LTF 60: Sufferings of Animals & Pretas; Two Meditations

[89] Even when in the state of an animal rebirth, there are all sorts of sufferings: being slaughtered, tied up, being beaten, and so on. For those who’ve had to give up (the ability for) constructive behavior leading to (a state of) peace, there’s the extremely unbearable devouring of one another.

[90] Some are killed for the sake of (their) pearls or wool, or bones, meat, or pelts; while others, being powerless, are forced into servitude, beaten with kicks, fists, or whips, or with hooks or with prods.

That’s pretty heavy. Let’s take a look at these types of sufferings, which are the realities of being born as an animal. When reading or studying this type of material, it’s important to try to imagine what it would be like to be like that. Usually, this is not only part of the meditations on the sufferings of the various realms and wanting to avoid the causes for them but also part of the meditations on developing compassion. 

We imagine, say, the first of these – being slaughtered as a sheep about to have its throat cut. First, we are led to the place where all the other sheep are being killed. We hear them crying out and so on, and how totally frightened we are. And we just go to the toilet on the floor and stuff like that. Then we are turned upside down and have our own throat cut. How horrible that would be and how much we would not want to experience that. 

Then we think of our mother and father being reborn as sheep and having to experience that and how much we would wish that they didn’t have to experience that. So, we develop compassion. Then we think of other close relatives, our friends, people that we know, then of sort of neutral people, those that we don’t know, and then of people we don’t even like – how horrible it would be for them to experience that. Then we think even of the sheep themselves – how horrible it is for them to experience this. That helps us to develop compassion. But here, in this is context, we are thinking, first, how we ourselves certainly wouldn’t want that. 

His Holiness the Dalai Lama always speaks in terms of chicken rights. I think he must have seen some sort of chicken prison or something like that. The way that chickens and pigs are raised in the West is really absolutely awful. Could you imagine being born and raised in a tiny cage? You can’t move whatsoever, and you are forced fed until you are fat enough to be killed and made into dog food, for example. How would you like that? Not very nice. Not nice at all. This is a horrible situation, a horrible rebirth. Just as we wouldn’t want to experience that, certainly it’s no fun for the chickens or pigs or any of the animals that are raised simply to be slaughtered for meat. 

Second one mentioned here is being tied up. How would you like to be tied up your whole life on a very short rope like a dog? A lot of dogs are tied to a post up all the time. Every time you try to run a little bit – ahh! – you’re caught by the rope and have to go back. Or how about the horses, donkeys or mules that have some of their legs tied together so they can’t run away? How would you like that – to have your two legs tied together all the time? Not very nice. Not very nice at all. Or imagine being on a leash every time that you go out. You have a collar around your neck and a rope so that you don’t run away. And if you want to stop anywhere or if you are tired, you just get dragged by the rope. Or like in India, the oxen have a ring through their noses and a rope through the ring. So, you are drawn by your nose wherever the master wants to lead you. That’s not very nice. It’s quite awful to be born like that. 

The next one is being beaten. Well, imagine that you are an ox. This is obviously written in India. You are an ox or a horse or something like that, having to pull some enormous heavy wagon or load. Or you have somebody sitting on your back riding you like a horse and constantly beating you to go faster, even if you are really tired. That wouldn’t be very nice. Not at all, not at all. 

Then it says “and so on.” There are many other types of sufferings that could be included here, like the insect example I was using. People see you and they just want to step on you, or they want to spray some sort of poison at you, or they have a giant fly swatter, and they just want to smash you. Imagine what that would be like. That would be quite awful, wouldn’t it? 

Nagarjuna says here, “They have given up (the ability for) constructive behavior leading to (a state of) peace.” In other words, what constructive, positive things can you do as an animal? There are some examples, perhaps, of a seeing-eye dog that leads a blind person around, but it’s pretty hard to think of other examples. As an ant or a worm, there is not much that you can do that is positive and that would lead to a state of liberation, etc. There is nothing that you could do, really. 

Additional Disadvantages of an Animal Rebirth

In fact, in that type of rebirth, what is the main characteristic? Main characteristic, I think, aside from being exploited and hurt by humans, is that you are completely ruled by your so-called animal instincts. Think of a dog: if somebody tries to take your bone away, you bark; you get really very angry and growl, and you’re always sort of looking around to make sure that a larger animal doesn’t come and take away what you’re eating. Think of the animals in Africa when they eat another animal that they have killed. They’re always afraid and have to look around to see if another one is coming. Then they growl and show their teeth if anybody else comes near. 

