Which one of the six worldly realms could be waiting for you as the place of your next rebirth?
It depends on what predominant emotion you have been programming into your mind’s karmic software.
Is it a negative emotion such as (1) hatred, (2) greed, (3) ignorance, (4) desire, (5) jealousy, and (6) pride?
Or is it a positive emotion such as (1) kindness, (2) generosity, (3) knowledge of right and wrong, (4) contentment, (5) joy, and (6) humility?
The habitual emotional pattern that you have programmed in your mind will react in the form of rebirth in the corresponding birthplace of the six realms or the pure lands.
According to many texts, karmas imprinted predominantly with the emotion of hatred and expressed through violent physical and vocal actions will lead to the suffering of burning and freezing, and they will also react in the form of rebirth in the hell realm.
In the first chapter of Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth, Tulku Thondup speaks of the four parts of an action that are necessary in forming a fully constituted karma:
(1) The object (or basis)
(2) The intention
(3) The execution.
(4) The completion.
In the example of the karma of hatred, the presence of a person or thing that you hate is the object. Having the motivation of hating the object is the intention. The mental act of hating the person is the execution. Experiencing the feeling of hatred is the completion.
Whatever action you are executing, if that action has all four elements, it becomes a fully constituted karma, which will unavoidably result in future consequences.
There are many people who appear to be born angry and afflicted with the feeling of hatred toward almost everyone. Then whatever they say or do becomes an outburst of that anger, which stirs up suffering and violence in their own lives and in the lives of all who are associated with them.
If that is the nature of your present life—whether you admit it or not—you will have no peace and joy in your life, only the experience of pain, fear, and misery.
Although you are now in a human body, living in the human realm, your experience will be just as hellish as if you were a hell-being in the lower realms. You might be acting as if you are strong, brave, and heroic, but in reality, this façade is merely a device to cover up your insecure, vulnerable, and injured ego.
As soon as you die, because of the mental habits of hatred that you have harboured throughout your life, your mental experiences and phenomenal appearances will arise in your consciousness as the hell realm.
In reality, no powerful judge will be condemning or punishing you—it will all be mere reactions of the karmic patterns engraved in your mindstream by your own afflicting emotions.
In the delog accounts of the bardo that were summarised in chapter 5 of Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth, there are some very vivid and frightening examples of the sufferings of hell.
Here we must remind ourselves that all the sights, sounds, and feelings of the bardo and the various realms are nothing but reflections of the experiencer’s own mental complexities, like appearances in a dream.
They are the mere symptoms of the positive and negative emotions that one has programmed into the mindstream by grasping at “self,” perceiving the objects as real.
Shantideva says:
All the fears and inconceivable sufferings
Came from the mind.
Thus taught the One Who Saw the Truth [Buddha].
Who specifically manufactured the instruments of the hell realms?
Who constructed all those burning iron grounds?
Where did those flames come from?
“All of them are [mere reflections of] your unvirtuous mind,”
The Buddha has said.
As in the case of hatred, karmic patterns engraved predominantly by the other afflicting emotions, expressed through vocal and physical actions, are the cause of corresponding sufferings and rebirth in other lower realms.
In summary:
(1) The emotion of hatred or anger causes the sufferings of burning and freezing, and rebirth in the hell realms.
(2) The emotion of greed or miserliness causes the sufferings of hunger and thirst, and rebirth in the hungry ghost realm.
(3) The emotion of ignorance or confusion causes the sufferings of dullness and fear, and rebirth in the animal realm.
(4) The emotion of desire or attachment causes the sufferings of birth, old age, sickness, and death, and rebirth in the human realm.
(5) The emotion of jealousy causes the sufferings of war and fighting, and rebirth in the realm of the demigods.
(6) The emotion of arrogance or pride causes the sufferings of distractions and fear of dying, and rebirth in the realm of the gods.
Higher degrees of attachment, jealousy, and arrogance become greed. Thus, the six afflicting emotions can be condensed into three poisonous emotions—hatred, greed, and ignorance—which cause suffering and rebirth in the three inferior realms. As Nagarjuna writes:
Greed leads you to the hungry ghost realm.
Hatred leads you to the hell realm.
Ignorance mostly leads you to the animal realm.
It is not only the character of the emotion alone, but its degree that will determine the cause of rebirth in a particular realm. According to Gampopa, whatever negative deed you have committed:
(1) If you have committed the misdeed with hatred, if you have repeated it numerous times, and if you have committed it against a highly sacred object or individual, then the consequence of that karma will be rebirth in the hell realm.
(2) If you have committed the misdeed with greed, have repeated it many times, and have committed it against an average sacred object or individual, then the consequence will be rebirth in the hungry ghost realm.
(3) If you have committed the misdeed with ignorance, repeated it only a few times, and have committed it against a lesser sacred object or individual, it will cause your rebirth in the animal realm.
The gravity of the karmic consequences also depends on whether you have put your afflicting emotions into action by expressing them in unvirtuous words and deeds; especially:
(1) how much these unvirtuous expressions of yours have hurt others; and (2) whether they have caused other people in turn to commit unvirtuous deeds.
Among numerous karmic consequences, which one will you reap first?
First, you will experience the result of the karma that is most intense among them all.
That will be followed by the karma created at the time of death.
So whatever you do at the time of death will make a great impact on the next steps of your future life.
After that you will face the result of the karma in which you are most experienced, and lastly the one committed most recently.
Since karmic causation is rooted in your mind, the good news is that you can avoid the experience of negative rebirths, such as the hell realm, if you change the habitual patterns of your mind.
Source: Taken from the following book — Thondup, Tulku. Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth: A Tibetan Buddhist Guidebook. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, 2005.
Which one of the six worldly realms could be waiting for you as the place of your next rebirth?
It depends on what predominant emotion you have been programming into your mind’s karmic software.
Is it a negative emotion such as (1) hatred, (2) greed, (3) ignorance, (4) desire, (5) jealousy, and (6) pride?
Or, is it a positive emotion such as (1) kindness, (2) generosity, (3) knowledge of right and wrong, (4) contentment, (5) joy, and (6) humility?
The habitual emotional pattern that you have programmed in your mind will react in the form of rebirth in the corresponding birthplace of the six realms or the pure lands.
(Tulku Thondup, Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth)