Buddhist Cosmology With Ajahn Punnadhammo

Ajahn Punnadhammo and I discuss mostly Buddhist cosmology and related topics including what can and can't be discussed with laity; definitions of world system, realm, and cycle; universe and cycle phases, types of rebirth, and stories about humans accessing other realms

Transcript

Welcome,

This is Josh Dippold of Integrating Presence,

And today I've got Ajahn Puttadhammo with me.

Ajahn,

How's it going today?

It's going good.

Cool.

So,

Usually I toss it back to the guest to do an introduction,

But if the listeners will bear with me here a little bit,

I'd like to pay some respects.

Giving tribute to Ajahn Puttadhammo,

We haven't met in real life,

But the dhamma talks I've listened to him,

He seems,

At least for me,

Has a knack for taking these extensive,

Complex,

Profound teachings and putting them into really clear and powerful,

Understandable and relatable ways,

And all without dumbing anything down.

I also wanted to just thank Venerables Chittadhammo and previously Anagarika Martin,

Now Venerable Karunya,

Spending extensive hours with me in Amravati,

Talking about things like this and coming up with some questions too.

I have questions grouped mainly in the structure and background,

And then access into these 31 realms.

Before we get started in this,

Let's lay some ground rules here,

Because there are certain things that can be said with the laity and certain things that can't.

I know that the main one is monastics aren't allowed to publicly talk about attainments,

But what other ground rules should we lay before jumping in here?

I think that's really basically it.

We don't really have secret teachings in Theravada.

Everything is on the table.

There is a Vinaya rule against monks speaking about their own higher experiences,

So that's not allowed.

We can talk about this in generalities though,

Right?

Yes.

Yes.

No restriction at all.

And maybe how lay practitioners might be involved with some of this.

Let's start off here without rehashing too much of the places you've spoke about this before,

But we're going to have to do some.

The definitions in Buddhist cosmology,

If I'm getting this right,

There's something called a world system,

And then there's realms,

And then there's cycles too.

What needs to be laid in the groundwork for people to understand this in our conversation to get in here?

Yeah,

It can get very complex,

And there's quite a number of layers to it.

I arranged my book in sections space,

Time,

And beings to try and separate out these different levels.

In terms of space,

The fundamental unit in the ancient Indian cosmology,

Which was adopted by the Buddhists,

Is the unit called the Chakravala,

Which is generally translated world system,

And I've used that translation myself.

The Chakravala,

I've called it the functional but not the structural equivalent of a solar system.

It's not at all like our modern understanding of a solar system because the sun is not at the center.

What's at the center is this enormous mountain,

Mount Sinuru in Pali.

Many people will be more familiar with the Sanskrit name Sumeru,

And this by far dominates the whole system.

It's 84,

000 yojanas high,

Which if you convert that to modern measurements,

It's a distance greater than the distance,

As we understand it,

Of the earth to the moon.

This is a very massive body,

And the land that humans live on is a relatively small island called Jampudipa,

Way,

Way off in the edge of the system.

We're not anywhere near the center of existence.

These Chakravalas are infinite in number.

Now,

This is not the only world system,

They're infinite in number,

And they're conceived of as being spread out on a plane,

A two-dimensional grid of an infinite number of Chakravalas.

It's quite different from solar system also in that there is no sense anywhere that the stars were identified as being other world systems.

So it's an entirely different physical universe.

In terms of time,

Time is measured in kapas,

Sanskrit kalpa.

A kapa is a very long period of time,

Immensely long,

Unbelievably long,

That is the lifespan of a Chakravala.

The world system persists for one kapa and then is destroyed because there's no permanence in this universe.

But the world system persists for this very,

Very long time.

Then in terms of different realms,

The realms of beings,

There are different classes of beings.

There are lower realms,

Hell realms,

Ghost realm,

And animal realm.

Then there's the human realm,

Which we could say is figuratively in the middle.