Are we like that? What about when somebody comes close to our personal computer and wants to start pressing buttons just for fun? We start to growl also, like a dog, don’t we? “Don’t touch that!” There are many things that we have that we guard like an animal. Dogs are also very territorial. “This is my yard. Anybody who comes in it is the enemy, the threat,” and then they bark and jump, and they bite. Thank you [dog barking in the distant]. We just had a dog barking. OK – coincidence.

Participant: Special effects.

Dr. Berzin: Yeah, special effects. 

But anyway, how territorial are we? Somebody comes into your kitchen and starts to move things around, or when you are cooking, they just come over and add more salt or pepper and things like that. We certainly get very protective. “This is my territory. This is my desk, my kitchen, my job. Don’t come in my yard.” So, we have these tendencies, don’t we? 

Also, think about how animals have absolutely no control over their sex urges. They just indiscriminately jump on top of any other animal that’s in heat. Doesn’t matter where, doesn’t matter when, and then they totally ignore that animal afterwards. Is that what we are like – going around sniffing the behinds of other people, as it were, and then just jumping on them? What if we were the female animal that the male animals did that to? 

I remember there was one female dog in India where I was living. It used to hang around our house quite a lot. I used to feed it, although it wasn’t officially my dog. But when it went into heat, it was attacked so much by the other, male dogs that, basically, we had to save it and lock it up in a little outside shower area that we had so that the dog could have some peace. Otherwise, it was just constant. Could you imagine that – experiencing something like that? Is that what our sex life is like? 

There are many people who just cruise around and have one-night stands, just like a dog, just like an animal. When we act like this, it builds up the type of habit that can cause us to be reborn in this type of state. One can say that that type of behavior could be a leftover from previous lives in this type of rebirth. But it can also be that if we don’t do anything to overcome acting out of these strong habits, these strong animal instincts, we just build up more causes to go back to that type of rebirth. And as it says, they “give up (the ability for) constructive behavior leading to (a state of) peace.” They’re very overwhelming – these types of drives. 

Now, certain animals can be trained. But if the best that we could be trained to do is to balance a ball on our nose or to jump through a hoop, and then we get a fish as our reward – what’s that? That’s about as good as we can do. That wouldn’t be very satisfying, would it? And it certainly wouldn’t get us liberation from samsara, would it? 

Serkong Rinpoche, my teacher, used to like to go to circuses. He particular liked the animals, the trained animals. Most Tibetans love animals very much. He used to use them as examples. He said, “If a bear can be taught to ride a bicycle in a circus, you could learn much more than that.” And that’s true. His Holiness the Dalai Lama always says that the most outstanding characteristic of being born as a human is human intelligence. You can use your intelligence to actually learn something and train yourself to be able to improve your situation. Animals can’t. Nagarjuna points that out with this line. 

The last line of that verse is “there’s the extremely unbearable devouring of one another.” Animals eat one another. Some people are very self-righteous when it comes to being a vegetarian – “I am not going to eat the animals.” But if you think about it… I mean, this isn’t a justification for not being a vegetarian; it’s just that the line of reasoning is a valid line of reasoning: if we don’t eat the animal, something else is going to eat it, either worms or vultures, or if they live in the wild, a larger animal will attack and eat them. Most animals in the wild don’t just die of old age. Even if they do, they are eaten by something. These natural science movies show you how, in the ocean, fish eat other fish alive; they bite them in half or just swallow them whole. And insects eat other insects alive. Imagine being caught in a spider web and having a huge spider come over and take a bite out of you, eating you. That would be pretty frightening.

Participant: Paralyze you and leave you there for days and…

Dr. Berzin: Yes, first, they paralyze you, leaving you for days. Then they suck out your blood, all your body juices. Not nice at all. This is what happens to animals: they eat each other. So, that’s quite awful. Could you imagine living in constant fear that some larger animal is going to surprise you at any time, that it will jump out of the dark and eat you alive? So, it’s important not to romanticize [speaks in singing tone] – “How lovely it will be to be Bambi, the lovely, gentle deer in the forest, with all sorts of Walt Disney characters around us.” It’s not quite the way it is, is it? 

And then Nagarjuna says, “Some are killed for the sake of (their) pearls or wool.” Imagine being killed or hunted by humans in order to take our hair or something like that. Or we’re raised for that. There are places where they raise animals for their wool or oysters for their pearls. To us, pearls and wool – that’s just natural; that’s just normal. But suppose some other creatures felt that human eyes or human tongues were really worthwhile commodities and that they’d hunt us in order to pluck out our eyes and pull out our tongues. Imagine that being the only thing that we were seen as being useful for – that our whole purpose in life was to provide these materials for them. Not nice. Not nice at all. 

