Tag: enlightenment

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.

Left Brain / Right Brain

I recently read a quote that goes “Enlightenment is not about learning but it is all about unlearning”. I thought that is such a profound statement. So today, let’s try and figure out what it is that we need to unlearn to develop lasting inner peace.

My brother and I had this discussion a few years ago. We both agreed that “Bhola Ne Bhagwan Jaldi Male”. Loosely translated, simple people get to Nirvana faster. There is a lot of truth in this. If you think about it, all we are saying when someone is simple is that they are right-brain dominated. They tend to have an artistic streak but more importantly, they focus on life’s little pleasures. They are at peace with themselves most of the time. They are not out there trying to prove anything to anyone. When you are happy, inner peace naturally comes to you.

So how do we get to a point where a lot of people in the Western world lost their ability to connect with their right brain? I have a theory. I believe that from an early age, we put so much emphasis on left-brain activities for children. Our linguistics controls are in our left brain. So does the ability to do Math. The area that keeps us organized is right in the center of our left brain and of course, the logic that we put so much emphasis on also is on the left side of the brain. As a result, we as a society have put undue emphasis on the dominance of the left brain.

What we learn to be successful in daily life actually gets in the way of our inner happiness. We learn about how to be “clever”, how to out-negotiate someone, how to push buttons to get our ways, and so on. All of these things give us some degree of material success and allow us to make “progress”. However, all of these skills increase our inner chatter. This inner chatter keeps us on the toe and keeps us always on the go. Which in turn prevents us from reaching true lasting happiness.

All of us have this potential for lasting inner peace. However, these so-called life skills are like layers of dust on the nugget of happiness. The dust layers are so thick that we don’t even know what the nugget looks like anymore. This is what the quote means when we talk about enlightenment is about unlearning.

So how do we remove this dirt from our inherently peaceful nature you ask? Well, the first thing to do is recognize. Once you realize that we need to unlearn some of these, it is then a matter of getting to work in a step-by-step fashion. We can begin with keeping an eye out for our inner chatter. Our mind keeps going all the time thinking of all kinds of things. It plays and replays things that happened in the past. It makes up stories about what may happen in the future. I recently read the book “My Stroke of Insight” by Dr. Jill Taylor. This is an interesting story. Dr. Taylor is a neuroanatomist. I didn’t know the word until I read the book quite frankly. Essentially, she studies brain-behavior for a living. At the age of 37, she had a devastating stroke. He left-brain hemorrhaged and as a result, she could not read, write, speak, hear, see for a long time. It took her eight years to recover believe it or not. In her book, Dr. Taylor says something interesting. She says our inner chatter has very little basis in fact. It makes up all the stories based on the previous history that is most convenient at the time.

My question to you is if our inner chatter is all made up, why are we listening to it anyway. Do me a favor, keep an eye out for where your inner chatter takes you for the next day or so. You will realize that it mostly wants to take you on a ride that is not useful anyway. So when you do catch yourself with this inner chat, bring yourself back. Just think about a happy incident that happened recently. Or, listen to music or start doing some arts and crafts. Point is, bring yourself to the present moment. Every week, when we meditate we talk about how the present moment is peaceful and how that allows us to have the next peaceful moment and so on. So if we are aware of our inner chat, it will allow us to bring ourselves back to the present moment. I hope this makes sense and we all start paying attention to the right side of our brain just a little more than we have been.