The gods
This is a world of light and colour. Its beautiful inhabitants are endowed with the highest graces.
Whatever they wish for simply appears: they have no need to work.
Sweet sounds fill the air and everything sparkles with a scintillating
luminosity.
The word deva, which is usually translated as 'god',
derives from a root meaning 'to shine'. The gods are the
'shining ones', radiant beings who live lives of unblemished happiness.
There are gods on earth, people to whom everything comes effortlessly
and who enjoy highly refined states of mind. Some artists seem to
live like this, and we can all think of people who seem somehow to
be particularly favoured in their lives. They are good-looking, though
not necessarily in the conventional sense, and there is something
about them that just shines out. Everyone enjoys their company and
they are always good to be with. Light-hearted and carefree, people
like this have an aura of brightness about them that affects everyone
with whom they come into contact.
In all likelihood, we ourselves have some experience of this world.
Perhaps we remember times when we consistently enjoyed clearer, brighter,
and more carefree mental states, or perhaps moments when we were absorbed
in the appreciation of great works of art. Touching the fringes of
the penetrating, refined consciousness of their creators, perhaps
we entered - for a while - into their world.
The 'human' god-realm also contains those beings who, through their
own spiritual efforts, have made substantial spiritual progress. They
shine from within with a happiness that comes from spiritual practice.
Having, through their transcendental insight, broken the fetters of
habit, of a certain vagueness that always keeps all options open,
and of superficiality, such beings live lives dedicated to spiritual
practice - both for themselves and for others. According to the
Pali tradition, such beings will be reborn on the Wheel no more than
seven times.
There are also gods who are not in any sense human. Above our human
world, according to the scriptural tradition, there exist plane after
plane of increasingly refined states of being, all occupied by different
kinds of gods. The first six of these levels, since the beings in
them are still subject to subtle forms of sense
desire, belong to the Wheel of Life.
Each god is embodied within a subtle physical form that is not perceivable
by the usual human senses. Beautiful and noble, they experience continuous
sense pleasure and satisfaction. The higher the realm, the more refined
its pleasures. Each of the god worlds is traditionally shown as a
kind of royal court, presided over by the chief god of that realm.
Here, the gods pass their time at ease, fully absorbed in the enjoyment
of beauty.
Because these gods inhabit the world of sense desire, they are able,
to some extent at least, to interact with the human world. They like
to visit places of natural beauty and are attracted to people who
are happy and positive. They are particularly attracted to people
who are practising spiritually, especially the spiritually developed,
over whom they are sometimes said to cast a beneficial influence.
All the gods, however, are impermanent. Their lives are immeasurably
long, and the higher the realm the longer the life, but like all other
living beings the gods will die. This happens when the karma
that made them gods in the first place is exhausted. None of the gods
made the world and none of them presides over it indefinitely. In
the Brahmajala Sutta of the Pali Digha-Nikaya
the Buddha treats with gentle irony the notion of a creator
god. There is a being who thinks he is the creator of all,
the Buddha tells us, but he is deluded. He just happened to appear
in his realm, through the force of previous karma, before any other
beings. And when they in turn appear there, through the force of their
past karma, he believes that he made them - and so do they.
Rather than being the centre of a god-made universe, the god realm
for Buddhism is that world we inhabit as a result of previous skilful
acts of body, speech, and mind. Skilful acts have positive consequences.
Traditionally speaking, all our skilful acts create a stock of 'merit'
which in time comes to fruition as a positive consequence. Gods are
gods because they have accrued a great deal of merit.
The merit we generate through skilful acts may, if we have not previously
created too much countervailing demerit, give rise in this life to
greater ease and pleasure, or we may experience it in future heavenly
rebirths. But however and wherever we experience the fruits of our
skilful actions, the enjoyment and the pleasure they bring is always
accompanied by the danger of intoxication. Living
a life of unalloyed sensory delight, the gods are prone to forget
themselves and they also lose sight of others. The existence they
now enjoy is the result of their past mindfulness and ethical striving.
Unless they continue to make an effort to preserve their awareness
and to generate further positive karma through skilful acts, they
will gradually sink to lower and lower levels of being. Eventually,
it is sometimes said, intensely anguished at the loss of their former
pleasures, such gods take rebirth in the hells.
As we make spiritual progress through our own efforts, we will naturally
come to experience more and more pleasure as well as greater ease
and confidence. Under such circumstances it is easy to forget that
the fruits of the spiritual life are only ever the results of striving.
Complacency easily sets in, and when it does we slowly begin to fall.
The realm of the gods is a place of great danger for spiritual aspirants.
For that reason, the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara
appears in the world of the gods as a white Buddha, playing the melody
of impermanence upon a lute. Only in this beautiful
form can the message of universal impermanence come home to the intoxicated
gods.
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