Some are killed for their “bones, meat, or pelts” (pelts are the fur on an animal) or are raised to be the fur coat of some wealthy, wealthy lady who is going to wear our skin draped on her back or around her neck in order to look pretty. What would that be like? That’s all that we are considered as – as a decoration to be wrapped around somebody’s neck. Horrible, isn’t it? 

It says, “Others, being powerless, are forced into servitude.” Animals are really slaves – work animals. “Beaten with kicks” – they kick the animal to pull the plow or to pull the wagon. Or with fists, they smash them. Or with whips… a lot of times, people use whips with a horse for it to go faster and to pull the heavier load. Or “with hooks or with prods” – that’s for elephants. In India, elephants are used for working. Their skin is very thick, so just hitting them with one’s fist isn’t going to do very much. So, they have this elephant hook that is rather nasty going into our skin in order to get us to work harder. All of these are the sufferings of being born as an animal. It’s certainly not something that we would like, is it? 

Why don’t we take a few minutes to reflect on that and imagine actually experiencing some of these sufferings? 

Meditating on the Lower Realms, Motivated by Two Levels of Renunciation

There are two levels on which we can work with this. One is on the level of renunciation, which is the context here – that we certainly don’t want to commit the negative actions that would cause us to be reborn like that. 

Animals are characterized as being basically stupid. They can’t learn very much. So, you think about it. A lot of people take drugs basically to make their minds unclear, to make them stupid. They may think, “Oh, I’m high, and I get all sorts of insights,” and things like that, like with marijuana. But actually, it just makes your mind dull. You are in a daze. It’s like walking around with a bag over your head, and then you challenge yourself in a sort of macho way: “What can I do while I’m stoned? Oh, I can do this, and I can do that.” But actually, all you are doing is making yourself stupid. You’re not using the clarity of your mind, your ability to concentrate, your ability to learn. What’s the consequence of that? You want to be stupid? You asked for it. Now you’re an animal with a completely clouded mind. That’s the consequence, the logical consequence of purposely making your mind dull. 

With alcohol, it’s the same thing. Or exploiting other people – well, then, you’re exploited like an animal, just being used by people for what they can get from you, like being raised for your wool and these types of things. Most of us are not cannibals; we don’t go around eating each other. But one could argue that eating other beings, like a meat eater, builds up the karma to be eaten yourself. But then again, in the West, when you bury people in the ground, they are eaten by insects and worms. You generally disintegrate, unless you’re cremated. 

There are all these types of suffering, and we want to renounce them, meaning, “I’m going to stop building up the causes for that because I certainly don’t want to have to experience that.” We have experienced that. Buddhism teaches that our mental continuums have no beginning, so we have had countless previous lives. And among those lives, we’ve certainly experienced being an animal, every kind of animal, many times. So, “enough already. I certainly don’t want to do that again.” So, there is that renunciation – renunciation specifically of this worse rebirth state within the context of “Let’s get a better one.” 

However, here, it’s more specifically in the context of “I don’t want any kind of rebirth. I want to get free from that type of uncontrollable rebirth so that I can act in a liberated way.” Of course, we will continue, but we’ll do so as liberated beings – so, not under the influence of all these heavy, negative instincts – so that we can actually help everybody as much as is possible. That’s what we are aiming for. 

We can do this meditation, then, thinking about the suffering of animals in the context of wanting a better rebirth, or we can, in addition, do the meditation in terms of developing compassion. Compassion is renunciation directed towards others. Renunciation is, “I don’t want to have that suffering, and I don’t want to build up the causes for that suffering.” Compassion is, “May you be free of that suffering, and may you be free the causes of that suffering.” So, it’s the same attitude just aimed outward toward others, which means that, unless we can actually empathize with the type of suffering that other people experience, it will be very difficult to be sincere in our compassion. “I know what it is like to have that type of suffering, and I don’t want that. I would want to be free of that; therefore, I wish you to be free of that.” 

Even if we haven’t experienced it ourselves, we could at least imagine it. For example, a man does not experience the suffering and pain involved with giving birth to a child. That’s something that only women actually experience. But though it might be quite difficult to imagine what it is like, that’s about as good as a man can do – to imagine what it is like. Similarly, if we haven’t suffered from cancer, it’s very difficult to know what it feels like to have the pain of cancer. But we can imagine it, which means taking it seriously. And if we can take it seriously in terms of ourselves, of our own actual or imagined experience, then we can turn that attitude out toward others. 