Then there are the higher realms that are divided into Devas and Brahmas.

Then there are some other special categories like the formless realms and the pure abodes and so on.

The realms of the Devas are conceived as being in space.

The first two,

There's six realms of Devas.

The first two are on Mount Sinuru.

The first realm,

The realm of the four great kings,

Is halfway up the slope.

Then the realm of the 33,

The Tawatingsa realm,

Is at the summit.

And then the remaining four realms are in space,

Not connected to the earth.

And then the Brahma worlds are infinitely far away.

You mentioned a 2D representation.

Is that just for understanding of this?

And then before I jump in here and ask about how this might relate,

How the Buddhist cosmos might relate maybe to modern day physics understanding of the cosmos and other different traditions,

Especially maybe esoteric and occult traditions,

If that seems appropriate to talk about.

The Buddhist cosmology can be kind of interpreted in many ways.

I know some people take it on a purely psychological level all the way through to the literal level.

But I just wanted to kind of give another thing here for those people who dismiss it immediately as imagination.

I just want to mention that or invite people to keep an open mind about this until they can completely understand imagination themselves,

You know,

Until they know exactly how the imagination works,

All the nuts and bolts,

The ins and outs of it,

And can tell precisely all these little mechanisms of imagination.

What can be spoke to about how to take this,

How to interpret this on all the different levels,

And then also comparisons to other cosmologies?

Okay,

Well,

That's a broad question.

I'll start with,

You know,

How to interpret it.

On the one hand,

It's impossible to really take it absolutely literally.

I mean,

You won't,

Or I like to say you'll never find Mount Sinairo on Google Maps.

It's not possible for us any longer to take this literally.

But also,

I don't like the psychological interpretation.

I think that's dismissive.

And you know,

If there is a correlation between the cosmology and the psychology,

I think it really should be understood the other way around,

That our microcosmic human psyche is a reflection of the greater cosmos,

Rather than the other way around.

I like to interpret it in,

I call it a mythological manner.

It represents a kind of truth that isn't nuts and bolts literal.

But there are deep truths hidden in there.

And there may be ways,

And I mentioned this in the afterword of my book,

That there may be ways if someone's creative to try and incorporate it into a modern understanding of physics,

Because there are so many open holes in our understanding of the universe,

Things like dark matter,

Things like other dimensions,

Which string theory says there's 18,

If there's any validity to string theory.

So I mean,

There is room for it,

But I don't really like going in that direction.

I prefer to take it on its own standing.

I think when we're studying or reading about ancient cosmology,

Whether it's the Buddhist cosmology I've studied and written about,

Or whether it's some other ancient system,

I think to really understand it,

We need to try and put ourselves in the imaginative space of the people who lived at that time and took it seriously,

Instead of sitting on our high perches,

Moderns,

And being judgmental about the past.

This is a very,

Very deep and detailed and well thought out system.

And it's well worth the intellectual effort of trying to understand it in its own terms.

And it begs the question too,

Well,

Where all this come from,

The origins of things like this?

Some people might say,

Well,

They needed to invent this to,

I don't know,

Fulfill certain gaps in their understanding.

But then there's things that line up amongst other different religions and traditions.

Also it reminds me of,

I think it's called Square Land,

A book or like an intellectual exercise where these 2D beings,

Even though they're viewing like a 3D universe,

They could only see it as 2D,

Right?

So then if we project this into higher dimensions,

If we're in like a 3D body and able to partly perceive higher dimensions,

Then maybe what we're seeing,

We're filling in the gaps in a 3D version,

Since we don't maybe have a 4D body,

Or I don't know how to explain this.

The metaphor,

I'm stumbling around in the metaphor,

But I think maybe you know what I mean and maybe how to apply this.

Yeah,

I do.

The book you're referring to is Flatland.

I recall that,

Reading it many years ago.

And that is one of the possibilities that Mount Sinuru might exist in a fourth dimension and we would not know it or see it,

But with no way of knowing that.

