White Buffalo Calf Woman Podcast Transcripts

The god realm is the opposite to the hell realm that we looked at last week. This realm is the most difficult to take rebirth in, whereas hell is the easiest. That is because we have a tendency to be self grasping and do negative actions to benefit ourselves, rather than doing things to benefit others. Society today glorifies selfish, greedy people and ways of living, which exacerbates these tendencies and makes it impossible to take rebirth in a god realm. We need a massive amount of positive karma to be able to be born in a higher realm. This means we have to spend most of, if not all of our time benefiting others, instead of always trying to fulfill our own desires. We need to engage in virtuous actions such as giving, having patience, wishing others to be happy and so forth. The more time we spend helping others the better our chances of being born in the god realm in the future will be. There are three levels of the god realm, which are desire, form and formless. Desire lev...

We want to avoid taking rebirth in one of the lower realms in the future. The suffering in the animal, hungry ghost and hell realms is far worse than what we endure in this human life. We also have no chance to make spiritual progress in those rebirths, as our suffering will be too great to bear. Negative karma causes us to take rebirth in the animal realm, heavier negative karma will cause us to end up in the hungry ghost realm and the heaviest negative karma we engage in will cause us to be born in hell. It is very easy for us to gain negative karma in this very lifetime. Simply squatting a mosquito in anger can create the cause to be reborn in hell. In this life and all our previous lives we have done many bad actions. We know this is true because of the difficulties we go through in our lives now. We need to do our best to change our impulses to behave badly, so we do not give ourselves even more negative karma. We can meditate to make our mind familiar with the danger of doing...

There seems to be some strange trend that people refuse to believe a place like hell exists. Some people think this is a fear based teaching devised by unscrupulous religions. Some are therefore in denial about it, wanting to keep their heads in the clouds and pretending that life is perfectly happy and nothing ever goes wrong. Strange way to think, because they are usually devastated when anything really bad happens in their life, betrayed by their pollyannish thinking. I am not teaching these things to try to put fear into you, rather I am teaching these because I love you and do not want you to suffer. A hell realm would be the worst rebirth filled with suffering with no relief, that you could take. I want to help prevent you from ever going there, again. Yes, again. The idea that you have one life, and at the end of it you either go to heaven or hell and spend eternity there is wrong. First of all eternity is forever, so that is impossible because you have this life now and you...

We have been learning about the different realms within Samsara and in the last podcast we learned about the dangers of the animal realm and why we don't want to take rebirth there. Today we are going to learn about the hungry ghost realm. This realm is considered to be even lower than the animal realm because it is fraught with even more suffering. The hungry ghost realm is seen as the second lowest floor within the prison of Samsara. You are probably wondering what a hungry ghost is. They are spirit entities that are starving and thirsty. They have families, like we do. They can have husbands and wives and children, but all of them are starving and unable to quench their thirst. It is extremely difficult for them to find any food or water at all. They have long lives filled with suffering. Their stomachs are bloated from hunger and they have very long, thin necks which make it very troublesome to swallow even the tiniest amount of food or water if they are lucky enough to fin...

We learned in the last podcast that the animal realm is the first basement level within the prison of Samsara. This is the realm where all the animals and insects dwell. Whether they are flying in the air, surviving on the surface, even underground or living in the water, all the animals and insects are found in the animal realm. The animal realm is considered one of the lower rebirths. You may be wondering why it is considered a lower realm and pictured below ground especially since there are animals all around us in this life. Surely if we are on the ground level or main floor of the prison and they are here with us, then they cannot be below us. Well, the prison with the six floors is only an image to help you picture the realms to better understand them. The animal realm is considered a lower rebirth because animals do not have the mental capacity that we enjoy as humans. They lack the ability to understand spiritual concepts and to make spiritual progress. An animal cannot ded...

You need to have an understanding of past lives for this podcast to make sense, so you may wish to go listen to my podcast on that topic if you are struggling with that concept. We were not humans in every past life we have ever had. We have been a variety of beings, every life form that exists multiple times over. We did not even live on this planet in every past life. We lived in different realms, in different worlds. So what is Samsara? Samsara is the cycle of uncontrolled rebirth. It can be seen as a prison for our minds. We are trapped here in Samsara as long as we remain ignorant of the truth and do nothing to work towards escaping this prison. Now the thing is we have always been stuck in this cycle, but we will all get out. Some of us will get out sooner than others. Many have already escaped. The ones that have escaped are called Buddhas. There are countless Buddhas. This gives us hope that one day we will escape, too and become a fully enlightened Buddha. Until that time ...

If you have learned and understand that past lives exist, then it is only logical that you will live again in new lives in the future. The question is, have you done anything to prepare for any of them? Most people spend this one brief life that they currently have trying to fulfill all of their desires in a vain attempt for perfection. It will never happen because they are trying to get everything outside of themselves perfect in order to finally be satisfied. It is impossible to get everything in life perfect. No one has a perfect life, so just about everyone is wasting their time and efforts to get rich, or famous or whatever it is they think they need to finally be happy. They are blind to reality and are ignorant of the truth. This is only one life out of countless numbers of lives we have had and we will experience. Throughout most of our lives, we have spent our time trying for this outer perfection that cannot be achieved. We only focus on the life we are currently livin...