By Jonathan Landaw

Last year I wrote a column dealing with the experiences I had coming to grips with the traditional Buddhist teachings on rebirth. Now I would like to relate some events that helped throw light onto what has been for me another problematic aspect of the teachings: the six realms of cyclic existence.

These two topics – rebirth and the realms of existence – are, of course, closely inter-related. In brief, the former teaches that death is not a final end to consciousness while the latter describes what happens after death as consciousness is propelled by its ripening karma into a state of greater or lesser suffering and dissatisfaction.

The karmic law of cause and effect governing the process of taking rebirth in these various realms – termed “higher” and “lower” depending upon the degree of suffering they entail – is succinctly expressed in the opening verses of the Dharmapada:

We are what we think…

Speak or act with an impure mind

And trouble will follow you

As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart…

Speak or act with a pure mind

And Happiness will follow you

As your shadow, unshakable. [Byrom's translation]

Rebirth in an intensely suffering “lower” realm does not come about by chance, nor are we condemned there by some force outside ourselves. Rather, it is the arising in our own mind of such “impure” thoughts as hatred and greed that impels us to experience the “trouble” associated with these realms of woe.

I never had much difficulty accepting the general thrust of these teachings. This emphasis on our own mind as the shaper of our experience always struck me as eminently reasonable and helped make Buddhist psychology very appealing to me. This was especially true when I compared this psychology of enlightenment to those religious systems that spoke of a supreme deity who, moved by great love, created humans, gave them the freedom to choose and then condemned those who chose incorrectly to eternal hell-fire and damnation. (I apologize for this oversimplification of the admittedly wide range of theistic believes and practices. I say in my defense only that, in my years of youthful searching, the more profound forms of theistic religion remained unknown to me.)

As I said, I had no major trouble with the Buddhist teachings on cause and effect. That our ever-changing mind can create for ourselves realms of god-like pleasure or hell-like misery accords with what I myself have observed. Hatred burns with the fire of hell just as assuredly as if we were being roasted by the Devil himself. So I could easily interpret the traditional depiction of each realm as a figurative description of a recognizably human experience.

The traditional description of the various realms, however, proved much more difficult to accept than this psychological interpretation. Consider, for example, the way in which the preta realm is depicted. These perpetually insatiable hungry ghosts are wandering spirits described as tortured beings who have great obstacles merely finding something to eat. Should they happen to find what to us would be a disgusting morsel, they cannot eat it because their throats are tied in knots. And should food somehow reach their cavernous stomachs, instead of providing nourishment it turns into acid and burns painfully.

Such a description is undoubtedly vivid, memorable and psychologically powerful. Since rebirth in this realm is said to be the direct result of the delusion of miserliness, it is easy to relate our own human restlessness and insatiability to this uptight mental affliction. But are such figurative interpretations enough? Could there be, in actuality, some sort of universe parallel to ours where preta-like beings, whose existence is completely hidden from ordinary human perceptions, have the very kind of bodies and life experiences these texts so vividly describe? For someone like myself, such a literal explanation was, if you will pardon the metaphor, too hard to swallow.

That is, until I met Mr. Balakram. In the early 1970s he was our landlord in Dharamsala, India. Mr. Balakram was as prototypic a miser as Ebenezer Scrooge himself! There was a story, widely circulated among the Indian and Tibetan townspeople, that his wife died because he was too stingy to take her to the doctor or buy the medicine he could so easily have afforded. With his facial features twisted by meanness into a nearly comical mask, he appeared to me to be no more than a grotesque caricature of a human being, and I paid scarcely more serious attention to him than I would a fictional character.

And so he remained until shortly before his death. It was only at this time that I came to know a little more about the particulars of his daily life. Although he was undoubtedly the richest man in the neighborhood, his living conditions were extremely meager. One day I noticed that next to his bed he had stacked coins of the lowest denomination; I could easily imagine him lying there at night, counting these pathetic coins over and over again, trying to extract from them a comfort they were powerless to confer. His beautiful garden, with its fruit trees and flowers, also appeared to offer him scant pleasure; all he seemed concerned about was whether someone might be planning to steal one of his precious mangoes or papayas. Yet for all his hoarding, he himself could not enjoy this delicious fruit at all. As I learned at this time, it was impossible for him to eat but the very blandest of foods; anything richer than yogurt and white rice would cause his stomach to burn. Suddenly it occurred to me: Mr. Balakram is turning into a preta! He is not even waiting to be reborn; he is doing it right before our very eyes!

Everything described in the traditional texts seemed to be reflected somehow in what he was experiencing. Watching him deteriorate, I found myself wondering: If he dies in this stage, and if it is true that consciousness does not cease at death, then towards what type of rebirth will his mindstream be directed? Would such a mind have any chance of finding a human shape in which to cloak itself? How twisted the container must be to suit the twisted consciousness he is propelling into the fearful unknown.

I have heard it said that just before death arrives, a person’s habits may undergo a sudden change. This also happened to Mr. Balakram. One day he invited a large number of his neighbors to his home – a completely unheard of event! – and, smiling as much as his twisted face would allow, he offered us food and drink. A few days later he was gone.