And I don't think we need to put too much emphasis on that.

But the more general point that comes from that is that we should have some humility and our perception and our understanding is incomplete.

We only have,

For example,

Our perception of vision,

We see a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum that we call visible light,

But all around us there's many other frequencies that are physically the same,

Except the frequency is different and we just don't perceive that.

And where does it come from?

It wasn't invented all at once,

Like somebody didn't just sit down and invent it.

This is something that's,

The roots of it go way,

Way back in time.

Before the Buddhists,

There were the Vedic religion that had a,

Not identical,

But very similar map of the universe.

We see parallels spread around Eurasia.

There's very strong parallels in Greek mythology and Norse mythology.

These things all come from,

I believe,

From one very ancient root and then they were elaborated in different directions.

Do we want to discuss that ancient root a little bit as far as an origin or is there anything,

Is it just another kind of mythological story or is there anything to speak to that?

Well,

There's a couple of,

I would say two different kinds of aspects to this.

One is the very general,

Which gets even say,

Global.

There are certain features like Nagas,

The great serpent beings,

They're found all over the world.

And also little spirits that live in the forest.

The Native Americans here have more of the little people and in Europe,

They have the elves and pixies and so on.

In the Indian version,

It was Bhumadevas,

Earthly devas.

So there's probably some realities of some kind that are being picked up around the world.

But there's also some very close parallels in the stories in a more limited geographical range,

That I think goes back to the very early peoples that are called the Aryans that spread into India and Persia and Europe.

And the particular level that represents their mythology is the Tawatingsa heaven,

Heaven of the 33.

They're constantly at war with the Asuras,

The demonic beings that live at the bottom of Mount Sinuru.

Very much like the Greek gods were at war with the Titans and the Norse gods were at war with the frost giants.

And you can find a lot of parallels in that level.

I think there was an old mythology about some war between the gods that got spread around from these people that ranged over a huge swath of Europe and Asia in both the second millennium B.

C.

Yes,

These commonalities are definitely very interesting.

And there's been so many different,

For lack of simplification,

Fairy beings,

Type of beings.

And then also the Nagas,

Yes,

The serpent-like beings.

They're time and time again throughout a lot of different cultures.

The other thing here,

As far as the realms and the overlaps and separations between these,

When we talk about realms,

How do they say,

What separates one from the other?

Is it a physical structure or how do we view this?

And then the jhāna correlations too.

Some say that certain jhānas are needed or required to access certain realms.

And then where is the division between these in the crossover?

Are there barriers?

The last thing I'll tack on here with this is,

If I'm getting this right,

Towards the Buddhist Parinibbāna,

He went all the way up through the highest formless all the way back down.

Is that right?

So he went out of jhāna and then went back to fourth jhāna again,

And then there was Parinibbāna?

Yes.

And if this relates to,

And what's your take on that?

Okay,

Well,

There is an equivalency that's established and elaborated in the Abhidhamma texts between states of consciousness and states of being,

That the system of the Brahma worlds can be simplified into the four levels of the Brahma worlds that are equivalent to the four jhānas,

And that the consciousness of the Brahma beings is equivalent to that of a meditator in jhāna.

So one of the ways this is seen is that the first jhāna still has thought formation,

With Taka,

Which are still present,

So there's still thought formation,

And that ceases after first jhāna.

So the first Brahma world is the only one where we have,

In the texts we have stories about the Brahmas interacting,

And we have some named individuals,

We have a more full picture of that realm.

That's because in the higher Brahma worlds they have no thought formation,

So they don't really have speech,

And they don't,

They really don't do anything,

They're just blissed out all the time.

So there's equivalence there between the first jhāna and the first Brahma world,

It's seen as playing out on the level of their consciousness.

This also applies to the destruction of the world at the end of a kapha,

Because there are four levels of destruction.

