This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Heavens & Hells: Lessons of the Mind & Buddhist Cosmos (1of 2) Ajahn Kovilo. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Ajahn Kovilo at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Greetings everybody. It’s nice to see quite a few Clear Mountain people, people who come to our gatherings online and some in person. That’s really lovely, and I’m happy to be here today. We’ll be spending the next three hours together, or as much of that as you can. I’ll be sharing some reflections, and we’ll be having some guided meditations, and there’ll be time for Q&A. The subject, as you probably all know, is heavens and what Theravāda1 Buddhism says about heaven.
For anyone who doesn’t know me, just a little bit of background. I’m an American Buddhist monk, a Theravāda monk. I’ve been living at monasteries for almost 20 years and have been an ordained monk for 15 years. I wasn’t raised in a Buddhist country or in a Buddhist family. I was raised in a Unitarian family. If any of you know what Unitarianism is, you could say that Buddhism, in the way that I’ll be talking about it, believes in life after death, whereas Unitarianism believes in life before death. So, somewhat related but somewhat different. Of course, as Theravāda Buddhists, we believe in life before death as well, but there is this whole other realm. We’ll be going into different ways that one might be able to pick up the different teachings that do exist in the Pāli Canon2 about heavens and hells.
Ajahn Nisabho and I, when we were talking with Rob of the Sati Center about what we would teach, had a number of ideas. Ajahn Nisabho and I have a lot in common, but we also are different in certain ways. He’s really taken by the heavens and hell realms in a somewhat different way than I am. So this week, I’ll be talking about heaven, and next week he’ll be teaching about hell realms, animal realms, the hungry ghost realms, and the titans, the asuras—all these other fun, what are called the lower realms. So I get the happy destinations, the sugatis, and he gets all the lower and depressing destinations. They’ll be very different presentations, actually.
In terms of getting one’s mind around heaven, I imagine there’s a plurality of different views that people here have or different capacities for belief. There are probably some people here who think, or maybe even know, that there is an experiential aspect to heaven. Heaven can be experienced in meditation, both on the level of deep states of happiness but also deep insights into actual heaven realms. So maybe some people here have had actual experiences of heaven; that is possible. Maybe some people just see heaven as a psychological principle. Maybe people are just here for the stories.
But whatever way, I think a nice unifying principle which I’ll keep coming back to through the morning is this really great Dhammapada3 verse, and it’s almost good to memorize: “If by renouncing a lesser happiness (sukha4) one may realize a greater happiness, let the wise person renounce the lesser, having regard for the greater.”
This applies to everything that we’ll be talking about this morning. It’s a very different conception of Buddhism than some people might be familiar with. Mostly people are familiar with talking about dukkha5, conceiving of Theravāda Buddhism in terms of the Four Noble Truths: that there is dukkha, there is suffering, there is stress; there’s a cause, there’s a cessation, and there’s a path leading to the cessation. But there’s also this alternate conception of the path as being one of getting better at sukha, getting better at happiness, refining one’s sense of pleasure. If by renouncing a lesser, or a more coarse, or more harmful happiness or pleasure, one gains a greater one, a more refined one, a more subtle one, then the wise person will renounce that lesser one in favor of the less harmful one.
When we talk about heaven, in whatever way we’re going to do it, it’s a matter of faith in a certain way. We can talk about three different levels of faith in Theravāda Buddhism. If you’re allergic to the word faith, which many Western Buddhist people are because it seems to connote things that they’re leaving—many Western Buddhist-influenced people have specifically left the religion of their birth because they couldn’t get their minds around this principle of faith. Here we’re using the English word faith just as a stand-in for saddhā6, which does have different nuances and connotations.
The three levels we’ll talk about are faith in habit, faith in mundane right view, and transcendent right view. Hopefully, everybody can at least get their mind around this first level of faith, which is faith in habit. For me, this is the easiest to get one’s mind around because you have to come down on this one way or the other. The Buddha says it is possible to abandon the unwholesome (akusala), and therefore he says to abandon it. If it weren’t possible, then he wouldn’t say to abandon it. But because it is, he says, “Abandon the unwholesome mind states of greed, anger, and delusion.” The correlate of that is that it is possible to develop the wholesome. It is possible to develop states of non-greed, non-anger, non-delusion, of mettā7, of generosity, and of clarity, of insight. If it wasn’t possible to develop the wholesome, the Buddha wouldn’t say to do it, but it is possible, so he says, “Develop it.”
