking this drink. It’s only in the formless realms where the beings don’t have anger at all. 

It raises the question: would we have to fight? If we were really mellow and really cooled out … well, I don’t know that these gods are cooled out. That isn’t really the image that we get of them. They just indulge. They’re complete hedonists. They’re enjoying good food, enjoying the wonderful, beautiful gods and goddesses that they’re with, enjoying all the bodily pleasures, the heavenly musicians and so on. Would we want to fight? If there were people constantly attacking us – and because they’re really, really jealous of us, they won’t give up – would we fight against them?

Participant: Well, the question is whether or not the anti-gods could actually do harm.

Dr. Berzin: I don’t know. I suppose they could. 

Think of the analogy of very, very wealthy, comfortable people in the modern world who are so engrossed with their pleasures. If all of a sudden they had anti-god terrorists attacking them, would they want to fight them? It’s an interesting question because I think most people in our present situation are motivated by fear. So, do the gods have fear? We don’t have to take some sort of drug like the gods do in order to get angry enough to fight back.

Participant: Maybe it’s just entertainment for the gods.

Dr. Berzin: Like being gladiators? I don’t know.

Participant: If they’re so mellow and just enjoy indulging in sense pleasure, why would they find fighting entertaining?

Participant: Because it’s just there. They probably don't go looking for it, but it is happening.

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, in order to really get into it, do they have to get the adrenaline going?

Participant: Well, I guess, they have to get the adrenaline going; otherwise, they wouldn’t make themselves ready to fight.

Dr. Berzin: Right, they obviously need this adrenaline drug. They don’t drink this water just to get high.

Participant: I mean that there seems to be a need to fight back.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Anyway, think about it: If we were completely immersed in a hedonistic life and our way of life were attacked, what would we do? This is what’s happening with the gods. Their way of life is being attacked. What do you do?

Participant: Why not share with them?

Dr. Berzin: It doesn’t seem as though that’s possible. That would be a good solution. However, it’s one that doesn’t seem to be raised here. What if the gods developed love and compassion for the anti-gods? I suppose they could. This is a very good point.

Participant: But the anti-gods have jealousy.

Dr. Berzin: Right, the anti-gods have jealousy. So… Ah! Here is an interesting thing: If we have love and compassion for those who are jealous of us and are willing to share what we have with them, would those who are jealous be satisfied and stop fighting or competing with us? Or would they want to have even more? That, after all, is the general nature of samsara – that we’re never satisfied. We always want more. 

That also raises the very important Buddhist point, which is that just giving material wealth and material things to others is not going to solve their problems. It helps, for sure, but what we really need to do is to help them to overcome their disturbing emotions. Just sharing our wealth with them is not going to do that. But we have to start with that. Being generous is the first of the four ways of gathering disciples under our good influence. So, think about it.

[meditation]

I’m reminded of a Kalachakra account, in which there’s an invasion of Shambhala by non-Indic forces. It’s metaphorical, of course. It’s actually speaking about the attack of disturbing emotions on the pure nature of the mind. On a metaphoric level, though, there are these invading non-Indic forces, and they are spoken of as being like asuras, like anti-gods. They’re jealous, and one has to fight them. The forces of Shambhala engage in a war with them, and after they conquer them, there is a golden age. So, it’s not that they kill all of these invaders: they subdue them. 

So, the invaders are the disturbing emotions. In a sense, they’re like the anti-gods: they’re jealous of the good qualities of the mind. And using the forces of good qualities… Shantideva uses this metaphor as well. He says, “Using the armed forces of mindfulness and alertness, I will conquer the enemy, my disturbing emotions.” So, one can use the good qualities of the mind – mindfulness, alertness, etc. – as weapons to wage battle against the disturbing emotions. Once they have been conquered – “conquer” in the sense of “subdue” – then love, compassion, and all the good qualities can pervade the mind.

So, is this a model one could use to deal with terrorism? It’s very nice in theory to say, “Let’s just share all our wealth,” but how does one implement that? It’s not something that can be done instantly.

Participant: It’s not just wealth, it’s…

Dr. Berzin: Whatever it is… let’s not get into the details. Whatever it is that we want to share and need to share… I’m sorry to cut you short, but we could get into a whole discussion of what they need. I didn’t mean for this to turn into a political discussion. My point is that no matter what “package” we want to share, we won’t be able to implement the sharing of it immediately. And also, what we share won’t satisfy everybody. I’m asking this as a theoretical question: Do we first need to use some type of force – not necessarily killing everybody – in order to quiet the situation down before we can share? How would we go about it?

Participant: I don’t think that terrorism is a good example because the causes are much more complicated than just jealousy.

Dr. Berzin: That’s true. The causes of terrorism involve a lot of injustice. I don’t think that injustice is an issue between the gods and the anti-gods. 

I’m just saying that we have these teachings on the gods, the anti-gods and this sort of stuff. Do we take them as lessons in extraterrestrial anthropology? Or is there something deeper?

Participant: In terms of jealousy, I know some people who are jealous of other people’s good qualities, not necessarily of their possessions. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are inspired by those qualities. For instance, I could be jealous of somebody’s generosity, but I wouldn’t necessarily be inspired to be generous myself. Their generosity might make me feel horrible about my own level of generosity. Do you know what I mean?

Dr. Berzin: This gets into the discussion of jealousy that we had last time – that we can be jealous of others’ good qualities but not necessarily want those qualities ourselves. We could even consider those good qualities to be bad qualities. There are some people (I won’t mention names) who are very unhappy with intelligent, educated people running governments. That doesn’t mean that they want to have those qualities themselves. They’re just jealous of the power. So, there is some aspect of others’ qualities that they want.

Participant: And if a god is generous toward an anti-god who’s extremely jealous, the anti-god might be jealous just of the generosity, not…

Dr. Berzin: You’re saying that the anti-gods could be jealous of the generosity of the gods without necessarily wanting to be generous themselves. No, it’s not that. It’s that they would like for themselves to be the objects of that generosity. It’s not that I am jealous of your being able to give and that I want to be able to give. It’s usually that I am jealous of your giving something to somebody else: I want you to give it to me. Your giving love to somebody else makes me jealous because I want you to give that love to me. 

Participant: All of these points about what jealousy really means and what the causes for certain things all add up to supporting your thesis that there first needs to be some measure of enforcement – “enforcement” is maybe not the right term – to bring calm to the situation. Then we can try to share.

Dr. Berzin: Exactly. The point that I was getting at was that we first need to calm down the disturbing forces – whether we’re speaking historically, politically, psychologically or emotionally. To do that, we need to use some sort of forceful measures. Once the situation has been quieted down, we can apply more positive measures. This is the structure of the lam-rim, isn’t it? First, on the initial scope, we have to use discipline and self-control to stop acting on the destructive impulses that come up. It’s only later in our development that we can use love and compassion as a means to overcome anger and to stop acting destructively. But, initially, we have to use forceful means.

Participant: To do what?

Dr. Berzin: To calm the situation down, to get it under control.

Participant: Is there such a thing as nonviolent forceful means?

Dr. Berzin: Yes. His Holiness defines violence as behavior committed under the influence of anger and hatred. Being nonviolent doesn’t necessarily mean not being forceful. Sometimes one has to be forceful.

Participant: Like a parent who hits their child out of compassion – for example, to teach them a lesson: “Don’t cross the road…”

Dr. Berzin: Does a parent hit the child in order to teach the child not to cross the road? Well, there are limits. So, you might, for instance, yell at the kid. That’s usually considered to be a destructive action. You might forcefully yank them away from the curb if they start to cross the road. But you don’t have to beat them with a leather strap.

Participant: But I was taught that there can be different motivations. The motivation for the parent’s action could be compassion and concern for the child, rather than anger and frustration. The same act could be interpreted differently.

Dr. Berzin: Right. If the motivation is compassion, rather than anger, then the action could be very beneficial. Absolutely. 