The most common one is destruction by fire,

And that reaches as high as the first Brahma world,

And the second level of destruction that occurs more rarely is destruction by water,

Which reaches as high as the second Brahma world,

Then there's the destruction by wind that only occurs once every 64 times,

And that reaches as high as the third Brahma world.

And these are related in some ancient texts to the jhāna factors,

That fire is like thought formation,

Because it's consuming and burning and so on,

You can see a parallelism.

Water is related to rapture,

Or piti,

And wind is the breath,

And the breath is supposed to cease at fourth jhāna,

So they made a parallelism from several different angles between the jhānas and the Brahma worlds.

And yes,

You do need to be reborn into a Brahma world,

You need to have some level of mastery of that jhāna.

We'll pick back up on the Buddhist parinirvāṇa if you'd like,

It leads me into these destruction of cycles.

What determines whether it will be ended in fire,

You know,

Water or air as well?

And then just as maybe an example question,

If the cycle is ended by air all the way to the third Brahma realm,

I guess the next births of the beings,

What happens to,

What is said to happen to them during that time period,

Let's just say for an example,

A rare destruction by wind?

Yeah,

Well,

What determines it is a fixed cycle.

There's a cycle that encompasses 64 kappas.

There are seven destructions by fire,

Then one by water,

And this repeats eight times except the very last time wind is replaced by water,

So it's just a fixed mathematical cycle.

And each one also,

We've been speaking about,

Like I would say,

The vertical destruction,

But there's also a broader horizontal destruction with each subsequent kind of destruction.

It takes out more world systems horizontally.

And what happens to the beings,

They're reborn in whatever's left,

Which in the case of the destruction by wind,

The only place left is the fourth Brahma world.

So that becomes overpopulated with all these beings,

And then the force of their karma,

Because they need to be reborn out of that realm,

They end up,

The force of their karma creates the lower levels subsequently,

And they fall down because they don't really have the karmic conditions to remain in that high state.

So they kind of tumble down into the lower realms,

Populate the lower realms,

And a new world is created.

So this cycle is said to be prophesied to end in fire,

Right?

And then where are we on that chain,

In that mathematical chain,

As it's said?

We don't know that.

It's only said that this is a fire cycle,

But we don't know if it's the last one in the series or what.

In any case,

If we were to take a direct understanding of the texts,

Then we're a long,

Long way from the end of the world.

So it's nothing that we need to be immediately concerned about.

These phases of a universe,

If I'm getting this right,

There's a different phase of a universe.

Is it,

Like you're saying,

The beings,

The force of their karma will actually create that?

And is it a parallel to phenomena,

The arising,

The sustaining,

The passing away,

And then maybe a period where there is no existence?

So do you know what I'm talking about here?

Yeah,

Yeah.

There's more.

A world system goes through these four stages,

Kind of four beats of existence,

Beginning with the empty space.

There's nothing.

There's nothingness.

And then from the force of the karma of previous beings,

There's what's called the error of unfolding,

When the new world system comes into being and it's formed.

Then there's the phase of existence,

Where it's kind of more or less stable in existence.

And then there's a phase of destruction.

It doesn't happen all at once.

It's a gradual process,

Destruction of the world system.

There's also cycles within cycles within one world system in the phase of existence.

There are periods of rise and fall of humanity,

That humanity,

Beings in the human level,

They go from a kind of animal-like state to a god-like state and then back again up and down 18 times before the end of the world.

And it's one of the ways this is measured is by lifespan.

At the peak,

Human beings have lifespan that's,

I can't remember exactly the number,

But it's more than 10,

000 years,

Like very,

Very long lifespan.

Then at the bottom,

Their lifespan declines to 10 years and they revert to a kind of animal existence.

Is there any kind of consensus,

Maybe publicly,

About where we might be along those lines?

Yeah,

We're on the downslope.

And there's a tradition,

I think it comes out of Burma,

There's a tradition that the lifespan declines in this period,

The lifespan is declining by one year,

A century.

