Buddhist Cosmology (6): Six Sensuous Heavens

Well, this is one of the most intriguing realms in Buddhist cosmology, and a lot of people don't know about this, but often you'll hear this idea that in Buddhism there's no heaven and no hell, that's all Christian stuff. But we're actually going to talk about the details of the six sensuous heavens. And in Christianity there's very little in the way of detail, especially early Christianity. Buddhism is fully fleshed out and describes in great detail all these levels of these sensuous heavens. So maybe just describe, why did they call them sensuous heavens? They're called that because they are still within the sphere of sensuality, which incorporates all the realms, the human realm and the lower realms as well. This is the sense-desire plane, and it's quite distinct from the higher realms, with the realm of form and the realm of the formless that are beyond sensuality. So the beings that are reborn into the sensual heavens enjoy sensual pleasures of a very refined form, and it gets increasingly refined as we proceed upwards through the levels, there's six levels altogether. And the sensual pleasures are similar but more delightful, more refined, more subtle than what we experience on earth. They're food, sex, music, adornments, beautiful palaces, chariots, song and dance, usually the gods are described, like Saka, having thousands of dancing girls, the charas. Yeah, so it's usually called sensuous, but really what it means is that the senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, are employed. So not necessarily terribly sensuous indulgence, but the pleasure and happiness is experienced through the senses. Yes, and they have little or nothing in the way of the miseries of the human realm, like sickness, old age. When they come to die at the end of their very long lifespans, they have five signs that appear, and this is their version of old age, just shortly before they die as a warning. Their garments become wrinkled, their garlands fade, their armpits become sweaty, they become restless on their seat, and their luster, their radiance fades. So this is their equivalent of old age, so it's a lot less suffering than Alzheimer's and rheumatism. And then death occurs shortly after, and that death takes the form of what? It's basically just disappearing, the same as when they're born. They do not reproduce sexually, although they have sex for pleasure, they're divided into male and female genders, which the Brahma realms are not. These sensual heavens are divided into genders, and they enjoy sexual pleasure, but they don't reproduce that way. When someone is born into that realm, they just appear, like poof, they're there. This is one of the great questions in the West for Christianity, is there sex in heaven? And most people say, if there's not, then I don't want to go there. So Buddhism explicitly answers this question, at least. In the lower heavens, the Brahma realms get beyond all this messy biological stuff, but in the sensual heavens, there's still genders. There is an interesting passage that deals with the sexuality in the different heavens that is exemplar for all other types of sensual pleasure, that they become more refined and subtle as we go up. You might see some sort of equivalent to this in the human realm in terms of refinements of intimacy and so forth. So let's just talk about this. Is there actual sexuality, sexual intercourse in some levels of the heavens? In the first two heavens, the Chathumarajika and Tawatingsa, they're still in contact with the physical earth. They're on Mount Sinuru. The beings copulate much like humans, except that the male does not emit any fluid. There's just an exchange of energy. Right, because there's no birth process. Yes. But that's the last... Tawatingsa is the highest level in which there's penetration. In the Yama heaven, the next one up... Yeah, which is the first level above Mount Sinuru. In the Yama heaven, the beings fondle and caress each other, but there's no penetration. And they manage to have some sort of refined pleasure from this. Yes. And the Sita heaven, they merely hold hands and gaze into each other's eyes. And then in the fifth heaven, they merely gaze into each other's eyes and smile without physical contact and bliss out, just like that. Then the highest heaven of the sensual realms, they gaze without smiling. And I imagine this gazing can go on for quite some time as well. Yes, because they have immensely long lifespans. Yes. So there's kind of an ecstasy over long periods of time. Now, this does remind me of being a teenager and walking in the rain with my girlfriend in grade nine or something. Yeah, somebody told me when I gave this teaching once, somebody said, that sounds like high school in reverse. Well, when you're younger, you are more sensitive and open to these things. So you do have a little intimation of, although not everybody is that refined. Obviously, in the human realm, there's some very coarse interactions, sexual interactions, and only refined consciousness can appreciate those kind of gazing into each other's eyes, et cetera. And I think all sensual pleasures are similar in that they have levels of refinement. I sometimes give the example of music. You can have music that's very coarse and rhythmic and appeals to a lower kind