Now, it’s an interesting issue, one that gets into a fine point that we’ve discussed before. There’s a difference between the causal motivation and the contemporaneous motivation. The causal one can be compassion: we want to help them so that they avoid suffering and so on. But when we’re actually yelling, it’s very difficult not to have some anger motivating us at that time. Or for instance, we might have to hit the dog with a newspaper in order to teach it not to make a mess on the floor or something like that. It’s very hard not to have some anger while we’re actually hitting the dog.

But anyway, let’s stick to our topic of the gods. The gods have this suffering of having to fight. That is a suffering. Somehow, they have to deal with the situation. They’re not just left alone to enjoy their pleasures.

Participant: Maybe that’s what the metaphor of the Lake of Agitation is about – that you have to drink from it only when you need to subdue the anti-gods. When you’re being attacked, then you don’t have a choice.

Dr. Berzin: You do have a choice. But what I’m thinking of – to extend the metaphor – is our minds being attacked by disturbing emotions. Don’t we always have to be on guard? It’s not just when we are in the actual throes of lust, anger, jealousy or whatever that we have to muster the strength to resist attack and fight back. 

Interesting discussion. Anyway, let’s leave it. 

There are four more classes of gods on this plane of sensory objects of desire. They live in heavens that are located above Mount Meru. I don’t think we have to go into all the details. One of them, though, is called the Heaven of Joy – Tushita. In Tibetan, it’s called Ganden (dGa’-ldan). It shouldn’t be confused with the Buddha-fields that are called Tushita Buddha-fields. There are heavens called by these names and also Buddha-fields, Buddha-lands, called by these names. What they say is that these heavenly realms are representations of the Buddha-lands but that they are not actual Buddha-fields, or Buddha-lands. Anyway, the gods who live in these heavens have very, very long lives.

The Extreme Mental Suffering of a Desire Realm God’s Death 

The thing that is really horrible about this type of rebirth – and is the main topic of meditation on it – is what happens at death. The desire realm gods really suffer because they know when they will die and to what rebirth they will fall. This is really terrible. Just think: We know a certain period of time before we die that our lifespans are up, and we also have the clairvoyance to see that we are going to a lower realm. Imagine the suffering we would have with that. 

These gods also have the suffering of feeling inferior to the higher gods. So, they have jealousy. They’re not free of jealousy. And those that are involved in fighting with the anti-gods suffer from being slashed, having their limbs hacked off, and even being killed by anti-gods before living out their naturally long lifespans. Not only that, they suffer from being supplanted by the more powerful gods. It seems, then, that they’re all fighting with each other. So, their lives are not very nice, actually, even though they have all their pleasures.

Participant: When would they have time for their pleasures?

Dr. Berzin: I don’t know. Well, it’s interesting. When we live very, very comfortable lives, filled with all sorts of gadgets and sense pleasures, don’t we also have problems that we have to attack? We do. Do we have time to enjoy? A lot of people are too busy to enjoy, actually. 

Participant: Isn’t it a defining characteristic of the god realm that they do have a lot of time to enjoy?

Dr. Berzin: They do have a lot of time. But the two lower gods have to fight with the anti-gods. And they’re jealous of the higher ones. The higher ones could somehow overcome them as well. It doesn’t say that they actually fight with them.

Participant: It doesn’t seem to me that there’s any room for pleasure at all. People who are jealous are consumed by their jealousy. Even the pleasures aren’t a hundred percent pleasurable because they always know that someone else has it better.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Jealousy is the main characteristic of the anti-gods. The gods don’t have so much jealousy, only a little bit. We humans have it as well. The anti-gods have it to an extreme. What the gods have to an extreme – although it’s not mentioned here, it is in other texts – is arrogance. They think, “Oh, I’m Indra. I’m the king of the gods,” and this type of thing. It makes the anti-gods even angrier and even more jealous that the gods feel they’re so much better than they are. Jealousy usually goes hand in hand with those who feel very arrogant, in the sense that knowing that they are the objects of jealousy gives them a feeling of superiority.  