You might say, “Oh, this is just obvious,” or you might think, “I can’t prove this, so I’m not going to have an opinion.” But you can’t really not have an opinion on this. You’re either operating from the default position that it is possible to cultivate the wholesome and abandon the unwholesome, or you’re operating from the idea that it’s not possible, that there is some kind of universal fate or a god who ordains these things. But that’s not how it is in Buddhism. There is this karmic principle, and it’s a smart view to have because it allows for habits. It allows for positive habits and to give up negative habits. So I would encourage everybody to adopt this positive belief, this faith in habit at the very least.
The Buddha then talks in various suttas8 about what he calls the graduated teaching. He gives a step-wise teaching. He doesn’t go straight into deep philosophical subjects; he kind of walks us in gradually. He gave a teaching on giving (dāna9), a talk on virtue (sīla10). The next step is a talk on the heavens. Then he explains the danger, the degradation, the defilement—the drawbacks of sensual pleasures in general. And then he talks about the blessing or the advantages of renunciation. When the person’s mind is ready, receptive, free from hindrances, elated, and confident, the Buddha teaches the Four Noble Truths of suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path, which can lead to stream entry.
Here we have the Buddha walking us from this first level of faith—that it is possible to develop good habits, that there is value in generosity and virtue—up to this next level. Some people who call themselves Buddhist teachers will make a case that teachings about heaven or any world after this one are just later interpolations, that later generations of monks just added these teachings on, and that teachings about rebirth are not original to the Buddhist canon. But you really have to twist things to be able to come to that in a genuine and authentic way. If you look at the teachings as a whole in the Pāli Canon, this is in the earliest teachings, this truth of rebirth. The Buddha didn’t shy away from it when he felt that someone could hear these teachings.
But then he went further. There’s a drawback in heaven in Buddhism. Even the best heavens, which are very, very long-lasting, are impermanent. When someone passes away from these godlike or deva11 states, one will be reborn, and saṃsāra12 continues. So there’s a value in renouncing that.
The next level of right view is this mundane right view, which the Buddha taught in many places. These are helpful views to take up. There is what is given, what is offered, what is sacrificed—i.e., there is value in generosity. There is fruit and result in good and bad actions. There is this world, and there is another world—i.e., there is rebirth. There is mother, there is father, so there’s value in filial piety. There are beings who are spontaneously reborn (opapatika13)—this is referring to beings in hell and heaven who aren’t born by womb or from eggs, but just poof, they pop into existence. There are in the world good and virtuous recluses and brahmins, spiritual practitioners who have realized for themselves by direct knowledge and declare this world and the next, i.e., who have realized Nibbāna14 and the truth of other worlds.
The final level of right view or faith is transcendent right view, basically the Four Noble Truths. You can see that there is suffering or stress in your life, there’s a cause for it, and when you stop craving, it leads to the end of suffering. But even within this transcendent right view, there are implications of rebirth. The Buddha’s definition of suffering entails birth and rebirth. The origin of suffering is that craving which leads to rebirth. And the cessation of suffering implies Nibbāna, which is the ending of saṃsāra.
People will be familiar with the Kālāma Sutta, the Buddha’s charter of free inquiry, where the Buddha says not to go by reports, legends, traditions, scripture, logical conjecture, or inference, but to know for yourselves when qualities are unskillful and lead to suffering, and then to abandon them. People use this to say, “Don’t go by scripture that says you should believe in heaven.” But the Buddha also says not to totally believe your own limited level of logical conjecture. In that same Kālāma Sutta, he gives this Buddhist Pascal’s wager: if there is a world after death and one acts wisely with a mind free from hostility, ill will, and impurity, then one will appear in heaven, which is great. And if there’s no world after death, no worries, you’ve just been a good person here on earth.
This is my own elaboration of six practical ways to relate to these teachings on heaven that I’ll be going over this morning.
The main framework I’ll use is based on this Dhammapada verse: “By telling the truth, by not growing angry, by giving when asked, no matter how little you have—by these three things you enter the presence of the devas.” This aspect of morality (truthtelling), mettā (not growing angry), and generosity will be the three main topics for the talks and meditations.
(Meditation introduction)
We introduced there this idea of lightness, the light of virtue, specifically thinking about grandma’s smile or smiling eyes. That’s the introduction to this whole section on virtue.