Likewise, here, with the suffering of animals. We have not, in this lifetime, actually experienced those types of sufferings, like being raised in a little cage where we can’t move so that we can be made into dog food. We have not experienced that. But perhaps we can imagine it and then think, “Just as horrible as it would be for me to experience that, how horrible it would be if my parents experienced that, my close relatives, my friends, my loved ones, strangers, people that I know, and even people that I don’t like,” and then think of the animals themselves. “How wonderful it would be if nobody had to experience that, if somehow I could teach people and help them avoid the causes for that.” 

OK? Let’s think about that in terms of whichever of these sufferings we like. I’ll read the two verses again so we can refresh our memory.

[89] Even when in the state of an animal rebirth, there are all sorts of sufferings: being slaughtered, tied up, being beaten, and so on. For those who’ve had to give up (the ability for) constructive behavior leading to (a state of) peace, there’s the extremely unbearable devouring of one another. 

[90] Some are killed for the sake of (their) pearls or wool, or bones, meat, or pelts; while others, being powerless, are forced into servitude, beaten with kicks, fists, or whips, or with hooks or with prods.

Any thoughts or comments that you would like to share? Or questions? 

Is It Better to Kill and Eat Animals in Order to Save Them from Worse Suffering?

Participant: I think it’s better to kill animals and eat them. To be a food is better than to be in this animal rebirth where you place, that [??] need to kill more animals in order to eat[??] or anything. But I think that it’s good that you , the soul, may have a chance, the opportunity, to do something else, to maybe be a human, for all we know if I end your animal rebirth.. I don’t know.

Dr. Berzin: She’s s[Rupal?] suggestings that thinking about the suffering of animals, maybe it’s better to go out and kill them and eat them, rather than use them as our slaves or just keep them for our amusement in our house or in a bowl, like a fish in a bowl. Could you imagine being trapped in a tiny, little bowl for your entire life? 

But that’s a dangerous way of thinking because you are saying, “Well, maybe they can be reborn more quickly as a human being. Then they wouldn’t have to undergo this type of suffering.” But then, you could justify killing anybody in order to liberate them from their difficult life and send them off to a better rebirth. I think one has to be a little bit careful there. I think that, yes, you don’t have to exploit the animals, but you also don’t have to go around hunting and killing them all either.

Participant: As a food, I think, it’s doing nothing. It’s just food. It’s not that I eat any meat. I’m just saying for meat eaters.

Dr. Berzin: She is saying that eating animals could perhaps be justified in terms of this.

I think it all depends. It’s very difficult, really, when you think about it. I don’t really want to get into a large discussion about vegetarianism since, for many people, that becomes a very emotionally charged discussion. But I think that if you’ve raised an animal as your pet – a lamb, for example, or a pet chicken – and then, when it gets large enough, to actually go out and chop its head off and eat it is, for most people, very difficult. When you personally know the animal, it’s very difficult. It’s difficult because you find that even chickens have personalities. They are not all the same. Does that mean that you give it to somebody else to kill, or you just buy it already packaged, wrapped in cellophane in the supermarket or in a can, deep frozen? I don’t know. It’s very difficult to actually justify eating meat. Mind you, I do eat meat, and I like meat very much. 

Participant: [Inaudible]

Dr. Berzin:  As I say, it’s a very difficult discussion. There is very little that one could say to justify eating meat. You could say, “Well, I need it for my strength,” but often that’s a justification or excuse for the fact that you have attachment, that you like eating meat. That’s usually is the case. 

Participant: Liberation is a good idea.

Dr. Berzin: Liberation is a good idea. The Tibetans… not only Tibetans, but Buddhists in many countries will liberate fish and birds and things like that. But then you have people that catch them, put them in cages or in bowls, and sell them to the devout Buddhists in order for them to put them back in the lake for these people to catch them again. 

Participant: And in the process, killing many of them.

Dr. Berzin: And in the process, of course, killing many of them. 

It’s a very difficult issue. I think that one tries one’s best not to harm others, including animals. But situations are always individual. In terms of malaria – mosquitoes and this type of thing – what do you actually do? But I think one has to be a little bit careful about using these teachings to justify either eating meat or going hunting and fishing. That I don’t think is the case. 

In many ways, if beings have the karma to be born as animals, they need to live out that type of life. If we can make it as comfortable as possible, like, for instance, not destroying their natural environment so that they can continue to live – that, I think, is a positive thing. Otherwise, what do you do? “Let’s kill all the animals in the jungles of Borneo in Indonesia so that we can make paper bags or wrapping paper out of the trees,” which you throw away after you have used them. This is ridiculous, isn’t it? 

