In Pavlov’s classic experiments with dogs, a bell rings and food appears. The dog salivates and eats. If you pair the bell with the food hundreds of times, soon the dog salivates when the bell sounds and no food appears. This is simple conditioning. Conditioning occurs with humans in relation to alcohol and drugs. The life energy of addicts is consumed in a ceaseless effort to end discomfort. Feelings of pain and anxiety are temporarily numbed by alcohol or drugs. If you don’t drink and observe carefully others who are drinking, you can see that with the first sip of a drink there is a lessening of tension and fear in their bodies and faces. It becomes a conditioned response, stress—alcohol—relax.
A woman came to me during retreat worried about her increasing alcohol use. She was a nurse in rural Alaska. The frontier conditions demanded more than she had been trained to do. She might make a mistake, kill someone. Work became stressful. Each evening after work she would drink a shot of vodka. This had become a habit. One drink had turned into several. I asked her to go home and practice by looking carefully at her mind-state as the usual sequence occurred: driving home, opening the door, taking off her coat, going to the place the bottle was kept, picking up the bottle, pouring a drink, taking the first sip, etc. Could she pinpoint the exact moment the suffering lessened? She said, “Oh, I already know when. It’s when I unscrew the top of the bottle.”
We are the same as Pavlov’s dogs. We are hungry for peace of body and mind. We find a something like alcohol that seems to shut off our neurotic mind, relaxes our muscles, and gives us a temporary ease. We become conditioned to relax when we taste alcohol. If we look carefully we find that we start to relax, as the student above was able to see, before we drink. We have become conditioned to the sight of the bottle, the motion of unscrewing the top, the smell of the alcohol.
This is actually quite wonderful, because it means that the mind can relax without the alcohol. It means we have the capacity to teach the mind itself to relax and be free. We have the ability to see through and change many of the states of mind that are painful. This is exactly what the Buddha taught about the mass of conditioning we call human life. It is also exactly what the Buddha taught about seeing through this mass and becoming free “by encompassing mind with mind.” This means to encompass the crazed workings of the small frantic mind with the larger mind, the mind we call the “mind of the Buddha.” When we begin to see this tangle of conditioning for what it is, we take the first step toward becoming an awakened being. It is the first step toward using the original unconditioned mind of Jizo Bodhisattva. It does not belong to Jizo alone—it is our own.
Not all of us have been addicted, but we have all experienced a restlessness that nothing seems to satisfy. We sit down to read, but the book isn’t interesting enough. We make a cup of tea, but it doesn’t taste very good. We flip the channels on the TV. Boring. There’s nothing we like in the fridge. Maybe we could go shopping, but our closet and garage are full of junk. We try talking to a friend but don’t really connect. Our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind are hungry, but nothing is taken in. Everything seems dull, diluted, covered over with a film. This is the realm of hungry ghosts.
The Path into and out of the Hungry Ghost Realm
The pathway into the realm of hungry ghosts is desire, grasping, and greediness. It is the persistent feeling “If only I had X, I’d be content.” As long as we believe the source of our happiness as out there, centered in some other person or thing, we will never be satisfied. We will be in eternal pursuit and never experience more than momentary satisfaction.
Hungry ghosts who can swallow a bit of food find that it sticks like a red-hot iron ball in their throats. We can become human-hungry ghosts in relationship to our spiritual practice. We want so badly to experience a breakthrough, to be enlightened, that our very desire stands in our way. Although we must practice with determination and vigor, we have to let go of any idea of a particular outcome.
The pathway out of the hungry ghost realm is to stop pursuing, to sit still, to watch the naked process of grasping, and to not move to fulfill it. At first this is uncomfortable. We are used to feeling thirsty and immediately going to the sink or refrigerator to get something to drink. We seldom experience just thirst. I have seen students come into a meditation hall (not ours) loaded down with supplies. They make a nest of cushions surrounded by extra sweaters, breath mints, water bottles with built-in straws! Are they afraid of experiencing sensations of thirst that might arise in an hour of meditation?