I’ll just read again the two Dhammapada quotes that we’ve quoted so far because they are a through-line for us.
“By telling the truth (this section on virtue or sīla), by not growing angry (having mettā), by giving when asked no matter how little you have, by these three things you will enter the presence of devas.”
And again, this one which everybody should memorize in your own form: “If by renouncing a lesser happiness, a more coarse happiness, one realizes a greater happiness, let the wise person renounce the lesser, having regard for the greater.”
What a great spiritual path we’ve got. That certainly applies to the levels of heaven, but it also applies to virtue in general. A whole path of virtue or ethics is letting go of those lesser types of happiness that involve harming others: killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, or taking intoxicants. We give those up because there’s a greater happiness of morality. The Buddha said he teaches morality for the sake of non-remorse. He teaches non-remorse for the sake of pamojja16 or well-being. He teaches pamojja for the sake of pīti17 or rapture, which leads to bodily seclusion, which leads to sukha18, which leads to samādhi19. The happy mind is easily concentrated.
This leads to the recollection of devas. This is one of the meditation objects which the Buddha gave. A noble disciple recollects the devas on different levels. Here’s the whole Buddhist worldview, a map of the 31 planes of existence. Below the human realm are states of deprivation: the hells, animal realms, hungry ghosts, and asuras. Above those, we’ve got the human realm, and then 26 levels above that.
The first six are the sensual bliss realms (kāma sugati). They start from the realm of the Four Great Kings, up to the Tāvatiṃsa (the 33 gods), the Yāma devas, the Tusita heaven (the level of contentment), the heaven of delighting in creation, and the heaven of those who delight in the creations of others. Beings in these six levels experience sight, sound, smells, tastes, touch, and mental objects, but in ascendingly higher and cleaner forms of happiness.
Above that, we’ve got the Brahma20 realms, which roughly equate to the four jhānas. If one dies in the first jhāna, one will go to the first few levels of the Brahma realms. And above that, you’ve got the formless realms, which are equated to the formless attainments of infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, and neither perception nor non-perception.
The recollection of the devas is to recollect that these beings were born there because of their faith, their ethics, their learning, their generosity, and their wisdom. And then to realize, “I too have these same qualities.” When one does that, their mind becomes unswerving, finds inspiration, and they become joyful. This leads to the well-being cascade: well-being leads to rapture, which leads to tranquility, which leads to bliss, which leads to samādhi.
Question: If one reaches the level of stream entry, they have a maximum of seven more lifetimes, either human or above. If they end up in one of these angelic realms, they could be there for eons. It could take a really, really long time to become enlightened.
Answer: That’s a good point. Stream entry (sotāpanna) is the first of four levels of awakening. When one attains it, they have a maximum of seven more lives and are free from doubt, personality view, and attachment to rites and rituals. The Buddha compared the suffering left for a stream-enterer to the amount of dirt under a fingernail compared to all the dirt on Earth. Even if those seven lives are in immense deva realms, it’s still an infinitesimally small amount of suffering in comparison to what other beings in saṃsāra are going through. So definitely go for stream entry.
The Buddha taught the gradual teaching (anupubbikathā): first generosity, then virtue, then the heavens. For those who can hear it, he then teaches the drawbacks of heaven, the benefits of renunciation, and finally the Four Noble Truths. The goal is to realize the Four Noble Truths and attain awakening.
Comment: During the meditation on a grandparent’s loving face, I felt a direct connection with my maternal grandfather and started sending mettā to all my ancestors. It brought tears, rapture, and bliss. My question is about faith (saddhā). The devas have this faith. Is it faith towards the Buddha and his teachings, or is it a universal truth that can be realized by anyone, even non-Buddhists?
Answer: I’m so happy that meditation had that effect on you. That is the intentional purpose of devanussati (recollection of the devas)—to give rise to this well-being cascade. Regarding your question, I believe it makes sense that what other religions describe as the causes for heaven—good actions—is consistent with Buddhism. It’s not just Buddhists who will go to heaven. It’s anyone who’s acting wholesomely. The faith (saddhā) of people in heaven, whether they are Buddhist or not, is that first level of faith: believing in the effects of habit and karma, that it is possible to cultivate wholesome states and abandon unwholesome ones. Devas in the heaven realms often know their previous birth and the good things they did that led them there. So it’s this right view that it’s possible to cultivate the wholesome.