Why Are Some Buddhists Vegetarian and Others Not?

Participant: Why some Buddhists are vegetarian and some not?

Dr. Berzin: Good question. Very good question. 

In the Tibetan cultures and the Theravadan cultures in Southeast Asia as well, they do eat meat. From a Theravada point of view, monks and nuns are supposed to accept anything, any food that anybody puts in their begging bowl. They say that even if a leper’s rotten thumb falls in your begging bowl, you should accept it. That’s obviously used to represent the extreme, but that’s the example that is used in the texts. 

The laypeople in Southeast Asia and, certainly, in Thailand, which I’m a little bit familiar with, think that meat is the best thing to offer the monks and nuns, which, obviously, is a little bit strange from a vegetarian point of view, particularly from a Hindu vegetarian point of view. But they do that. What you want to train in as a monk or nun is to overcome the self-centeredness with which you say, “I don’t like that. I don’t want to eat that.” So, you accept the generosity of anybody, accept whatever they give you. Humility. 

From a Tibetan point of view, they justify eating meat with excuses, basically, saying that you didn’t have much growing in Tibet. It was, for most part, an animal-based culture. If you are a nomad and there is nothing growing except a little bit of grass for your animals to eat, well, what are you going to do? Also, they justify it in terms of tantra. If you are doing advanced practices with the energy winds, you sometimes need to weigh those winds down with meat. However, given that that may be correct, very few people are at the stage where it really becomes necessary to do that. So, that’s why I think that, in many cases, it’s just a justification based on the fact that they like meat and that they are used to that. 

In Chinese influenced cultures, there is vegetarianism, which is emphasized in Chinese Buddhism. I think that is then followed in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, among the Chinese influenced Buddhist there. I am not positive that it is in all forms of Chinese Buddhism, but certainly, it is a primary aspect. I think that it is even taken as part of the bodhisattva vows. But I am not positive about that. 

In any case, why among the Chinese? I don’t really know. Obviously, one could use the Mahayana teachings to argue for vegetarianism – that this animal has been your mother in previous lives; you don’t want to eat your mother or kill your mother. But I have never heard a good discussion from a Chinese point of view about why, in particular, they follow that. They just sort of take it as, “Well, of course, you don’t eat meat.”

Participant: Was it there in Tao or Confucianism?

Dr. Berzin: Not that I can think of. I don’t recall. Certainly not in Confucianism because early Confucianism even had sacrifices, although not in the more developed Confucianism. But they did have them in the more primitive forms, when it was evolving out of having certain types of rituals like that… not Aztec or anything like that, not that type of ritual killing. 

Taoism? I don’t know. I don’t recall. Now, in Taoism, the highest goal is immortality. So, it would fit with aiming for immortality – that you don’t kill others if you want to live a long life. I did a research paper about that (this is really going off the subject), about the early sorcerers and sacrifices in ancient China and using blood to symbolize the life force. You made a sacrifice with blood basically as a way of achieving immortality. You take this life force blood type of thing and offer it. In Taoism, there was the use of cinnabar, which is a red substance. I don’t remember exactly what it is. I think it’s a mercury compound, actually. It was used in their alchemical practices for gaining immortality. Obviously, it killed a lot of people as well because it is a bit poisonous. But it evolved out of this symbolism of red symbolizing blood. Anyway, it was long, long time ago that I did a research paper like that in university. I was doing Chinese studies.

One thing that came to my mind while doing this meditation was what it would be like to be a dog. I had a dog for a number of years. One of things about dogs is that they like to please their master. They are all excited when the master comes home. They jump up and down, lick them and stuff like that just to get a pat on the head. Then they wag their tail. They are very happy. So, to think: is that our mode of behavior with people whom we like? We just want to please them and are so excited when they come, and we just want to be patted on the head. Is that the level of our interaction with others? It’s an interesting thing to think about. That’s very animal-like behavior. It doesn’t really do much with the opportunity of a human being interacting with another human being, is it? That came to my mind as well, besides just eating each other. Actually, thinking about animals can be very, very productive. Tibetans love to use animal examples to illustrate so many things. I guess that’s because most Tibetans grow up with animals, so they are familiar with how animals act. 

Anything else? If not, we go on to the next session. 

Preta – One Who “Has Gone Forth”

Next session deals with the suffering of ghosts. All cultures, it seems, believe in ghosts, spirits, although not necessarily the ghost of somebody who died. There are various types of spirits, and there is a huge classification scheme of many, many, many different kinds. 