We see in numerous references in the Pali texts about when they talk about human lifespan,

They always talk about it in terms of being 100 years long.

And nowadays we consider 80 years to be a kind of normal lifespan.

So if that's to be taken literally,

Then this is maybe where they get those numbers.

I would also mention that we see in a lot of ancient sources,

The idea of human beings living very,

Very long lifespans.

See that in the Bible,

We have the early patriarchs living hundreds and hundreds of years.

We see that in the Babylonian king lists and the Egyptian,

The first dynasties of the Egyptians that the modern interpretation generally is that they were legendary,

But they're given lifespans in the hundreds of years as well.

Let's toss in some other signs of the times,

I guess.

Isn't there something where when the Dhamma dies out,

Signs when the Dhamma is supposed to die out,

Some of these,

Isn't it lack of maybe concentration practices or Samatha practices?

I'm sure you know a few of these.

Oh,

I'm not sure,

But I imagine you know a few of these.

I also heard reports now though,

That there's a few monastics in Burma who can recite the entire Pali Canon from memory.

And so I guess we can speak to this.

What I'm most familiar with from the texts in terms of decline of Dhamma is in terms of the Sangha,

That the monastic order will gradually,

Gradually decline and the monks will cease keeping the rules and they'll live like laymen.

And there's one text that says,

At the very end of that process,

The only thing that distinguishes them as monks is that they'll wear a piece of orange cloth,

Like a sash.

But they'll be carrying on with farming and hunting and marrying and just so on.

And then one day they'll say,

What are we wearing this orange cloth for?

They'll totally forgotten what it means and they'll just throw it away.

And that's the final,

Absolute end of the Buddha cycle.

That's another kind of cycle is that the Buddha comes into the world and gives this teaching and establishes a Dhamma and a Sangha.

And that persists for some period of time,

Then it declines and disappears.

And then there's a period when there's no Buddha teaching remembered and then a new Buddha can arise.

So that opens some chicken or egg questions,

Right?

You know,

I imagine there's some people that want to get on with the next Buddha so we can benefit from that.

I don't know.

But then it's just like weighed with,

Well,

You know,

What do we do in the meantime?

You know,

We want the benefit from the previous Buddha's teaching in the meantime.

But I think the obvious thing here is the balance that things are just going to kind of run their course and we do what we can wherever we're at along our birth to benefit from wherever we're at.

I don't know.

It's my statement.

It's kind of vague there.

But maybe you know what I'm getting at here.

I don't,

I don't know.

Yes.

That was while we're living under the dispensation of a Buddha,

Which we are,

We still have the memory of Siddhartha Gautam is existent in the world.

We should,

We should cherish that and try and preserve that and keep it going as long as possible.

Because when that's gone,

It's not like the next Buddha comes right away.

There's a long dark age before the next Buddha appears.

So I told Anagarika Martin at the time,

I would ask about which realms include formless,

I'm sorry,

Spontaneous birth.

All the different ones,

I guess we could just list them here.

And then I guess we can mention maybe the other,

As a technical note,

The other types of birth,

What are moisture born and egg born,

Right?

And then womb born.

There's four kinds of birth that are recognized,

Moisture born,

Egg born,

Womb born,

And spontaneous birth.

Spontaneous birth applies to all the Devas and Brahmas and some of the lower realms,

The hell realms and what it means.

And this can be confusing because some people who might be familiar with pre-modern European biology,

That term was used to refer to how they thought flies arose in rotten meat,

That they were spontaneously kind of developed out of the meat.

But that's not what's meant here.

It's generally mostly the higher realms that the being just appears.

So when a Deva was born into that realm,

They don't go through a childhood and there's no sexual reproduction,

Although in the Deva realms,

There's sex,

There's sexual relations,

It's just for pleasure only.

There's no birth that way.

They just appear fully formed as adults.

