Karma and the Six Realms

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Thank you and happy listening.

I want to talk a bit about rebirth now.

So according to Buddhism, if one acts skillfully, if one acts out of these positive motivations,

one generally will realise a good rebirth.

If one acts out of unskillful ones, one will have a bad rebirth.

And the rebirth is seen in terms of six realms.

There are two good realms, if you like, happy realms and all the others are not really

very desirable.

And that's marked on this model here.

So the human realm is seen as ideal, it's seen as the axial realm, because it's the

realm from which we can gain spiritual liberation enlightenment.

The other positive realm is the gods, which is a very pleasant, enjoyable realm, but can

lead to a spiritual complacency, at least according to the tradition.

Then we've got the asha realm, which is sometimes called the realm of the angry gods or the

warring gods.

We've got the preters or the realm of the hungry ghosts, the reverence, the hell beings,

which is states of extreme suffering and pain, and then finally the animal realm.

And I've kind of given some, if you like, psychological correspondences.

So the god realm is a realm of kind of aesthetic enjoyment.

The asha realm is the realm of war, power, competitiveness, etc.

The preter realm is the realm of neurosis and greed, unaswageable greed.

The hell realm is the realm of mental illness, of paranoia, etc.

The animal realm is the realm of crude appetites.

And the human realm, well, is the human realm.

The human realm is a balanced realm where there's a kind of balance of awareness, self-awareness,

and there's a kind of mixture between pleasure and pain.

Pain is not so excessive as to mean that one is completely caught up in pain, but pleasure

isn't so intoxicating that one loses all idea of wanting to work on oneself, wanting

to transcend one's limitations.

Okay, so that's the six realms.

So if one lives a brutal life, a hateful life, maybe one will be reborn in the hell

realm, or if one's born in the human realm, at least according to the tradition, one will

be reborn ugly and short-lived.

So the tradition at least makes a correlation between our physical appearance and circumstances

and our previous karma.

So this touches on the Glen Hoddle question.

Glen Hoddle seemingly, I may be wrong about this, but my understanding is that Glen Hoddle

said something to the effect that people who are reborn as physically disabled are such

are physically disabled because of their conduct in previous lives.

And I was quite shocked and alarmed to read in the daily telegraph that the Dalai Lama

agreed with him.

I don't agree with this.

I'm not saying that it's never true.

What I would say is that we can't know this.

We don't know whether we are reborn as a disabled or ugly or whatever it is as a result

of our previous conduct.

I think there are other factors at play which we may know nothing about.

One example I've been reflecting on recently is the example of the drug Thalidomide, which

was a drug that was administered to pregnant mothers, I think in the 70s, or somewhere

around there, maybe 60s, and this led to quite severe physical impairments and disablesments

in the children.

So how do you explain that the mother took this drug as being a result of the previous

karma of the child?

It just seems crazy, really, to explain it in those terms.

It would seem much more straightforward to explain it in terms of physiological factors.

Well, you know, the mother took this drug.

It had an effect on the growing fetus and these were the consequences.

I mean, I wouldn't like to rule it out altogether as saying that, say, one's physical appearance

is never a result of one's previous actions.

I don't know about that.

But what I do want to say is that we shouldn't jump to this conclusion and say that, ah, you've

been reborn this way, that's because this is a punishment for your previous conduct.

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