The Five Remote and Five Imminent Signs of Death

The main thing that’s discussed in connection with these gods is the signs they receive at the time of death and the suffering of knowing that they’re going to die, that their pleasures will be finished and that they’re going to go to a much, much worse situation. When death approaches, they receive either the five remote signs of death or the five imminent signs of death. After they receive these signs, they will, if they are of the first class of gods, live for another seven god days. A god day is like fifty human years. Still, to them, it’s a day. 

The five remote signs are: 

• The color of their bodies turns unattractively pale 
• They do not like to stay in their seats; they become fidgety and agitated
• Their flower garlands begin to wither 
• Their garments become dirty and smelly (obviously, they didn’t get dirty or smelly before)
• Their bodies perspire (which they never did before).

These are mostly physical signs, aren’t they? For humans, too, the body starts to change in quite radical ways as it gets close to death and starts shutting down. 

Now, for those of us who might have any issues with hypochondria – feeling anxious when even the slightest something is out of order with our bodies – just imagine how freaked out we would be if we not only got definite signs that we were going to die but also got a clear vision of where we were going to go after we died.

The five imminent signs of death are:

• The radiance of their bodies diminishes
• When they wash themselves, the water clings to their bodies
• Their clothes and garments make unpleasant sounds when they move
• Their eyes begin to blink 
• Their minds become narrow and rigidly fixated on one point, and they become completely withdrawn.

Sounds very human, doesn’t it? These are the signs that we ourselves would experience.  

What happens is that when the other gods see this, they don’t want to have anything to do with us. The gods are very snobbish and very fickle. They don’t have lasting friendships; they’re preoccupied with their own self-importance and pleasure. So, when we receive the death signs, we’re taken to a remote and deserted place (sounds like a nursing home), and our friends and relatives refuse to have anything more to do with us. Only extremely patronizing gods will come to visit, offering from a distance food and garlands on long sticks and praying that we be reborn as a human so that we might collect the merit to be reborn once again among the gods. 

Participant: Wow.

Dr. Berzin: Wow. Heavy. This is quite awful. 

I don’t know if you’ve had the experience, but I’ve had the experience of many close relatives – my mother, father, grandparents, aunt and so on – being in nursing homes. People feel very, very uncomfortable when they come to visit you – if they come to visit at all. They don’t know quite what to say. They feel fidgety in your presence and want to leave as soon as possible. I don’t mean to sound critical or disrespectful, but people in these homes do have a certain smell of old age and death about them. 

So, this is what we focus on when we think of the suffering of the gods – that no matter how wonderful our lives might be in terms of pleasures and so on, they end up like this. Plus, we know that we’re going to fall to a worse rebirth. We can see that we’re going to be reborn as, let’s say, a rat in a sewer or something like that. Just imagine the suffering we would have. 

The point of this is not to want to be reborn as a god. For instance, if we were in one of the worst states of rebirth, experiencing mostly pain and suffering, we could think how wonderful it would be to be reborn as a god with all these pleasures. But look what happens. 

So, let’s try to imagine what it would be like. I think the example of being in a nursing home is a good one to use. But don’t think of being in a good nursing home. Have you ever been in these ones where the halls smell of urine and so on? They’re understaffed, so the beds aren’t changed so frequently.

[meditation]

And your loved ones feel uncomfortable visiting you – if they visit at all.

[meditation]

Tell me, which is worse, mental suffering or physical suffering? They say that the gods have the worst mental suffering of all when they know that they’re going to die and fall to some horrible rebirth and are treated so horribly by the other gods. Is that pain worse than physical pain?

Participant: How much you suffer from physical pain has to do with your mental state. Therefore, I think that the mental state can cause much more pain. 

Dr. Berzin: If we’re depressed and have a great deal of mental suffering, does physical pain make our mental pain worse?

Participant: Sometimes people who get depressed inflict pain upon themselves in order to feel some relief, actually. So, the physical pain is a relief from the mental pain.

Participant: Actually, there is a new study that shows that when people inflict pain on themselves, what they’re looking for is the little high that one gets right after.