In the guided meditation, I was using a stock phrase from the suttas about the suffusion with the divine abidings (Brahma-vihāras21). We chant this at our monasteries:
“I will abide pervading one quarter with a mind imbued with loving-kindness, likewise the second, likewise the third, likewise the fourth. So above and below, around and everywhere, and to all as to myself, I will abide pervading the all-encompassing world with a heart imbued with loving-kindness: abundant, exalted, immeasurable, without hostility, and without ill will.”
When we practice loving-kindness, we are practicing in a way similar to the Brahma gods. These deities are not engaging in sensuality in the same way as the lower deva realms; they live in a jhāna-esque existence of rapture and bliss. The names of their realms point to the qualities that manifest in the jhānas, like boundless light or ultimate beauty.
There’s a story about the “mind-corrupted devas.” These devas contemplate each other with excessive envy. Their minds become corrupted by anger, and their bodies and minds become exhausted, and they pass away from that plane. If one deva gets angry but the other remains unperturbed, the latter protects the former from passing away. But if both get angry, they both pass away. Anger can take one down from the state of being a deva. We can all feel that. A modern upper-middle-class existence is a deva realm in many ways, and we’ve probably all experienced how quickly a fight can bring us down into a hell state.
This goes back to the principle: “If by renouncing a lesser happiness one may realize a greater happiness, let the wise person renounce the lesser, having regard for the greater.” There is a gratification in righteous indignation, but it burns us and others. We can let go of the indignation part and see that there’s a greater happiness in forgiveness and love. The promise of the Buddha is that it is possible to completely transcend anger and have a mind of loving-kindness.
Comment: I’ve noticed that as I’ve practiced, my anger has decreased. I also think about the idea of the devas being able to see our thoughts. When I’m driving and someone does something that makes me angry, I think, “How would the wise ones think about my reaction?” It doesn’t always stop me from embarrassing myself, but it has certainly lessened it.
Answer: Thank you for sharing that. Part of being a monastic is living in dependence on a teacher. I was fortunate to live with Luang Por Pasanno. The word deva comes from a root that means “to shine” or “to play.” There are devas on earth, shining beings. The more you are around spiritual circles, the more you understand the iconography of a halo. People seem to start having this brightness to them. There is a kind of osmosis from just being around people who have qualities we want to emulate. It’s about having the eyes to see the devas in our lives.
There’s a sutta where the Buddha speaks to a couple, Nakula’s father and Nakula’s mother, who ask how they can be reborn together as a couple in future lives. The Buddha says it’s possible if they practice the same generosity, keep the same precepts (sīla), study together, and have the same level of wisdom. You can cultivate multi-life pair bonding or create affinities with a group by practicing these things together.
The final theme is generosity (dāna). Going back to the Dhammapada verse: “…by giving when asked, no matter how little you have, by this you enter the presence of the devas.” The Buddha said, “If beings knew as I know the value of giving and sharing, they wouldn’t eat without first having given.”
There’s a great quote from Shantideva, a Mahayana scholar. He compares the mind of a hungry ghost with that of a deva. When a hungry ghost has some food and someone comes along, they think, “How could I give this to the other being? Then I wouldn’t have anything for myself.” In the same situation, a deva thinks, “How could I keep this for myself when I could give it to the other person?”
The Buddha suggests the recollection of generosity (cāgānussati) as a formal meditation. One recollects their own generosity: “It’s a gain for me that among people overcome with the stain of possessiveness, I live with my awareness cleansed of that stain, freely generous, open-handed, delighting in being magnanimous, responsive to requests.” When one does this, their mind is not overcome by passion, aversion, or delusion. Their mind heads straight, and they gain joy, which leads to the well-being cascade.
In a sutta, the Buddha talks about how different motives for giving lead to rebirth in successively higher heavens.
I hope to have encouraged you to have at least a pro-attitude, if not an outright belief, in heaven on some level—whether it’s enjoying the stories, seeing the psychology, meditating on the qualities, or believing in it as a goad to do good.
A huge practice in Buddhist countries, hardly known in the West, is the transference or dedication of merit. “Merit” (puñña) is just another name for happiness. The practice is to recollect the good things you’ve done and dedicate the goodness that arises. For example, at the end of the day, you can reflect: “This morning I listened to the Dhamma and meditated. May any goodness that comes from that go to all beings, to my friends and relatives who have passed away.” There’s a sutta where the Buddha says that hungry ghosts are especially able to receive this merit, like a care package dropped from the sky. At the very least, it’s a good way for you to remember the good things you’ve done.