Jizo Bodhisattva’s Activity in the Hungry Ghost Realm
The most effective teaching in the hungry ghost realm are the Four Noble Truths. There Jizo Bodhisattva teaches the intertwined truths of suffering and grasping, the cause of suffering. His peaceful presence shows those in torment the possibility of ending their suffering by following the Eightfold Path. Jizo knows the only food and drink that is always available, that satisfies any hunger and quenches the deepest thirst. This is the truth of Dharma.
When desire, driven by the thought of scarcity, is extinguished, then we see only abundance. Then our desire becomes the one desire of Jizo, to comfort those who suffer and help lead them to freedom.
The Animal Realm
The animal realm is characterized by ignorance, confusion, and habitual behavior patterns. Animals are driven by instinctual responses to basic biological needs. They spend their lives searching for food, fleeing danger, seeking shelter from bad weather, and reproducing. They are enslaved by instinct and also by humans. They have difficulty adjusting to new situations outside of their genetic and conditioned programming. Our dog has never learned that the cars that speed by are dangerous. He sits happily in the middle of the road awaiting their approach with an interested expression. Only a lot of training or a painful accident will teach him not to.
Animals lack a certain kind of wisdom. They cannot see the wider perspective in which they live. They do not understand cause and effect. Because of this they are often bewildered or repeat behaviors that are not helpful to their lives. Our dog whines to go out at night to romp with the coyotes even though they once slashed his throat, necessitating surgery.
Humans fall into the animal realms through ignorance. Many people are barely able to provide the necessities for themselves and their families. They lose jobs and are evicted repeatedly, just scraping by without really understanding why. The life energy of many people is consumed by the relentless round of getting up, working, eating, defecating, watching, having sex, and going to bed. The preoccupations of food, sex, and shelter, with a little mind-numbing and often violent entertainment thrown in, occupy all of life.
In my work I have seen many children raised like animals. One family lived in an attic crawl space, urinating in the insulation and defecating in tin cans. The schizophrenic parents had sex in front of the children and with the children. I also have seen children who failed to grow and no medical reason could be found. They would begin to grow at age three or four, when they were tall enough to open the refrigerator and cupboards to rummage for food and to beg or steal food from neighbors. Abused and neglected children like these come into foster care behaving like feral animals. They hoard food, eat from garbage cans, drink from toilets, and do not know how to bathe, use toilet paper, or sleep on beds. They have no self-discipline and fight tooth and nail if their powerful instinctual drives are corralled.
My husband has found that many of the criminals he works with are caught in the animal realm. They do not understand the action of cause and effect. They are in jail because “the judge had it in for me.” Why did they go before the judge? “Got in a fight.” How did the fight start? “The other guy punched me first.” Why did he punch you? “I propositioned his girlfriend.” Do you like her? “Nah, I was too drunk to see straight.”
They cannot link these events together—drinking, improper speech, anger, fighting, arrest, and imprisonment—let alone see their connection to the consequences for the future—an end to employment, fri
endship, marriage. Many come from chaotic and unpredictable families. A child in such a home is like a bewildered animal. Their experience is that a given action, such as asking an honest question, can result in apparently random effects, praise and kisses one time and slaps and insults the next. The child cannot understand the reason—that the parent was sober one time and drunk the next.
The Path into and out of the Animal Realm
Ignorance is the path to the animal realm. This ignorance could be willful, such as drinking to loosen our inhibitions and then have “license” to break other precepts—to lie, steal, or misuse sexuality. The ignorance could be imposed, as with children in addicted and neglectful families. When causes and effect seem randomly linked, we remain confused, fearful, and enslaved by patterns of instinctual behavior that are destructive to ourselves and others. Wisdom is the path out of this confusion.