And because that it's so non-traumatic and immediate,

They generally retain a memory of their past life,

Their one immediately preceding lifetime.

Whereas as humans,

We go through,

We're in the categorical womb birth that applies to most of the mammals and some of the other beings,

Some of the lowest,

Very lowest level of Devas and other animals that they were also womb born.

It's a very traumatic process,

You know,

Going being slow gestation for nine months and then born as an infant,

Helpless infant.

So we lose our memory of our past life.

Moisture-born is very similar.

That applies to all the creatures that are born out of eggs,

That's most of the rest of the animal world other than mammals,

As well as Nagas and some other beings.

And then the last category is moisture-born,

Which is the same as what the pre-modern Europeans called spontaneous birth.

They didn't understand about creatures like maggots arising from eggs that were laid in rotten meat and other things that they thought that they just were generated somehow by the decay of the substance.

Now science doesn't really understand the moisture-born,

Right,

Either,

Or I mean,

Because Well,

We don't recognize them anymore.

That was like pre-modern Europe,

That was the accepted category,

We no longer,

Because we know now there's microscopic eggs that cause it.

I see.

And so they would be those type of microscopic egg beings that would be considered moisture-born and there's really no other kind of class of beings or Yeah,

It only applies to these kind of very,

Very low level animal beings like maggots.

I see.

Yes.

So what I'm picturing now is like a dried up creek bed and how,

With a heavy rain,

If maybe a little microscopic,

It will then take birth.

But just for technicality here,

What are the hell realms then of the,

Do you remember from memory which categories of the other lower realms include spontaneous birth?

Well they're all pretty much spontaneous birth,

Though,

The hell realms,

Because nobody's really born there,

You're reborn there from being a human or other level that lives very unskillfully and you're reborn in a state of great suffering,

The hell realm.

I wonder if there was ever any time too that there was spontaneous birth in the human realm,

If there's any recorded history of that being a possibility.

No,

The only exceptions are kind of legendary ones and I'm actually not,

I don't think there's any in the Theravada tradition,

But I know in Tibetan Buddhism,

Padmasambhava was supposed to be spontaneously born,

Just appearing on,

His name means the lotus-born one,

He just appeared floating on a lotus in the middle of a lake.

I'm not,

Nothing comes to mind in the Theravada of any kind of similar thing.

Okay,

So the other thing I wanted to ask is about Nama Rupa and the formless realm.

So if Nama Rupa,

Right,

Some people translate it as name and form or materiality,

Mentality,

And so what kind of materiality,

I guess,

Part of it could be in a formless realm and still doesn't the 12 links of dependent origination apply to the formless realms too?

I was wondering about this.

There is no Rupa in the formless realm,

They're also called four aggregate beings,

The rest of the universe are five aggregate beings because we have body and the four mental aggregates,

They don't have body at all,

There's no materiality there at all.

Dependent origination,

The 12 nadanas of dependent origination are meant to be specifically applied to the human experience,

Although they can be generalized to other levels.

So it wouldn't apply directly to formless realms,

They would have to be considerably reinterpreted.

But Nama Rupa doesn't apply there at all,

There's no Rupa.

That's a very clear and easy explanation for that,

Yes.

So now,

Overall,

The structural changes in the realms,

Is there any mention,

I guess,

In the commentaries or anywhere else about how locked in stone these realms are?

Because with the changeable nature of reality,

I would imagine that over the eons and cycles that some of the realm dynamics might change,

Or I don't know,

Separation,

Or maybe even I don't know if a new realm would be added or removed.

What do the texts say,

Any other sources say about the veritability of the change as far as the cosmology goes?

Well,

Other than at the beginning and end of the universe,

You know,

These cycles that we've talked about,

The realms as taken as a whole are pretty stable,

They don't really change much.

We do have for the Tawatingsa realm,

We do have a bit of history for it,

That there was some movement there,

And that's the realm at the top of Mount Siniru,

So it's still fairly,

It's the peak of the earthly existence,

But it's still pretty low in the whole scheme.