Comment: I used to not believe in these things, but a few weeks ago I had a dream of my mother, who has passed away. She asked me to perform a ritual for our ancestors. It made me think, and I arranged for a food offering to be sent to a monastery on her behalf. I started watching videos on past-life regression and realized that energy never dies, it just transforms. I started to feel a connection, and now my heart and mind have opened up.
Answer: That’s so beautiful. The fact that you feel happy about it is enough. It’s really beautiful that many cultures have customs to intentionally reflect on and make offerings to their ancestors. It gets people doing good and gets them out of themselves. And who knows, maybe there is that connection and we can help our ancestors, or they can help us. There’s a principle that if the thought to do something good comes to mind, you should do it quickly, because we never know how long we’ll be around.
It has been a pleasure. I do feel like I’ve met deva-humans in this life. As we practice, we start to get these “heavenly eyes” (dibba-cakkhu) and are able to see the goodness in others and feel this spaciousness, joy, and light.
Thank you all for the morning. Please join Ajahn Nisabho next week. He’s a lot of fun and a very wise and smart person. He’ll be talking about a more depressing subject, but he’ll make it fun.
The following talk was given by Ajahn Kovilo at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Greetings everybody. It’s nice to see quite a few Clear Mountain people, people who come to our gatherings online and some in person. That’s really lovely, and I’m happy to be here today. We’ll be spending the next three hours together, or as much of that as you can. I’ll be sharing some reflections, and then we’ll be having some guided meditations, and there’ll be time for Q&A. The subject, as you probably all know, is heavens and what Theravāda Buddhism says about heaven.
For anyone who doesn’t know me, just a little bit of background in addition to what Rob said. I’m an American Buddhist monk, a Theravāda monk. I’ve been living at monasteries for almost 20 years and have been an ordained monk for 15 years. I wasn’t raised in a Buddhist country or in a Buddhist family. I was raised in a Unitarian family. If any of you know what Unitarianism is, you could say that Buddhism, in the way that I’ll be talking about it, believes in life after death, whereas Unitarianism believes in life before death. So, somewhat related but somewhat different. [Laughter] Of course, as Theravāda Buddhists, we believe in life before death as well, but there is this whole other realm. We’ll be going into different ways that one might be able to pick up the different teachings that do exist in the Pali Canon about heavens and hells.
Ajahn Nisabho and I, when we were talking with Rob of the Sati Center about what we would teach, had a number of ideas. Ajahn Nisabho and I have a lot in common, but we also are different in certain ways. He’s really taken by the heavens and hell realms in a somewhat different way than I am. So this week, I’ll be talking about heaven, and next week he’ll be teaching about hell realms, animal realms, the hungry ghost realms, and the titans, the asuras. So all these other fun, what’s called the lower realms. I get the happy destinations, the sugatis, and he gets all the lower and depressing destinations. They’ll be very different presentations, actually.
In terms of getting one’s mind around heaven, I imagine there’s a plurality of different views that people here have or different capacities for belief. There are probably some people here who think, or maybe even know, that there is an experiential aspect to heaven. Heaven can be experienced in meditation, both on the level of deep states of happiness but also deep insights into actual heaven realms. So maybe some people here have had actual experiences of heaven; that is possible. Maybe some people just see heaven as a psychological principle. Maybe people are just here for the stories.
But whatever way, I think a nice unifying principle which I’ll keep coming back to through the morning is this really great Dhammapada verse, and it’s almost good to memorize: “If by renouncing a lesser happiness or sukha,1 one may realize a greater happiness, let the wise person renounce the lesser, having regard for the greater.”
This applies to everything that we’ll be talking about this morning. It’s a very different conception of Buddhism than some people might be familiar with. Mostly people are familiar with talking about dukkha,2 conceiving of Theravāda Buddhism in terms of the Four Noble Truths: that there is dukkha, there is suffering, there is stress; there’s a cause, there’s a cessation, and there’s a path leading to the cessation. But there’s also this alternate conception of the path as being one of getting better at sukha, getting better at happiness, refining one’s sense of pleasure. If by renouncing a lesser, or a more coarse, or more harmful happiness or pleasure, one gains a greater one, a more refined one, a more subtle one, then the wise person will renounce that lesser one in favor of the less harmful one.