I think the Indians had a certainly well-developed system of that. The Tibetans developed it much, much further with so many different classifications of ghosts. In the Sanskrit, the word preta, which is the word for ghost, literally means something that has gone forth, pra-ita, “has gone forth.” Probably, that evolved from somebody dying and their spirit going forth. I would imagine. I am not exactly sure how that term came about, but that’s what it means. 

How Pretas Came to Be Called “Hungry Ghosts”

In any case, the Chinese translated it as “hungry ghost,” egui in Chinese. That’s how it came into Western translations. Everybody translates it as a “hungry ghost,” but that’s not the original meaning. The Chinese chose “hungry ghost” because they understood this form of rebirth in terms of ancestors. 

It’s very interesting the way in which the way Chinese translated the Sanskrit texts. Very often, particularly in the early period, they just could not deal with the concepts of Buddhism. It was much too alien. One of the things that was super alien for them was rebirth and the idea of all sentient beings. So, they never used the term “all sentient beings” in the early translations. Later translations they did… or “all limited beings,” which I think is a little bit more the connotation because a Buddha is not a sentient being. In any case, it’s a being with a limited mind. So, in all these different life forms, they translated with the word “humans.” So, they really just limited it to humans. Maybe they would allow animals, but they didn’t really want to talk about that too much.

So, for the pretas, these ghosts, they spoke about them in terms of the spirits of the ancestors and filial piety – being good to your parents, ancestor worship and so on. All that stuff came into Chinese Buddhism. “Filial” means being like a son or daughter. Filial piety is one of the biggest virtues in Chinese Confucianism. It means to serve your parents like a good son or daughter. 

OK. So, a terrible thing would be for an ancestor to die, and you don’t make all the various offerings that the Chinese always make for the ancestors, such as leaving them food on the altar and paper money. The Chinese invented paper money, and they have phony paper money that they burn for the spirits of the ancestors to use, and so on. So, a hungry ghost is an ancestor spirit that is not taken care of by their descendants. 

The Tibetans translated it with the term yi-dags. Yi means “mind,” and dags means “tied up.” So, their minds are tied up. I translate it sometimes as “clutching ghost.” Their bodies are all clutched up, their necks all clutched up. They can’t eat anything because of their necks being too small. And they’re always grabbing for food, which they can never get, and so on. 

The cause for this type of rebirth is basically being miserly, not wanting to share. This fits in with our concept of ghost in the West as well because ghosts haunt things. What does that mean? They don’t want to share a house with anybody else (their old house), so they haunt it in order to scare away anybody who comes. Ghosts can also take possession of somebody because they don’t want to share that person with anybody else; they want to have them all to themselves. That’s what ghosts do according to our Western concepts of them as well. 

Participant: How did the Chinese finally get the concept of rebirth and the ancestor thing together?

Dr. Berzin: Well, they still put a big emphasis on the ancestors.

Participant: But they are not reborn?

Dr. Berzin: I don’t know. I have never really discussed it.. Thich Nhat Hanh was here last week. He spoke so much about honoring your ancestors. He comes from a Chinese Buddhist background in Vietnam. But that is a major theme – to honor your ancestors. I think it’s not only your personal ancestors but also the ancestors of your culture in general. 

Participant: We’d like to reconnect with them, not so much to honor them.

Dr. Berzin: Well, one reconnects with them, but one reconnects in a respectful way, not in a begrudging way. Now, you could understand that in terms of cause and effect – that not only are we influenced by our own individual karma; we are also influenced by history and the ancestors in our family. So, one could understand it like that.

Participant: You also recognize the negative aspects.

Dr. Berzin: Is that what you have in Chinese Buddhism – to recognize the negative aspects? I have never heard of that. 

Participant: I am talking about Thich Nhat Hanh.

Dr. Berzin: Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of that as well?

Participant: You reconnect with your ancestors, but you also recognize the negative aspects. You recognize the negative influence, the not so constructive things, that your father and mother had done and their negative habits and, also, the way that these negative habits percolate down to you.

Dr. Berzin: Really? I haven’t heard enough of Thich Nhat Hanh teachings to know how much he emphasizes reconnecting with the ancestors and recognizing not only the positive qualities but the negative qualities as well. Recognizing their negative qualities makes me think of Carlos Castaneda and this type of dealing with negative things from the past, from ancestors and from others. But let’s not get into this, please. Let’s stick with the text.