Because there was a change of management,

You know,

First of the Asuras lived there,

And then Saka,

Or Inda,

And his 33 companions appeared in that realm and overthrew the Asuras and tossed them down the bottom of the mountain,

And then the Asuras have been trying to get back ever since.

So there is a,

You know,

We do have a bit of sort of dynamic history applied to that realm,

But otherwise,

No,

You can see those being pretty,

I mean,

The personnel changes,

They are not immortal,

They die and then another one arises,

But the realm as a whole doesn't really change during the cycle of existence.

We'll switch now to the Axis,

And a lot of the questions I have were kind of more based on,

I don't know,

Maybe literal interpretations of some of this,

So I don't know how much is going to apply.

But we do have accounts from like Dipa Ma and,

You know,

Anagarika Manindadri,

I can't,

Maybe you can help me with the pronunciation,

How he specifically taught Dipa Ma and others how to access these realms in vision.

We have a lay teacher like Joseph Goldstein being there and hearing accounts of when he would task them,

I guess,

With visiting these realms in vision,

I guess,

And then reporting back on what they see.

So given this,

What's your stance on this?

I guess we can only speak to teaching the laity,

Maybe more advanced practitioners about doing this,

And then how this might differ from if this is involved in the monastic community.

Could instructions be given on this today,

You know,

Why or why not?

How do we view all this,

I mean,

What's the way to approach this?

Things like this.

Well,

Generally,

As a kind of general principle,

In mainline Theravada,

There's a discouragement of seeking out psychic powers,

Because it's kind of a side trip,

It's not leading directly to enlightenment.

There is one of the psychic powers that there's a list in the Vusuyamaga of called the Binyas or psychic powers.

One of them is that can be developed,

You know,

Through mastery of jhana is always the root into these things is called the Dibbacaku,

The divine eye,

Which allows one to perceive the other realms.

There seems to be a general rule in the in the cosmology that beings who exist on a higher level are invisible to beings on a lower level normally,

Because it's said that their bodies are more subtle.

So one way some people understand this is in terms of like a frequency,

And they're existing on it,

They might be in the same space as us,

There might be a Dewa immediately present,

The earth bound Dewa,

But we wouldn't know it if we don't have the Dibbacaku.

There's also some discussion of,

You know,

If someone has a partially developed Dibbacaku,

They don't have the mastery of it,

But it's the first beginnings.

They won't see the Dewa as a form,

But as a glowing ball of light,

Which is kind of interesting because we get a lot of accounts and stories around the world of people seeing glowing orbs.

And then with greater mastery,

The form is solidified and one can interact.

This is a really important point.

I feel that this can be a sidetrack.

I mean,

We look at Devadatta,

Right,

Trying to steal followers and just develop psychic powers for gain.

And so it's pretty clear,

Right,

That this is meant in service to the final goal,

Not to be a distraction if it's developed to be a compliment,

Right?

And so I'm thinking of the Ittipada Vibhanga Sutta and how the Buddha there encourages to develop these.

However,

I would say that might be more in a monastic context.

So I could imagine that,

Yes,

These can be misused,

But I could also imagine that they could be of benefit too in various ways.

And in this context,

There's also another thing I'd like to add is from the Zen tradition.

Hogan,

A very famous medieval Zen master,

In his Rivers and Mountains Sutra,

Which is a very fascinating text,

He puts the whole difference between the different realms down to perception.

That it's just the way we perceive things determines whether we're a dewa or a human or a hell being.

He gives the example of a river.

On the human level,

We see a flowing river of water.

A hell being sees it as molten lava,

And a naga sees it as a kingdom of crystal palaces.

Whatever the underlying actual reality is,

Is kind of a moot point.

Which is fascinating.

That opens up to perception itself.

How should it be,

I guess,

Talked about and investigated and developed,

Or seen through?