of level of consciousness, all the way up to very fine line concertos. And I think this is important because it says something about sensuality in general, that we tend to be a bit too black and white in looking at these things. That if you go through the heaven realm, sensuality gradually, it becomes more refined and attenuates. So at the highest level, it's not much of a jump to get beyond sensuality altogether. Right, to transcend that. Yeah. And we'll talk about the realms above that later on, but the realms above that are really non-sensuous, non-sensual. Don't involve sights and sounds, smells, tastes, touches, or even ideas, but they are even more pleasurable and the lifespans are longer. So Buddhism is not really trying to throw a wet blanket on happiness and pleasure, but is just pointing out that there are more and more and higher refined pleasures. Yes. And that once you get into well-developed meditation, one can transcend the sensuous. So a lot of people ask us why we, when you go to a monastery, you take eight precepts and one of them is to abstain from music and singing and dancing and various kind of sensuous indulgence, including the wearing of perfume and garlands. And it's not that those things are all that evil, but they, for the development of the very higher, the more refined mind, tend to be mutually exclusive. So the sensuous tends to interfere and course in the mind and then prevent the transcendence into this. It keeps your mind operating on that level, sense, desire, plane level, and it's only by transcending that, that one can experience the non-sensual higher levels that are actually more blissful, more pleasant. And one might also say that if one manages to get into these non-sensual, above the sensual heavens, or through the experience of meditation, that the sensual experiences tend to pale in comparison. So one might find that one's obsession with sensory pleasures drops away and diminishes, perhaps to the surprise of the meditator. Yeah, yes. So let's talk a little more about these beings. Apparently they're exquisitely beautiful as well. Yes. Yeah, they're perfectly formed and beautiful and radiant and wear gorgeous garments and ornaments and things. And it's said that the males all appear to be perpetually about 25 years old by human standards and the females about 16. Yeah. 16. So this is an Asian Indian standards of beauty. The height of beauty. Yeah, I think they had a sense that the height of beauty for males is reached about 25 and the height of beauty for females is 16. And this lowest heaven, this Yama Deva, it's kind of like a million-year English garden party idea. I think most people would find it appealing that often the descriptions of the Christian heavens are very vague and problematic, like, why do you want to go there? So this is something you can relate to. It's charming. How is it that these beings have arrived there? What is the fuel for arriving in those places? Making good karma with the added factor of generosity is, first of all, keeping the five precepts. And usually when we have case studies and stories in the Wamanawatu, stories of the heavenly realms, and they talk about the karma beings make, it usually involves some act of generosity, which is then, this is a kind of a mirror image of the Peta realm we talked about earlier, where people do some bad deed on earth and then they suffer something equivalent. In the heavenly realm, often they get some special reward based on what they gave. They gave lotus flowers and they live in a palace surrounded by beautiful lotus ponds and so on. And I remember one woman had given a lantern to a monastery and then she's radiantly luminous. Light radiates from her body very beautifully. Do they have recollection of their life as a human? Generally, they do. They can recollect their immediately preceding life, but not beyond that. And I think it seems to me to make sense that the reason why is that their birth in heaven is not traumatic. Whereas human birth is a trauma. It's a nine-month-in-the-womb thing. Whatever happens before, you have to go through death and so forth. Then you're nine months in the womb, then you're helpless for several years, can't speak and so forth. And so by the time you finish that, no wonder you can't remember anything. Yeah, yeah. These beings just appear fully formed. In a mansion surrounded by attendants and all their paraphernalia. So that, yeah, there's no trauma involved. Yeah, so there's no trauma-induced amnesia. There is one story about a monk who overexerted himself in his meditation and died during walking meditation and appeared in a heavenly mansion. And at first he was confused and didn't know where he was. And these attendants, the dancing girls, they said, but you're not a monk anymore. Now you're a dewa. You can enjoy sensual pleasure. He was horrified. He didn't want to do that. He wanted to continue his practice. Right. And that's the idea of aspiring, as a monk, aspiring to sensuous heavens is considered kind of a dukkhata or a wrongdoing to aspire to. Yeah, it's a lowly kind of thing. It's a low, it's a kind of a booby prize. Yeah. If nothing works out for you, you may end up... There's a story about a man who, by chance, some of the dewas had come to earth for some reason. He saw some achars and he became so obsessed with them