When we talk about heaven, in whatever way we’re going to do it, it’s a matter of faith in a certain way. We can talk about three different levels of faith in Theravāda Buddhism. If you’re allergic to the word faith, which many Western Buddhist people are because it seems to connote things that they’re leaving—many Western Buddhist-influenced people have specifically left the religion of their birth because they couldn’t get their minds around this principle of faith. Here we’re using the English word faith just as a stand-in for saddhā,3 which does have different nuances and connotations. The three levels we’ll talk about are faith in habit, mundane right view, and transcendent right view.
Hopefully, everybody can at least get their mind around this first level of faith, which is faith in habit. For me, this is the easiest to get one’s mind around because you just have to come down on this one way or the other. The Buddha says it is possible to abandon the unwholesome, the akusala,4 and therefore he says to abandon it. If it weren’t possible, then he wouldn’t say to abandon it. But because it is, he says, “Abandon the unwholesome mind states of greed, anger, and delusion.” The correlate of that is that it is possible to develop the wholesome. It is possible to develop states of non-greed, non-anger, non-delusion, of mettā,5 of generosity, and of clarity, of insight. If it wasn’t possible to develop the wholesome, the Buddha wouldn’t say to do it, but it is possible, so he says, “Develop it.”
You might say, “Oh, this is just obvious,” or you might think, “I can’t prove this, so I’m not going to have an opinion.” But you can’t really not have an opinion on this. You’re either operating from the default position that it is possible to cultivate the wholesome and abandon the unwholesome, or you’re operating from the idea that it’s not possible, that there is some kind of universal fate or some kind of god who ordains these things. But that’s not how it is in Buddhism. There is this karmic principle, and it’s a smart view to have because it allows for habits. It allows for positive habits and to give up negative habits. So I would encourage everybody to adopt this positive belief, this faith in habit at the very least.
The Buddha then talks in various suttas about what he calls the graduated teaching. You find this in multiple discourses of the Buddha where he gives a stepwise teaching. He just doesn’t go straight into talk about heavens or deep philosophical subjects. He kind of walks us in gradually. He gave a teaching on giving, generosity, dāna;6 a talk on virtue. The next step is a talk on heavens. He explains the danger, the degradation, the defilement—i.e., the drawbacks of sensual pleasures in general. And then he talks about the blessing or the advantages of renunciation. Then, when the person’s mind is ready, receptive, free from hindrances, elated and confident, the Buddha teaches the Four Noble Truths of suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path.
The Dhammapada says: “By telling the truth, by not growing angry, by giving when asked, no matter how little you have—by these three things you enter the presence of the devas.”7 This aspect of morality or truth-telling, of mettā (i.e., not growing angry), and of generosity will be the three main topics.
A whole path of virtue, or ethics, or having a moral sense is letting go of those lesser types of happiness that involve harming others: killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, or taking intoxicants which might lead one to more easily harm others. We give those up because there’s a greater happiness: the greater happiness of morality. The Buddha said he teaches morality for the sake of non-remorse. Why does he teach non-remorse? For the sake of pāmojja,8 or well-being. Why does he teach pāmojja? He teaches it for the sake of pīti,9 or rapture, which leads to bodily seclusion, which leads to sukha, which leads to samādhi.10 The happy mind is easily concentrated.
The Buddha talked about governing principles, and he said there are three: having oneself as one’s governing principle, having the cosmos (the loka) as one’s governing principle, and having the Dharma as one’s governing principle. Regarding the cosmos, a practitioner reflects: “There are devas endowed with psychic power, clairvoyant, skilled in reading the minds of others. They can see even from afar; even up close, they are invisible. With their awareness, they know the minds of others. They would know this of me. ‘Look, my friends, at this person who, though he’s of good faith, has gone forth from home into homelessness, remains overcome with evil, unskillful states.’”
When you reflect thus, that maybe what you can see isn’t the end of the story, maybe there are other beings who can know your thoughts, it can bring out more of a sense of conscience and fear of wrongdoing. The Buddha gives this really beautiful poem: “There is in the cosmos no secret place for one who has done an evil deed. Your own self knows, my good man, whether you are true or false.”
This brings us to the second aspect: not growing angry, having mettā. There is a stock phrase in the suttas, a suffusion with the divine abidings, or Brahma-vihāras. We chant it at our monasteries:
“I will abide pervading one quarter with a mind imbued with loving-kindness, likewise the second, likewise the third, likewise the fourth. So above and below, around and everywhere, and to all as to myself, I will abide pervading the all-encompassing world with a heart imbued with loving-kindness: abundant, exalted, immeasurable, without hostility, and without ill will.”