Dr. Berzin: Our scientist friend says that people who cut themselves and so on are actually looking for the slight high that they get immediately afterwards, which I guess is before the physical pain sets in. The physical pain somehow is a distraction from their mental pain.

Participant: Also, physical and emotional pain end up being very mixed. Even Paracetamol, which is a pain reliever, partially relieves emotional pain.

Dr. Berzin: So, you’re saying that you can’t really separate them.

Anyway, the situation of the gods seems pretty horrible, doesn’t it?

Participant: I’ve got a friend who used to meditate quite a lot. When he goes to the dentist, he doesn’t have any Novocain. No anesthesia. For me, that’s proof that if you’re mentally stable and more or less able to work with your mind, you can stand even extreme pain.

Dr. Berzin: She says that if one is good at controlling our minds in meditation, one can endure extreme pain. That’s true. That’s a complicated issue, though. There are some people who just don’t like to take painkillers and would, just as a matter of principle, never have Novocain. It wouldn’t be because they had achieved anything in meditation. On the other hand, there are others who might be quite good at meditation, but who have Novocain anyway when they go to a dentist – because why have the pain? There’s no benefit from having pain when one can have the shot. It’s interesting. I find dental pain very, very difficult to deal with, whereas pain on my body is something that I have a huge tolerance for. So, again, there are many different types of reactions that one could have to pain. 

But the main thing with the gods is that they have extreme mental pain. And if they fight with the anti-gods, they could have physical pain as well.

Participant: I think fear really blows pain out of proportion.

Dr. Berzin: That’s what one has in the hell realms: a tremendous amount of fear. Probably in all these lower realms, one has fear. Clutching ghosts are constantly attacked as well by other ghosts. Animals are constantly attacked by other animals.

Participant: But are these gods afraid?

Dr. Berzin: They have all the disturbing emotions. But the main characteristic that they have is arrogance. They’re very haughty, snobbish, and narcissistic, just interested in their own pleasures.

Participant: But towards the time of death …

Dr. Berzin: Towards the time of death, they get unbelievably depressed.

Participant: And they have no choice.

Dr. Berzin: And they have no choice. At that point, it’s too late. If we have spent our lives in trivial games, and then a week before we die, we learn that we’re going to fall to a worse realm – it’s too late. There’s not much we can do in a week, especially if we’ve never paid any attention to the Dharma during our lives. The gods are capable of it, but they don’t as a rule.

I think the main point here is not to be attracted just to a life of sense pleasures. Where does that lead? I’m thinking of my favorite example, which is of people who walk around constantly listening to music. They have to have their earphones in and music playing almost all the time. How much suffering they would have if, all of a sudden, they were deprived of that. Also, how much fear they have of not having it, fear that their batteries might run out or something like that. The more addicted we get to pleasures, the more fearful we are of losing it and the more suffering we experience when we know that we’re not going to have it anymore.

Participant: I don’t think it’s strictly pleasure-based. I think it’s also a distraction from suffering.

Dr. Berzin: The music, you mean?

Participant: Yeah, for example.

Dr. Berzin: Well, could we say the same about the gods as well? Could we say the same about all pleasure?

Participant: No.

Dr. Berzin: No? Elaborate.

Participant: I might use pleasure in order not to feel any suffering.

Dr. Berzin: As in my favorite personal example – having some chocolate when I’m in a bad mood.

Participant: But I might be in a perfectly good mood. And if someone offers me a piece of chocolate, I might take it and just enjoy it.

Dr. Berzin: That’s true.

Participant: Aren’t these pleasures called suffering in Buddhism?

Dr. Berzin: Yes, worldly pleasure is suffering because it doesn’t last and never satisfies. So, it’s frustrating. It’s never enough. We might be full at the moment, but then, a little later, we want more. 

But thinking of the suffering of the gods gets us to examine our own relationship to sense pleasure. I think that’s what we really need to focus on – sense pleasure and what our attitude toward sense pleasure is.

Participant: For me, it’s very clear that the more hedonistic my life is, the less I want to practice Dharma.