that he pined away and died. That the loveliness of them is beyond human comprehension. Right. And an ordinary human can't handle it. Yeah. So it's better not to catch a glimpse of these. The human realm tends to become base and coarse after that sight. Now, it's interesting that you mentioned that he had seen these achars, which they're kind of heavenly dancing girls. And what is the interpenetration between the human realm and the heavens? Do the angels appear on a regular basis in the human realm or are they... On rare occasions they do. And normally they're not visible to humans. It may be that humans see them as a bright light. There is one story of where they come to see the Buddha. And the Buddha's in a cave on the side of a mountain and the villagers below, they see this brilliant light in the mountain. They think the mountain's on fire. Yeah. That's the dewas coming to see the Buddha. Right. So, yes, they appear as lights and there's many descriptions of them visiting the Buddha in the Jetavana Grove, the Jetavana Monastery, and lighting up the entire grove with their light. And that usually happened somewhere after 10 at night, between 10 and 2. After he's finished teaching humans, then the dewas visit him and he often gives teachings. Because dewas are not necessarily... They're beautiful and they have at some point been virtuous, but they're not necessarily wise. No, no. Most of them are not. There's some cases of dewas that do attain to stream entry. This does occur. But it's rare and it's difficult for them because they don't have an experience of dukkha, of suffering. So the teachings are not... They don't resonate with them. And in fact, it's said when the Buddha teaches in the heaven realms, many of them become frightened. They don't want to hear about death and impermanence. They have an existential dread when he informs them that even this beautiful realm that they're in is impermanent. Yes. And that they must eventually die because it'd be very easy to forget that fact. Yeah. In fact, some of them may have never seen anybody die. Yes. And they may have... There might be cliques of devas that are convinced they're eternal. Yes. Yeah, this is quite so the case because when they hear the Buddha talk about death, some of them explain, oh, so we are not impermanent. We are not permanent. It's a shock to them. This is a shock, yes. So, and of course, in the West, the Christian idea of eternal heaven and unfortunate opposite the eternal hell where we see in Buddhism that neither heaven nor hell, I believe, is eternal. Let's just go up the levels of heaven. This Yama realm is above Siniru. Is that the third level of heaven? That's the third heaven. Tawatingsa is the second. It's the highest that's in contact with the earth, and it's at the top of Mount Siniru, which is 84,000 yojanas above sea level. And then the Yama heaven is 84,000 yojanas above that. Now, each successive realm is twice as high. So the next one is then 168,000 yojanas and so on. And each one is a reflection or refinement of the previous one. The geography is similar. Each one has a Nandana Grove, which is like the central pleasure park, but it becomes more beautiful and more exquisite in each new version. So they're like reflections or translations of each other at more and more refined levels. The Yama world is not described in any detail, but it's the first heaven that is not in contact with the earth, and it's the first level where there's no conflict. It's peaceful. Right. And we talked about the Asuras and the conflict with the Tapatingsa, and in Tapatingsa, while it's in heaven, there's still some sort of combat going on with lower levels. Yeah. So this is free from... It's a non-conflict zone. Yes. Yeah, they're completely peaceful. And the next level up is Tushita Heaven, which is a special place because it's where the Bodhisattva, the Buddha-to-be, appears for his final life before becoming Buddha. He's completed, during the course of his Bodhisattva career, he's perfected all the And then this is kind of like his rest or vacation before taking on the Buddha role. So I think that the next Buddha should be in Tushita Heaven. That's Mateya. Yes. Or rather, not the next Buddha, the Bodhisattva who will be... Who will become the next Buddha. Yes. ...is in Tushita. Yes. So he's there currently, waiting for his rebirth as a human. So this is rather arcane information. It's common knowledge in Asia, but in the West, where you just go take a vipassana course or a Metta retreat, weekend retreat, such... The details like this are rarely talked about. But it's very rich to contemplate this, that this is already taking place simultaneously in existence as the next Bodhisattva. There's a story in the Wamanawatu of a pious lay Buddhist who's dying, and the monks come to chant, and he cries out, wait, wait. And the monks think he's telling them to get lost. So they leave, and his family is, why did you drive the monks away? He says, I'm not telling them to wait. I wanted them to finish their chanting. I'm telling the Devas to wait. There were six Deva chariots in the air above him from the six heavens, and they were all asking him to come to our realm. And so he asks his daughter, my dear, which heaven do you think I should choose? And she says, choose Tusita heaven, because that is where the