by Donald Lopez
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This list provides additional background for the selections that follow.
THE BUDDHIST UNIVERSE
1
THE REALMS OF REBIRTH
The doctrines of karma and rebirth are fundamental to Buddhist theory and practice. Karma is the law of the cause and effect of actions, according to which virtuous actions create pleasure in the future and non-virtuous actions create pain. It is a natural law, accounting for all the happiness and suffering in the world. The beings of the universe have been reborn without beginning in the six realms of gods, demigods, humans, animals, ghosts, and hell beings. (These six realms are sometimes collapsed into five, as in the text below, with demigods included in the realm of ghosts.) The actions of these beings create not only their individual experiences of pleasure and pain, but also their bodies and minds, and even the domains in which they dwell. The physical universe is thus the product of the individual and collective actions of the inhabitants of the universe. Buddhist practice is directed largely at performing deeds that will bring happiness in the future, avoiding deeds that will bring pain, and counteracting the future effects of misdeeds done in the past. The ultimate goal is freedom from the bonds of karma and the universe it has forged.
Because of this causal link between past deeds and present circumstances, descriptions of the Buddhist cosmos are often also ethical treatises, identifying which human actions result in rebirth in a particular realm, and exhorting their readers to practise virtue and eschew sin. The text translated here is an excellent example of this genre. It begins at the bottom with the hells. Buddhist texts often describe a system of eight hot hells, eight cold hells, four neighbouring or secondary hells, and various trifling hells (the hot hells and the neighbouring hells are set forth here), providing elaborate details of the gruesome sufferings that the denizens undergo as a result of their sinful actions in the past.
Next is the section on animals, followed by the section on ‘ghosts’. This section includes descriptions not only of petas (Sanskrit preta, a term that literally means ‘departed’ and is usually translated as ‘ghost’ or ‘hungry ghost’) but a wide variety of generally malevolent beings. Modern English is relatively impoverished in its demonology, leaving only words like ‘demon’, and ‘ogre’ to render terms that are much more evocative in the original. For example, a rather ghoulish denizen of charnal grounds is the kumbhaṇḍa, which literally means ‘pot testicle’; so named because its testicles are the size of water pots, creating difficulty when walking but apparently providing a convenient place to sit. Also included here are the demigods (asuras), a class of jealous deities that sometimes warrants its own category among the six places of rebirth. They are jealous of the riches of the gods and wage war against them, only to be defeated.
The section on humans describes our various pleasures and sufferings, and identifies what deeds were done in the past to cause them. Those who find themselves in happy circumstances in this life are experiencing the result of their past virtues. It is also the Buddhist view, however, that illness, physical or mental disability, as well as the female gender, are the consequences of negative deeds done in the past. The text concludes with a description of the Buddhist heavens, the most pleasant realms within the cycle of rebirth.
The work translated below is entitled Pañcagatidīpanī (Illumination of the Five Realms of Existence), a work in Pali of unknown date and authorship, but perhaps written in Cambodia in the fourteenth century.
ILLUMINATION OF THE FIVE REALMS OF EXISTENCE
Let there be homage:
Homage to the Virtuous One, conqueror of what must be conquered, resplendent with right knowledge, always working for the good of others, the teacher of the three worlds! (1)
‘Whatever good or bad deed is done by themselves with body and so on, people reap the fruit of it; no other creator is found.’ (2)
With this thought, and displaying compassion, the Ins
tructor, the one teacher of the three worlds, spoke for people’s benefit about the fruit of each deed. (3)
Having heard what was said by the Completely Awakened One, I shall now speak briefly about deeds good and bad to be done or to be eschewed by you. (4)
Naraka Section The Eight Great Narakas [Hells]
There are the Sañjīva, Kāḷasutta, Saṅghāta and also the Roruva, the Mahāroruva, Tapa, Mahātapa and Avīci [hells]. (5)
Those men who, because of greed, delusion, fear or anger, kill living creatures, or having reared them, slaughter [them] – they surely go to Sañjīva; (6)
Though killed and killed again for many thousands of years, because they revive there [again and again] it has the name of ‘Sañjīva’ – the Revival Hell. (7)
Men who show enmity to their friends, including mother, father and dear ones, who are slanderers and liars – they go to Kāḷasutta; (8)
Since they are split like wood with burning saws along [a mark made by] black thread, so it is thought of as ‘Kāḷasutta’ – the Black Thread Hell. (9)
Those men who kill goats, rams, jackals and so on, hares, rats, deer and boar and other living beings – they go to Saṅghāta; (10)
Since, crushed together, they are slain there in a total slaughter, therefore this niraya [hell] is considered to be named ‘Saṅghāta’ – the Crushing Hell. (11)
Those men who cause torment of body and mind to creatures and who are cheats go to Roruva; (12)
There they give forth terrible howls, constantly consumed by fierce fire, so that is thought of as ‘Roruva’ – the Hell of Those Screaming Aloud. (13)
Those who take the property of devas [gods], brahmans and [their] gurus, by causing suffering to them even, go to Mahāroruva, as well as those who steal what was entrusted to them; (14)
The awfulness of the fire-torment, and also the greatness of the howling [there gives rise to the name] ‘Great Roruva’; its greatness [must be heard] with respect to Roruva [which it surpasses]. (15)
Whoever burns creatures in conflagrations such as forest fires, that person, wailing, is consumed by fire in Tāpana in blazing flames; (16)