Renata is pointing out that in Vietnamese temples, they have a separate room for ceremonies to honor the ancestors. Certainly, in Chinese temples in China and Taiwan, there is an altar with the pictures of the ancestors and these long sticks that have pictures, and people light incense and so on to make offerings to them. But this is in later Chinese Buddhism, where you get a mixture of pure land and little bit of Zen (Chán in Chinese) with Confucianism ancestor worship with the whole Taoist I Ching and the various types of prognostications. So, they get a big mixture coming in. That started particularly in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties – so, going back in the last four hundred years. In aAny case, let’s not get into Chinese history, please; otherwise, I’ll go on in great length since I studied Chinese history a great deal. 

So, the suffering of pretas… Rather than drag this out for several classes, why don’t I do like we did for the verses of the hells and just read these verses. It starts with Verse 91.

[91] Clutching ghosts also have an unbroken stream of sufferings, which flow from their being starved of what they long for. They must entrust themselves to the extremely unbearable (state) that builds up from being hungry, thirsty, cold, hot, and scared.

[92] Some, with bellies as (huge) in size as a mountain, (connected) to mouths, the mere eye of a needle, are tortured by hunger, not having the capacity to eat even the tiniest lump of filth thrown away.

[93] Some, with bodies (just) skin and bones, and naked, are like the withered trunk-tops of palmyra palm trees; while some blaze (flames) from their mouths in the sphere of the night, having to eat blazing sand as their food, poured into their mouths.

[94] Several lower classes cannot find even filth, such as pus, or excrement, or blood, or the likes; they beat each other in the face and gobble down the oozing pus that drips out from goiters on their necks.

[95] For them, in summertime, even the moon seems hot, and in the winter, even the sun seems cold; trees seem to become barren of fruit, by their merely having glanced (at them), and rivers seem to become dried up.

[96] Some having bodies tightly bound by the grappling rope of the karma of their faulty deeds that have made them entrust themselves to sufferings, unbroken, never come to die for five thousand or ten thousand years. 

[97] Whatever various sufferings there are, (all) of one taste, that the clutching ghosts have received like those, the cause for them is delighting in stinginess as a human; and Buddha has said that misers are ignoble.

Nagarjuna Shantideva describes that in great poetic beauty – very nice poet. 

Just to go over this briefly, to be born as a clutching ghost comes from being a miser – not wanting to share, holding on to what we have, not being generous, being selfish, and so on. Because of that, they are starved for what they long for. Because they never shared anything with anybody else, they are always starving and can never enjoy what they have. 

In India, I lived next door to a classic miser. He was a little like Scrooge McDuck with his money bin. It was very funny. What is he called in German? 

Participant: Dagobert Duck

Dr. Berzin: Dagobert Duck. So, like that.

This neighbor would never spend any money on himself. He always lived really, really poorly. He died shortly after I moved in. That would have been thirty-five or thirty-six years ago. They opened up his house because he had no relatives or anything like that, and they found these big, Indian metal trunks filled with one-rupee notes, which he kept underneath his bed. I don’t know if at night, by himself, he opened it up like Scrooge McDuck and played with it or something like that. Anyway, this is an example of the classic miser. 

So, they are starved for “what they long for. They must entrust themselves on extremely unbearable (states) that build up.” So, they are always hungry, always thirsty, always cold or always hot. And they are always frightened, frightened that somebody is going to take away what they long for. They are always seeing images of food and so on and are hungry and thirsty, but they can never get the food, and they are afraid somebody else is going to attack them trying to get it. Some of them have bellies huge like a mountain, and their mouths are connected with necks that are only the size of a needle. So, they can never fill their stomachs; so, they are always hungry. They are tortured by hunger, and they can’t even eat the tiniest piece of filth thrown away.

When you make offerings to hungry ghosts in pujas, it’s a mistake to offer the good food from the offerings. You have to offer leftovers because hungry ghosts, these clutching ghosts, can’t even see good food. They are completely blinded by that. The only things that they can eat is usually some spit or some snot from somebody’s nose or something like that. That’s why you give leftovers in the puja, something that you have taken a bite out of and have some of your saliva on. Serkong Rinpoche used to be quite strong about that. He said, “It is ridiculous. You are making an offering to the clutching ghosts as if they were the Buddhas or the gurus. This is not the case.”

Their “bodies are just skin and bones, and naked.” Some of them are very, very skinny “like the withered trunk-tops of a palmyra palm trees.” When people cut off the tree-topleaves of a palm tree, it just looks like a telephone poll sticking up with nothing on top – very dry and barren. Some have flames coming out of their mouths because anything that they eat turns to acid. So, you think of an ulcer or something like that – acid stomach. This is very much connected with this whole syndrome of miserliness – you can’t enjoy what you have, and you don’t let anybody else enjoy what you have either. And they have to “eat blazing sand as their food, poured into their mouths.” So, whatever they eat is like red-hot sand that just burns them. 