Dr. Berzin: That’s very true. That’s why they say that the human rebirth is the optimal one. There’s not too much suffering and not too much pleasure, so we can have the motivation to actually do some spiritual practice.

Participant: Did I tell you about my friend with brain cancer? For years before she was diagnosed, she used to struggle with meditation and found it very difficult to sit for long periods. The other thing was that she used to watch DVDs for hours at a time. But now she knows that time is running out. So, when I visited her yesterday – and she was quite cheerful – she was actually, telling me, “Now I can meditate. Take some of my DVDs. I don’t want to watch them anymore.”

Dr. Berzin: Usually, it’s when we are in difficult situations that we turn really strongly to the Dharma – that is, if we don’t just get depressed or go into denial. 

The Imminent Signs of Death for Humans

I just want to finish this section by looking at the imminent signs of death for humans, which we find in the abhidharma texts.

• We become very calm.
• Our breathing fluctuates unevenly – which is medically the case also.

The next two are really funny:

• When we place our right hand on top of our head and look up at the sky, we see only empty space, rather than a narrow strip of flesh.
• When we stare at the moon on a full moon night and quickly look back at our shadow, we see it as having no head.

Sounds like a horror movie, doesn’t it? 

Participant: I have a question. The lower god realms are the desire realms. What realm do the humans and anti-gods live in? Or do they have their own realms?

Dr. Berzin: The desire realm, or the plane of sensory objects of desire, is where the first six classes of gods and every being below that live. So, we’re all in that realm. Another division that we find in some texts, which is something that actually comes from the Bon tradition, is on the earth, above the earth and below the earth. We’re on the earth.

Participant: When the gods see that they’re going to fall to a worse state, do they not have the possibility of warning humans about learning something of the Dharma before it’s too late? Or can they, at that time, get in contact with the Dharma or…

Dr. Berzin: Mind you, they only have seven days.

Participant: Three hundred and fifty years.

Dr. Berzin: It doesn’t matter what the equivalent is in human years. It’s seven days of their life. So, to them, a day is what a day is like to us. 

In any case, would they have the ability at that time to turn to the Dharma? In theory, yes. However, this is not like the case of your friend with brain cancer who got more strongly motivated to practice toward the end. As it says, they never took interest in the Dharma before. Presumably, your friend with brain cancer already had some familiarity with the Dharma. So, just to start to take interest at that point would be quite difficult. I don’t know if it’s the same with the gods, but usually, shortly before humans die – if we’re dying of a sickness; I’m not talking about being in a car accident – we have either a lot of physical pain or some form of dementia.

It’s interesting. You know that my aunt died just a few weeks ago. She was 99-years-old. She was quite remarkable. She never had any physical pain throughout her whole old age. The only time she had pain was when she fell and injured her foot. Aside from that, she didn’t have any physical pain, which is quite amazing. And she was very alert up until a few months before she died. At the end, though, she got very confused. She was in a hospital in America, and she didn’t quite know where she was and these sorts of things. She thought I was married. When I spoke with her on the phone, she would ask me how my wife was. It would take me a long time to convince her who I was, and I spoke with her every week. So, people get very confused, even if they don’t have dementia per se, like my mother did with Alzheimer’s.

Participant: The brain degenerates.

Dr. Berzin: Right. 

Here, the gods are dying of old age. They’re not dying of a sickness.

Participant: I was wondering, in some sutras, doesn’t it say that some gods come to listen to the teachings?

Dr. Berzin: Right. In some sutras, the gods do come to listen to the teachings. In the Mahayana sutras, the audience is filled with gods and all sorts of different beings. So, they are capable. That’s why, in the initial scope, one aims for a better rebirth, which could be as a human or a god. But just because the gods are capable of listening to the teachings doesn’t mean that they necessarily do. It also doesn’t mean that humans necessarily do either. 

When we’re thinking of the suffering of human beings, we’re not focusing on the advantages of the precious human rebirth: we’re focusing on the disadvantages. It’s the same thing with the gods. There are advantages to being a god – for one thing, they certainly live longer. But there are disadvantages as well.   