Bodhisattva is. So she gives him a garland of flowers, and he throws it over the yoke of the chariot from Tusita. And the other people around, they don't see the chariots, but they see the garland suspended in space. And he instantly dies and is carried away in the chariot to Tusita heaven. It's interesting why Tusita, the fourth level, is preferred by the Bodhisattva, not the lower one, which is a little on the sensuous side, and not the next levels up. It seems to be that that would be the most conducive, apparently. Well, the next two levels up are rather special in their own ways as well. And I think for a Bodhisattva, this is, Tusita heaven would be like the peak of contentment. The name means contentment. So it's like contented, very peaceful, and the sensual pleasures are very subtle and refined. It's not coarse and grosser like the previous realms. But the next realm up is the Nimanarati realm, is the realm of those who delight in creation. So this is creation meaning as like an artistic production? Well, broadly speaking, yes, you could say that. Whatever they desire and imagine with their minds manifests for them. So if they want a big palace with lotuses and trees, and if they want a chariot, whatever they want, they can just imagine it and it appears. This is a very high level of good karma, because all in the lower levels, the beings enjoy palaces and ponds and chariots and all sorts of ornaments. And those appear magically for them, but they don't create them directly with their mind, but created by their karma. But now these beings at this level have such a powerfully good karma that they're able to control it and manifest whatever they choose as a reality to live in. What they really have is imagination, the power of imagination. If you are an imaginative person, you may not realize that not everybody has an imagination. They need the actual substantial object or experience. They can't imagine the experience. And if you're a reader of books or artistic and so forth, you're able to create these realms in your mind without having to have the literal experience. That makes that type of person a little mysterious to people. We don't know, how did these composers do this? How did these creators do this? It's coming out of their imagination. So it puts them in that fifth level is this realm of creation. But one should not think that simply being in the arts or in something like that automatically delivers you into the heavens. So I think this has to be connected with virtue and perhaps some sort of generosity as well. Maybe the offering of arts at the service of Dhamma or something like that. What you see in most of the great religious cultures, art really is there not as an end in itself, but as a means of expression of the highest truths. And so that type of perhaps that's what leads to this level of heavenly creation. There's also, I think, a relationship to our faculty of perception that in this level of existence as ordinary human beings, our perception is very constrained by sense data. But if you understand how consciousness and perception works, we are creating the world that we actually live in. We don't directly experience the outer world. We get signals coming in from the senses and then perception creates a simulation that we experience. And when we're dreaming at night, then the dreams are more free. They're not constrained. So we're experiencing something like the nirmanarati level of consciousness when we're dreaming. I think the other deva realms in between, they're somewhere in between waking and dreaming. The perception is more free. And so you get to the nirmanarati level where they have total control over the experience. We create the world they live in with their will. Almost lucid dreaming. Yes, yes, yes. Very much like lucid dreaming. There's one more to go. Yes. What possibly could be above the level of pure mental creation? This is the level of parinimitta-vasavati, those who delight in the creation of others. They don't even have to bother with the act of creation. The nirmanarati devas serve them and create pleasures for them. And they don't even have to bother giving orders. It's said that nirmanarati devas know exactly how to please them just as the king's cook knows exactly what dishes will please his master. They're kind of parallel to aristocracy who have at their disposal all of the arts, the architecture, etc. But they don't have to sweat and get into their hands with creation themselves. And so that would be a parallel to the hierarchical structure in the human realm. The connoisseurs of art. So that's just fascinating that how it's interesting for people to contemplate how you would design the hierarchies of heaven. Which are your senses of what is more pleasurable and refined? Lots of people are quite surprised by this. Investigating this, it really reveals how wise and insightful this exploration of these sensuous realms is. How well they understood the nature of the mind and the refined natures of consciousness. And it reveals a lot. It doesn't have to be just psychologized. If you want higher and more refined happiness, you have to understand what is above your present experience. And to discover these things. This also has occurred to me thinking about this final level. That this is meant to be the final attenuation of