Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Dharma Sharing on 23rd February 2013


Here's Charmaine with us on what she learnt on 23rd February 2013! :)

in today's sharing we talked about the 6 realms of existence in Buddhism. They are the hell realm, hungry ghost realm, animal realm, human realm, demi-god realm and the god realm.

Beings are sent to the different realms based on the kind of karma they have accumulated in their previous lives.

Beings are sent to the realm of suffering (hell realm) due to the bad karma they accumulated from, primarily, hatred.

Next, would be the hungry ghost realm. Beings are sent there mainly because of greed. They are to live a life of always wanting more and never getting enough.

Then, would be the animal realm. Being are sent there because of ignorance and delusion. they are characterised by prejudice and complacency, and they avoid anything that is different.

Coming on fourth would be the human realm. This is the realm of curiosity and passion. It is very difficult to be born in this realm and it is the most conducive realm for attaining nirvana.

After that would be the realm of the demi-gods. The karma of hate and jealously causes rebirth in this realms. Beings there are always jealous of others and live a life of paranoia thinking everyone is out to get them or do better than them.

And lastly, the realm of the gods. Beings are sent there due to a lot of god karma. But, because of their higher status, they are blind to the sufferings of other and lack wisdom or compassion.

What I realised is that the different realms signify the different things we experience in live . From the hell realm, I learnt that in hatred the ones that suffer are ourselves. Though our actions may hurt others, we are the ones that will suffer the consequences, leaving us lonely and with even more hate.

From the hungry ghost realm, I got that with greed we will never be happy as we will always be wanting more.

The animal realm shows me that we have to be open to new thing and be willing to accept them as they are.

The demi-god realm made me understand to not compare myself with others as there is no need to be jealous of what other people have or don't have.

The god reminded me that even if i am higher position than others i must not forget how i got there and hep others should thet need it.

Lastly, the human realm. To me the human realm is like a balance of the other realms. although not to the same extreme there are beings here that are suffering, are ignorant and also people in better positions who had humility. Therefore we need a balance of everything to be able to be happy in our lives.

1 comment:

Ven Bodhi said...

Hello Charmaine

Thanks for your efforts.
Just a small but important [pont:

You said 'beings are sent to ...realm'. This 'sent to' implies that somebody or some powers send beings to realms. I need to point out to you that it is the force of karma that causes beings to be reborn in the realms, not a higher being, nor Buddha, nor Bodhisattvas. In case you missed this...
Metta
Ven Bodhi