Participant: That they live longer is inconsequential, given beginningless and endless time, especially if their lives aren’t used for anything purposeful.

Dr. Berzin: Right. As Shantideva says, “Whether we have slept for a night or a hundred years, when we wake up, it’s all like a dream.” That really is true. Think back to your school days. Back then, that time seemed like a really long period of time. Now it’s like a dream, isn’t it? I think of the 29 years I lived in India. That time is like a dream. A whole lifetime is like a dream. And how horrible it would be to learn at the end of our lives that we were headed for some horrible rebirth and actually be able to see where we were going.

The result of meditating on all of this is that we are really determined not to have this type of life. It is not our goal. That, I think, we can focus on for a minute, and then we’ll end. A life of complete pleasure is not what I want. A little bit of pleasure sometimes is not so bad, but… 

[meditation]

Tell me, is pleasure irrelevant to the spiritual path? And does being on the spiritual path, the Buddhist spiritual path, mean that we can’t enjoy anything and that there’s no value in enjoying anything because it’s irrelevant?

Participant: I don’t think that it’s irrelevant. For example, I think that the nice things that we do for other people at the starting level, we do because we get pleasure from doing them.

Dr. Berzin: Well, yes. It says in the Mahayana teachings that the source of happiness is thinking of others and caring for others. That’s true. But we’re talking here about sensory pleasure.

Participant: But a main characteristic of a precious human life is that it has this balance between pleasure and pain.

Dr. Berzin: Right. And if we were given the choice between experiencing pleasure or pain, although we could say “same, same,” most of us would choose pleasure. But we actually have to work with both, don’t we?

Participant: I also think that from an evolutionary standpoint – though I’m no expert – pleasure is not irrelevant because it’s part of staying alive. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. This is the Buddhist axiom: everybody wants to be happy. So, everybody strives to be happy.

Participant: But I think that’s true on a very physical level as well.

Dr. Berzin: Right. It’s true on a physical level as well in terms of affection and so on. For a baby, these sorts of things are very important. Very important. 

So, I think we shouldn’t take these teachings to mean that there’s no value whatsoever in pleasure… sense pleasure. We’re talking here about sense pleasure. This is what the gods are into. Is there a value to sense pleasure? Is there value to having a comfortable bed? 

Participant: Then your back doesn’t hurt.

Dr. Berzin: So, it’s a matter of not going overboard. 

Participant: Not exaggerating.

Dr. Berzin: Right. It’s a matter of not exaggerating the good qualities of something and just enjoying it for what it is.

Participant: You can’t force yourself not to feel pleasure.

Dr. Berzin: Right. But we could, because of being overly serious about the Dharma, not enjoy anything anymore. We might say, “Well, but I enjoy meditation.” But do we really enjoy meditation? 24 hours a day? Very few would.

Participant: Everybody around us will think, “I don’t want to be with that person.”

Dr. Berzin: Right. Nobody will want to be with us because we’re too boring and dull.

I don’t know. This is a very delicate question. Not an easy one. A lot of people become very strict, almost fanatic Dharma practitioners, and then they don’t want to have any sense pleasures. I’m thinking of the meditators in caves. Was Milarepa, for example, after sense pleasure? Not at all.

Participant: I don’t know, but I think that a Buddha is someone who’s inspirational. And I think that a person who takes himself too seriously and is super strict doesn’t provide any inspiration for anybody. I think that’s the difference.

Dr. Berzin: Well, I don’t know. These are things to think about.

Participant: Just to add to Milarepa – you get the sense from reading his songs that he didn’t have sense pleasures in terms of chocolate and so on but that he had mental pleasure.

Dr. Berzin: Right. He certainly had mental pleasure from meditation.

Participant: And from realizations.

Dr. Berzin: And from realizations. 

I think we have to talk about levels. At our ordinary level, where we haven’t gained attainments or a proficiency in our meditation, we need some sort of balance when it comes to sense pleasure.