When we practice loving-kindness, we’re practicing in a way which is similar to the Brahma gods, the Brahma deities. These beings live in the rapture and bliss of a jhāna-esque11 existence.
There’s a story about the “mind-corrupted devas.” These devas contemplate each other with excessive envy. As a consequence, their minds become corrupted by anger towards one another, and their bodies and minds become exhausted, and consequently, they pass away from that plane. One young deva, wishing to celebrate a festival, set out by chariot. Another deva, seeing him, became angry and exclaimed, “That miserable wretch! There he is, going all along, puffed up with rapture to a bursting point, as if he had never seen a festival before.” The first, realizing the other was angry, became angry in turn. The text says if both get angry, the anger of one will become the condition for the anger of the other, and both will pass away.
This is a case for non-anger. There is gratification in anger, in our righteous indignation. It feels good on a certain level, partially because oftentimes our righteous indignation is right on a certain level. But the indignation, because it’s tinged by this flavor of anger, burns us and it burns the people around us. We can let that go. We can still have the clarity of seeing rightly, but we don’t have to burn ourselves. We can let go of the indignation part and see that there’s a greater happiness in forgiveness, in love, or at least in non-anger. Let the wise person renounce the lesser with regard for the greater.
This brings us to the third quality: giving when asked, no matter how little you have. This is the spacious heart, the freely giving mind of a deva. The Buddha said, “If beings knew as I know the value of giving and sharing, they wouldn’t eat without first having given.”
There’s a great quote from Śāntideva, a later Mahāyāna scholar. He compares the mind of a hungry ghost with that of a deva. When a hungry ghost has some food and someone comes along, the hungry ghost thinks, “How could I give this to the other being? Then I wouldn’t have anything for myself.” Whereas the deva in the same situation thinks, “How could I keep this for myself when I could give it to the other person?” It’s an amazing portrait in just two lines of the mind of a deva.
The Buddha suggests a formal meditation, a recollection of one’s own generosity: “It’s a gain, it’s a great gain for me that among people overcome with the stain of possessiveness, I live at home, my awareness cleansed of the stain of possessiveness, freely generous, open-handed, delighting in being magnanimous, responsive to requests, delighting in the distribution of alms.” When you do this, your mind isn’t overcome by passion, aversion, or delusion. Your mind heads straight, based on generosity, and you gain a sense of the Dharma and joy, which leads to that same well-being cascade: from well-being to rapture, to tranquility, to happiness, and finally to samādhi.
The Buddha also taught that one can be reborn in a specific heaven realm through aspiration. If a person possesses faith, virtue, learning, generosity, and wisdom, they can hear about the different levels of devas and think, “Oh, at the dissolution of the body after death, I might reappear in the company of those gods.” They fix their mind on that, resolve on it, and develop it, and these aspirations lead to reappearance there.
The Buddha also explained that the results of giving depend on one’s intention.
Question: If one reaches the level of stream-entry, they still have a maximum of seven lifetimes, either human or above. If they end up in one of these angelic realms, they could be there for eons. So it could take a really, really long time to become enlightened. How is this addressed?
Answer: That’s a good point. For anyone not familiar, stream-entry is the first of four levels of awakening. When one attains it, they have at most seven more lives. The Buddha compared the suffering left for a stream-enterer to the amount of dirt underneath a fingernail compared to all the dirt in the earth. So even if those seven lives are in immense deva realms, it’s still an infinitesimally small amount of suffering in comparison to what other beings in saṃsāra12 are going through. So definitely go for stream-entry. Not having to be reborn as an animal or a hell-being is great. But the Buddha’s gradual teaching doesn’t stop at heaven. He then talks about the drawbacks of heaven—that no heaven is permanent—and then the benefits of renunciation and the Four Noble Truths. So, practice as much as we can to realize the Four Noble Truths. Stream-entry is a great goal for a human life.
Question: The faith (saddhā) that the devas have, is it towards the Buddha or the teachings? The Dharma is universal and can be realized by anyone, not just Buddhists. How would you address this for people who are not Buddhist?