Because it seems like perception interweaves itself into through almost everything,

Through practice and things.

And it's a very subtle and profound phenomena.

You've given talks on perception before,

But what makes sense in relevance to this conversation?

Yeah,

I think it's very important for practice to gain some intuitive understanding of perception.

Probably for most people in the world,

Haven't really thought about it or investigated it,

They suffer from naive realism.

They think that what they perceive is what actually is.

Whereas our perception is actually a very sophisticated filtering system.

What we actually experience,

We don't experience the outer world at all.

Only indirectly.

We get signals and limited bandwidth,

Limited range of signals from the eye,

The ear,

The nose,

The tongue,

The body.

And the quality of sanya,

Or perception,

Takes these signals and constructs a simulation of the world.

A mentally constructed simulation that we actually live in.

We can never experience the outer world directly.

So what the outer world actually is,

Is kind of a moot point.

This is where the Buddha says,

For example,

When I talk about loka,

Which is a word that means either world or universe,

It's kind of a broad term.

When I speak about loka,

I mean this fathom long body.

Or in another parallel text,

He says,

When I say loka,

I mean these six senses.

Because that's all we really have.

And our perception is,

It's sophisticated and it's powerful,

But it's not completely accurate.

We can misperceive things because it's trying its best to make construction.

Like the mistaking a rope or a stick for a snake,

Of course.

Even though within our own body,

Perceiving things within our own body,

I'd imagine,

Is subject to various different levels and interpretations and understandings.

Are there accounts of people using the divine eye to go back and investigate some of the occurrences in the suttas that there might be gaps or questions or things left undone?

It makes me wonder how the next Buddha is prophesied to be Maitreya.

And if there's accounts of how that was determined,

Or if anyone has reported on his whereabouts now,

And I'm thinking also of Aniruddha,

The foremost of the divine eye as well.

In the Thai forest tradition,

We have stories of some of the great Ajahns,

Like Ajahn Mun,

Who reports encounters with various beings in different realms.

In the old literature,

In the Jataka stories,

There are accounts of some human beings actually traveling to the Deva realms in the body.

Very interesting account of King Nimi,

Who was decided,

The gods decided,

This king is so virtuous,

We're going to reward him with a stay in heaven with us.

They sent Matali,

The charioteer,

To get him.

He got in the chariot with Matali,

And they headed out,

And on the way,

Matali gave him a tour,

Before going up to heaven,

He gave him a tour of the hell realms,

Which ends up being the bulk of the Jatakas.

This is where we get most of our gruesome descriptions of the hell tortures,

From this and another similar Jataka.

Then Saka is concerned,

Because he's taken so long to get there,

He says,

Where is Matali?

Does he not know that lives of humans are short?

And he sends a message somehow to Matali to hurry up and get up to heaven,

And he goes there,

And he spends a few months in heaven,

Then he goes back to earth,

And from his perception,

He's been gone for less than a year,

But on earth,

Five generations have gone by.

You know,

Make of that what you will.

But there's certainly,

You know,

There's kind of this fluidity of time.

So there are some accounts in the old literature of people visiting these other realms,

And we do have some more modern accounts of various masters and Ajahns having visions or some way of encountering beings from these realms.

Also I think sometimes people can experience these realms in dreams,

Which may be either actual psychic connection to that realm,

Or it could be a memory of having once been there.

This is all very fascinating,

And I remember a talk you gave on dreams,

Too.

I like the saying,

Some of them are wind in the belly,

Too.

I hadn't heard that.

Well,

Ajahn,

Thanks so much for doing this.

There's been a list of people that I wanted to talk to.

If I could talk to anyone,

I'm very grateful to have spent this time and appreciate the vast amount of knowledge and work you've done on this subject,

And just all the benefit you bring through all your other Dhamma talks,

And hopefully one day I'll make it and visit Arrow River,

Let you get back to your day.

Thanks again.