Tag: human life

Dangers of Lower Rebirth

We have discussed in the past that this is the cycle of Samsara. We are born into a certain realm, once our time is up, here comes the death, and then we rinse and repeat. During our karma discussions seems like eons ago, we talked about how the type of karma that ripens at the time of death dictates what life we may come back into. This could be in a number of realms including another human life if we are lucky, or an animal realm, hell realm, and so on. Animal realm, hell realms, and others are what are known as lower rebirths. Meaning, we are taking a step down from our human life.

Why are these other realms known as lower rebirths? There are a number of reasons. The first and foremost is that in these other realms one does not have consciousness. Meaning you are reactive all the time. Take an animal life for example. An animal reacts to its environment and is constantly worried about survival. There is no consciousness in an animal. They are not able to make a decision based on what is right and wrong. Another and more important reason is that the human realm allows us to make progress towards our nirvana, mox, mukti, enlightenment. In another realm, we don’t have that ability. It is said that it is easier for a human being to attain enlightenment than for an animal being to attain a human life. If we understand this, we will hopefully take steps towards avoiding nonvirtuous actions.

Nonvirtuous actions or negative karma are the main reason we end up taking a lower rebirth. More nonvirtuous actions we have committed, the more the chance of them ripening at the time of death resulting in higher chances of lower rebirth. If our heavy negative karma ripens at the time of death, we end up as a hell being in the next life. If the middling negative karma ripens at the time of death, we come back as a ghost being and if the lower negative karma ripens, we end up as an animal.

Just knowing this is not enough. We need to develop a fear of taking a lower rebirth in the animal realm or hell realm and so forth. We have talked about how fear is not a good thing. So I know this is a contradiction but in this case, it is a productive fear if there is such a thing. The fear developed of being taking a lower rebirth allows us to take preventive actions today to avoid taking a lower rebirth. If we stop or say reduce our negative actions, our chances of lower birth reduce. There is no way to completely eliminate our chances of lower rebirth since we have already committed negative actions in the past but we can certainly increase our odds of higher rebirth such as a human being.

So the object of our meditation is this fear of lower rebirth. During our meditation, we will first settle down in our hearts. Once we have found that peace, we will begin to contemplate that when we die, we have no control over where we will end up. Depending upon the karma that ripens at death we will take lower rebirth. If our heavy negative karma ripens, we will end up as a hell being. If our middling negative karma ripens, we will end up as a ghost being and if our lower negative karma ripens, we will end up as animal beings. It is very easy to commit heavy negative karma. Just by squatting a mosquito out of anger, we can end up in hell. We have committed countless negative karma over the years. Any one of these karma has the potential to ripen at our death. Ask yourself, if we die today, where will we take the next rebirth.

Once you contemplate this, hopefully, you have developed a strong fear of lower rebirth. This fear is our object of meditation. We hold this fear single-pointedly as long as we can.

This Precious Human Life

Today let’s talk about a topic one of the most basic concepts in all of spirituality. Our precious human life. Someone asked Buddha how precious is this human life. He had an interesting answer. He said imagine there is a blind turtle in the vast ocean. We all know how deep and cast the ocean is. Now in this ocean, there is a golden ring floating around. Our blind turtle is swimming deep in the ocean. What the chances of this blind turtle coming out and get his head in the golden ring when he comes on the surface? Think about it. There must be billions to one or some crazy odds like that for it to happen.

There are theories as to how rare human life is and one theory is that we get a human life once in a hundred thousand years on average. Does not mean one cannot have back-to-back human lives but in general, it is as rare as once in a hundred thousand years.

So now that we know that how rare an occasion this is let’s look at what makes it so special and what to do with it. A human being has an opportunity to work towards the liberation and even enlightenment. An animal does not have that opportunity because they are not capable of learning and practicing Dharma. Only human beings have the opportunity to engage in spirituality which leads to lasting happiness. This is what makes human life precious.

Another way to look at this is to realize that there are more than 7 billion human beings on this planet. Every one of us gets one life and that’s all. No matter who you are – rich, poor, powerful, layman, religious authority, nonreligious person – it does not matter. Each person gets one shot at this life. You are no different than Jeff Bezos in that sense. Steve Jobs tried everything in his power including a liver transplant but in the end, he could not buy more time. You can buy many cars, houses, all kinds of material things but you cannot buy another life. So once this human life is over, it would be very difficult to find another human life so that makes it a rare occurrence.

Now that we understand how rare and precious opportunity we have, we must make the most of it. It means we use this human life to advance our spiritual practice. Get one step closer to liberation and even enlightenment. This makes life very meaningful.

Nearly 150,000 people die on a daily basis in this world (maybe a little more during COVID). To quote His Holiness Dalai Lama:

“Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I’m not going to waste it, I’m going to use all my energies to develop myself. To expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, I’m going to have kind thoughts toward others, I’m not going to get angry, or think badly about others, I’m going to benefit others as much as I can.”

Sadhguru tells his followers to put an alarm every hour when they are awake and when the alarm goes off, just say I am still alive.

Can you imagine how it will affect our daily lives and decision-making process? I am sure once we start appreciating our human life, we will stop wasting a lot of time. We will begin to let go of little things and focus on what matters.