The Work of Jizo Bodhisattva in the Animal Realm
Tibetan religious paintings often show Kshitigarbha carrying animals in his arms. Kalu Rinpoche says that we can help free animals by speaking about the Dharma to them. A bit of what is taught might be perceived and ultimately help them.
Our dog whines at the door of the meditation hall if he is not allowed in during retreats. Once inside, he sits quietly with everyone else. A visiting Tibetan teacher told us that he is part Lhasa Apso, a Tibetan temple dog. According to legend these dogs were once monastics that lapsed in their vows. They retain enough merit to live in temples where they might after death regain human existence so they could once again practice. I do not know if this is true. Our dog acts as if it is.
Certainly animals respond to our love for them. Many people are drawn to their innocence and can practice metta (loving-kindness) toward animals with more ease than toward human beings. Once when visiting Green Gulch Zen Center near San Francisco, I gave a talk on my work with abused children. Later a student approached somewhat shyly and told me that she understood the work I did. She had worked in an animal shelter, where her job was to euthanize the animals that no one claimed. She spoke movingly of the trust in the animals’ eyes even as she carried them to their death. She talked quietly of her dread of Halloween, when animals that had been tortured, maimed, and skinned were brought in. With glistening, sorrowful eyes she said, “I came here because I had come to hate humans. I’ll leave when I can be with people again.” Hers was an intense practice, driven by an overwhelming experience of suffering in the animal realm and cruelty in the human realm, embodying the compassion of Jizo Bodhisattva.
To help humans caught in the animal realms the power of Jizo Bodhisattva works to raise the level of existence to a truly human one. It works to provide education and training in basic human-life skills to raise the standard of living. It gives compassionate medical care. It develops wisdom by teaching cause and effect. It helps people to see their unhealthy habit patterns and gives them tools of practice so they do not fall prey to them. Thus those who work in education, health care, social services, foster care, counseling, and religious work are manifesting as Jizo in the human-animal realm. It is our hope in this work to turn the energy of desire away from selfish animal needs and redirect it, to arouse desire in the spiritual heart to follow the spiritual path to deep awakening.
The Asura Realm
The realm above humans and below the gods is the home of the asuras. The inhabitants are described as jealous gods or angry gods, always fighting.
War is the human experience of the asura realm. There are more than fifty wars being waged on the earth at any time. Why do we fight with each other? Because we want something for ourselves and we have to get it away from someone else—territory, a lover, family honor, political or religious power. But these are all things that we made up. “My country,” “my backyard,” and “my airspace” are only concepts. The earth, grass blades, and clouds do not know who “owns” them, where France ends and Germany begins. We fight because we think that we need certain things in order to be safe. We fight because we see scarcity instead of abundance. Our minds invent ideas and then compel us to fight over them.
The Path into and out of the Asura Realm
The asura realm is entered through feelings of jealousy. At the core of jealousy is an idea that someone has something I should have. It could be a material possession like a house, a new car, or wealth. It could be assets such as beauty, youth, or talents we don’t have or had once and lost. It could be good fortune, like winning at a casino. It could be a person we desire, like a child of our own, or a lover, or even an experience we never had—like a happy childhood.
Beneath jealousy is comparison. Someone has X and I do not. Beneath jealousy on a more subtle level is a feeling of entitlement. If someone has X and I want X, I deserve X.
It is a very interesting practice to become aware of this feeling of entitlement, which ironically is particularly strong in America. America is a land of jealous gods rather than a pure heavenly realm. In a curious way, jealousy seems to feed off abundance. On a trip to India I prepared myself to be distressed by the poverty and suffering I would see. Instead I was astounded to find the level of happiness and central sense of well-being was obviously greater there than in an American shopping mall or middle-class suburb. The difference was observable in the faces of Indian people all around me, from the thin dirty children begging and playing at the train station to the porters who staggered under enormous loads, then relaxed on their bundles, joking easily with each other as they awaited the next train. The difference was palpable in the gentle greeting of the wild-haired wandering ascetic awakening from sleep in a doorway in a frosty dawn in Dharamsala. Could it be that the less we have, the happier we are?
A study of happiness shows that once the basic need for food, clothing, and shelter are met, happiness is unrelated to material wealth. Actually you don’t need a study to prove this. Any National Enquirer reader can tell you about the miseries of movie stars and millionaires in the United States. But we like studies. Especially with statistics. We just don’t believe the study applies to us.
How much do and advertising support this feeling that everyone is entitled to everything they desire? How much does it fuel the anger of “rising expectations” that leads to actions like one child killing another to obtain a pair of coveted sports shoes? Or to a parent beating a child that won’t stop crying? Or to our irritation with a spouse who doesn’t feel like making love tonight?
The epitome of the entitlement state of mind is the lottery mentality. We see someone win the lottery. What do we think? “Free money! All my worries will be over.” Actually studies of lottery winners show the opposite to be true. Many people actually spend time planning what they will do in the future when they win the lottery. What a waste of time.
The state of mind “something for nothing” arises. Since the chances of winning the lottery are so minuscule, people begin to look around for another way to win a lot of money without putting out much effort. Robbery, gambling, selling drugs—those will work. Or combine the lottery mentality with the feeling, “If I am suffering, then someone (else) must be responsible and therefore must pay,” and you file a lawsuit.
The path out of the imprisonment of jealousy is to realize impermanence and that good and bad are often temporary labels. There is a story about this:
Mr. Sai lived long ago in China. When his wife bore a healthy son the neighbors came to say, “How fortunate! A handsome son!” Mr. Sai smiled and said nothing. An epidemic swept through the land when the boy was ten, and he fell seriously ill. At last he recovered but was left with a crippled leg. “How terrible,” said the neighbors, “to have a son who is deformed and will not be able to work hard or find a good wife.” Mr. Sai said nothing, only smiled at the son he loved.
The boy grew up and because of his handicap, had to learn to get around by riding a horse. He became an expert horseman, and won prizes in competitions. “How fortunate” said the neighbors, “to have such a talented son. Surely he will make you
rich and have his pick of wives!” Mr. Sai only smiled and said nothing. One day when the young man was riding, the horse stumbled and fell. Mr. Sai’s son was not injured, but the horse became lame and could no longer be ridden in competition. Mr. Sai was too poor to buy another horse, but he would not have the lame horse put too death. “What a calamity!” said the neighbors. “Your only horse is now crippled and will not be able to win prizes or to work hard.” Mr. Sai was silent, just smiling at the horse he loved.
War swept through the country. All the healthy young men and horses were conscripted into the army. The only farm left with a young man and a horse was Mr. Sai’s. His son was able to harness the horse to a plow and grow enough food for Mr. Sai’s family and the neighbors. “How lucky you are!” exclaimed the neighbors. Mr. Sai only smiled.
Jizo Bodhisattva’s Teaching in the Asura Realm
What can Jizo Bodhisattva teach, in addition to the truth of impermanence, to free those in the asura realm? There are several specific practices that are effective antidotes to the poison of jealousy. These practices are loving-kindness (metta), sympathetic joy (mudita), awareness of abundance, and the bodhisattva practice of wishing enlightenment for all others before yourself.
The second type of asura realm, that of beings eternally at war, is entered through a taste for bloodletting. The path out of this realm is the practice of ahimsa, or nonharming.
The Heavenly Realm
Life in the heavenly realm is always comfortable and pleasant. All desires are satisfied. The gods do not become ill during their very long lives.
It’s like living in Southern California. I once led a retreat in Santa Barbara. Several blond, tanned, sleek students who attended told me, “It’s very hard to practice here. The weather is always lovely, the surfs up, we’re having fun.” “It won’t always be like this,” I said. They replied, “We know it will change eventually. We should practice to prepare for that time, but it’s too hard to get motivated.”
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