Answer: That’s a very good question. I believe it makes sense that what so many other religions describe as the causes for heaven—good actions—is consistent with Buddhism. It’s not just Buddhists that will go to heaven. It’s anybody who’s acting wholesomely, refraining from all harmfulness of body, speech, and mind. So, a characteristic of the saddhā of people in heaven, whether they’re formerly Buddhist or Christian or whatever, is that first level of faith: just believing in the effects of habit, the effects of karma. That it is possible to cultivate wholesome states and it is possible to give up unwholesome states.
Question: I had two occasions where I was asked to give, and it kind of irked me and took away my joy of giving. How does one deal with that?
Answer: It’s natural. There’s a prohibition against monastics asking for anything for this reason; nobody really likes being asked for stuff necessarily. But you can train your mind. In that recollection of generosity, there’s the line, “May I be responsive to requests.” You could train yourself in that way. You can start with, “May I be responsive to requests from wise people,” and then expand from there. When I was stingy with my time this morning, I felt a contraction of the heart. I don’t berate myself, but I’d like to be more magnanimous. There is a spaciousness and lightness that comes from letting go of that tightness, from just being more generous and open.
Sukha: A Pali word for happiness, pleasure, ease, or bliss. ↩ ↩2
Dukkha: A Pali word often translated as “suffering,” “stress,” or “unsatisfactoriness.” It is a central concept in Buddhism. ↩ ↩2
Saddhā: A Pali word for faith, confidence, or conviction, based not on blind belief but on reasoned trust and verification through personal experience. ↩ ↩2
Akusala: A Pali term for unwholesome, unskillful, or demeritorious actions or states of mind, typically rooted in greed, hatred, and delusion. ↩ ↩2
Mettā: A Pali word meaning loving-kindness, friendliness, goodwill, and active interest in others. It is the first of the four Brahma-vihāras (divine abidings). ↩ ↩2
Dāna: The Pali word for giving, generosity, or charity. It is a foundational virtue in Buddhism. ↩ ↩2
Deva: A Pali word for a divine or heavenly being. In Buddhism, devas are inhabitants of the heavenly realms, which are still part of saṃsāra. ↩ ↩2
Pāmojja: A Pali word meaning joy, delight, or gladness, often arising from a clear conscience and virtuous conduct. ↩ ↩2
Pīti: A Pali word for rapture, joy, or intense interest. It is one of the factors of the first and second jhānas. ↩ ↩2
Samādhi: A Pali word for concentration or a state of meditative absorption where the mind becomes unified and still. ↩ ↩2
Jhāna: A state of deep meditative absorption, characterized by profound stillness and concentration. There are traditionally four form jhānas and four formless jhānas. ↩ ↩2
Saṃsāra: The cycle of death and rebirth, characterized by suffering (dukkha), to which all unenlightened beings are bound. ↩ ↩2
Opapatika: A Pāli term for spontaneous rebirth, without the need for parents or a womb. This is how beings are said to be born in the hells and heavens. ↩
Nibbāna: (Sanskrit: Nirvāṇa) The ultimate goal of the Buddhist path, meaning “to extinguish” or “to blow out.” It refers to the extinguishing of the “fires” of greed, hatred, and delusion, resulting in the end of suffering and the cycle of rebirth. ↩
Jhāna: A state of deep meditative absorption or concentration. There are traditionally four form jhānas and four formless attainments. ↩
Pamojja: A Pāli word meaning gladness, delight, or joy that arises from a clear conscience and virtuous living. ↩
Pīti: A Pāli word for rapture, bliss, or intense joy. It is one of the factors of the first and second jhānas. ↩
Sukha: Here used in the context of meditation, referring to a more subtle and peaceful happiness or bliss that follows the initial rapture of pīti. It is a factor of the first three jhānas. ↩
Samādhi: A Pāli word for concentration, specifically the one-pointedness of mind developed in meditation. It is the final factor of the Noble Eightfold Path. ↩
Brahma: A type of high-level deva inhabiting the higher, form-based heavens (rūpa-loka). These realms are associated with the attainment of the jhānas. ↩
Brahma-vihāras: The “divine abidings” or “sublime states.” These are four virtuous mental states cultivated in Buddhist meditation: loving-kindness (mettā), compassion (karuṇā), sympathetic joy (muditā), and equanimity (upekkhā).This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Heavens & Hells: Lessons of the Mind & Buddhist Cosmos (1of 2) Ajahn Kovilo. It likely contains inaccuracies. ↩