sensuality. The very highest, most subtle form of sensuality. And it ends up being completely idle and useless. They're just supine beings that don't even exercise their will. They just are bombarded with sensual experiences that are created for them by others. And they're just on the edge of entering the next realms of subtle form. Yes. Yeah. Where you're beyond sensuality. Beyond the sensual. The happiness beyond the senses. Yes. Which we will hopefully devote an entire interview to as well. One other detail about this Parinimitta-Vasavati realm is that each realm has a king, right, a lord, overlord. And the lord of this realm is Vasavati. So he's like the highest lord of the whole sensual level. But he doesn't rule completely without a rival. In one corner of his kingdom ruling as a rebel prince is Mara. Ah, well, this is very, very interesting. So again, I must point out the contrast to the Christian idea that Lucifer was, of course, formerly, his name is Lucifer as in light. And he reigns in hell. Yes. In the Buddhist version, that role of Lucifer, the tempter, etc., dwells in the highest, the sixth level of sensuous heaven. Yes. It's very interesting they've placed him there. Yes. And I often think, you know, maybe he's not intrinsically attempting to be destructive. He just feels that all of the sensuous realms are his customers. So he's basically a Madison Avenue advertising executive. And he wants to keep the customers because it reinforces his sense of ego. Yeah. He wants to keep people locked into the sensual domain. And he doesn't necessarily want to make them suffer or to be evil. But he's willing to use that. Like he'll use sensual enticement. And if that doesn't work, he'll use terror. Yes. And so he finds it a threat when people are not appreciating his product anymore, the sensuous product. And if they're on a spiritual path, a spiritual course, which is going, abstaining from the sensuous, he becomes quite concerned that he's losing a customer. Yeah. And so very, in many of the religious traditions where monastics or serious practitioners are abstaining from the sensuous indulgence, Mara shows up in order to see if he can recover this customer he's in danger of losing. So those who are meditators should be aware that to expect some very interesting, tempting things to arrive on your doorstep if you are earnestly attempting to enter into states of deep samadhi, because that's not a sensuous experience. And so some of the things you always wished for might appear at the door just to distract you from this. And if not, then the opposite, which is fear and terror, anything to interrupt this, probably the first one will be a sensuous bribe. And if failing that, some sort of fear and horror, perhaps to keep you away from this, your concentration, to break your concentration. So you should find that this is a universal experience. Don't be bewildered by that too. It's nice to know, you know, to expect these things ahead of time. And as in the scriptures, they say, I know you Mara. So Mara is, you have to be aware of the guises that Mara comes in, of sensuous temptation, and also a provoker of fear. Now, when a person, this is a kind of an interesting thing, when a person does manage to enter into the jhāna, Mara is not aware of this rama bhava, him. But is Mara always a him? Yes, yeah. Mara is a male figure. The idea that Mara doesn't go beyond the sensual realm is a little bit debatable, because there is a story of him interfering in the first and the lowest level of the brahma realm. Where discursive activity still persists. Yes, yes. The Buddha went to up into that realm at one time to confront one of the brahmas, Baka, who had fallen into wrong view to try and correct him. And Mara followed him and occupied the mind of some of the lesser brahmins, and caused them to say, you know, to challenge the Buddha. And the commentary says that this is the highest level Mara can reach, this is the very lowest level of the brahma realm. I think I've also heard that Mara becomes particularly alarmed when somebody goes off the radar, and in the second jhāna, you disappear. Yeah. And you're no longer, it's no longer possible for Mara to interfere with you. Yeah, he has no power beyond the very lowest level of jhāna. And when Mara notices that you've gone off the radar, Mara makes a special effort to prevent you from doing that again, to escape his realm, electronic surveillance. Now, you actually wrote a whole little series of stories called the letters from Mara, which are kind of a little bit modeled on the screw tape letters, C.S. Lewis, screw tape letters, which were very, very popular, more or less, letters and strategies from Satan interfering with the Christian's progress. So you remodeled it for the sake of Buddhists. But it's very informative. You could really get to know the realms of the heavens and Mara's strategies through those letters. Are you going to include those in your upcoming book on the... No, I do have a long section on Mara, but it's more like that. Letters from Mara was playful. Right. Is that published or available? Yes, it's published by BPS. Okay. So those who are watching, if you want a playful, but informative exploration of Mara and the tactics of Mara, read Letters from Mara by Ajahn Punadamoh, published by the Buddhist Publication Society.