And some (this is the loveliest verse) some can’t “find even filth, such as pus, or excrement, or blood.” So, they go around beating each other up. They have these big goiters, and they just suck the pus that comes out of it. It’s quite disgusting. 

“In summertime, even the moon seems hot.” So, in summertime, they are always suffering from heat. And “in the winter, even the sun seems cold.”; they can never get warm. And when they look at trees or at fields, they instantly turn barren, as if there were nothing there. Even if there is something nice, they can’t see it. In their minds, when they look at it, it just disappears and turns into a desert or a wasteland. 

And some, having their bodies all tied up with the rope of their karma, “never die for five thousand or ten thousand years.” So, they live a very, very long lives like this. In fact, all of the beings in these rebirth realmss have quite long lives – not the animals, but the ghosts and the hell beings. And Nagarjuna says very well what the Buddha had said – that they receive this because this is what they bring upon themselves. It’s not somebody else punishing them; it’s not the Buddha punishing (there is no judge in Buddhism). But this comes from “delighting as a human” in being stingy – not sharing, being a miser. “And Buddha has said that misers are ignoble,” meaning that being a miser is not nice, not something to be praised; it’s not something to be looked up to. So, even if we are very poor and don’t have very much, it’s very important to share, not to keep what we have to ourselves – this type of thing. 

There is a very famous line that says, “Some people think that if I share with you, there won’t be anything left for me to eat.” So, they don’t share. But actually, we should be just the reverse: if I eat it for myself, take it for myself, there won’t be anything left for you. So, one needs to always be generous and to share with others. And in sharing with others, giving others the pleasure of using whatever we have and benefiting from and enjoying whatever we have, the karmic consequence of it is that we enjoy and we are given – that other people share with us and help us. But if we are unwilling to share, if we are selfish and miserly and keep things to ourselves, then not only will nobody else share with us, we won’t be able to enjoy anything. This is the suffering of the clutching ghosts.

Any comments or questions? We’re nearly at the end of the class.

Anything?

What Kind of Beings Are Demons?

Participant: Dämonen sind da?

Dr. Berzin: Are demons there?

Well, demons are usually in that class. It’s hard to say. There are so many different forms of beings. In Hindu or pan-Indic (general Indian) culture, you have the yakshasas and rakshasas, and all these various beings that are cannibal spirits, and so on. I think that most of them would be considered spirits, or ghosts. I don’t think that they are considered animals. A naga is an animal – half snake, half human. But I don’t believe that demons are like that. So, they are spirits. Now, there are some beings that are classified as spirits that would be in the god realms. For instance, Nechung, the oracle, would be in a god realm, not a ghost realm. 

But then you get all sorts of things that are strange or unusual for us, particularly when it comes to mediums and oracles and channeling various beings through you. This is extremely popular in Malaysia, Singapore and these sorts of areas. There, it’s hard to tell. As His Holiness says, just because some being speaks through you while you are in a trance, doesn’t mean that that being has good intentions or knows what he or she is talking about. It could be a very harmful spirit, or ghost, that is speaking through you. A lot of people think, “Oh, I’m channeling this spirit or that spirit. What they teach must be so sacred and wonderful.” It’s not. You always have to check what these various beings are actually saying, provided, of course, that you believe that that is actually happening. I have seen enough examples of that among the Tibetans in India, particularly with the Nechung Oracle, both the previous and present one, to know that something is going on there. I personally know both the mediums quite well when they were not in trance. 

In any case, there are lots and lots of different classifications of these ghosts, or spirits. I don’t think we need to be exobiologists and classify all of them. No need to wonder about all the different classifications and sub-classes and so on – although Tibetans have quite a well-developed taxonomy of ghosts. 

Participant: You said nagas are counted as…

Dr. Berzin: Nagas are counted as animals. They are the wealthiest of animals. Garudas are also animals.

Participant: I thought they were humans?

Dr. Berzin: No. 

There is another one –a kinnara? It’s like a centaur but in reverse: horse head and human body. There are all sorts of incredible beings that are described in general Indian thought. The Tibetans add many more, and then the Mongolians add even more. 

As I say, it is not really necessary for us to go into all of that. We could add as well our goblins and elves and all these things from Lord of the Rings if we like, but I don’t know that that is necessarily helpful. 

What is helpful is to think of the types of sufferings that a mind can experience, that we could experience, and the causes for them, and then develop some sort of feeling of renunciation of those causes and some compassion for those who are suffering in these ways. We get some taste of that, I think, in the leftovers that some people experience in human births – of having terrible… [recording ends]