Theravada Buddhist Community of Vancouver

Is there a heaven and a hell? Are there several heavens and hells? I’ve always been intrigued by the variety of views on these things and by the experiences of the great spiritual masters of old. Most people of any philosophy or religion have similar ideas about how to be a good person, how to behave in a moral way. But people have very different ideas about how we fit into the big picture. What is man’s place in the universe? in the cosmos? I was a Buddhist monk in Thailand four years ago and when I returned my first talk in Canada was given to 300 Muslims at a mosque in Delta who invited teachers from various religions to describe man’s physical, spiritual and moral place in the universe. I explained to them that I have adopted a Theravadin Buddhist world view of the cosmology of the unseen realms.

After years of study I have discovered that official Buddhist traditions have very different beliefs about what is above us. Here we will explore Buddhist cosmology and we shall see that different Buddhist centres right here in the Vancouver area live in different universes. What do we have to hold on to? One thing that most Buddhists agree upon is that the Buddha taught that there are six realms of existence: human, god realm, jealous god realm, animal, hungry ghost and hell. This is samsara.

The ultimate thing in the Buddhist cosmos is nirvana- enlightened mind. The purpose of the path to enlightenment is to leave behind these six realms of suffering, this wheel of life and attain nirvana, which is the highest bliss that ends all suffering. This state of mind, depicted as the transcendent space beyond the six realms is even higher than “heaven.” The Buddhist god realm is similar to the Christian concept of heaven- where life for angels- called devas, is exquisitely blissful with only marginal suffering. As a rule these heavenly angels are not enlightened; they still have their own confusion. Some are very high spirits while others are as ordinary as Forrest Gump, people who have died and gone to heaven (the god realm). After this point, Buddhist traditions part company over the details of the rest of the higher realms.

According to the more orthodox Theravadin (meaning: “of the elders”) tradition of Thailand, Burma and Sri Lanka, in about 3000 pages of discourses the Buddha described in great detail the levels of heaven- full of devas. In about every third discourse the Buddha refers to these beings. In my Theravadin classes at the Vancouver School Board I teach “Buddhists chant to devas and want to develop a relationship with them because devas can bring us benefits and they want to help the human world as well as work through us to create their own projects on the earth. Since many devas were humans they have compassion for the people they left behind and they can respond so it is on that basis that we do have a relationship with them. We also dedicate our merit to them to try to help them on their path to enlightenment.”

The Oriental Buddhist temples around Vancouver are almost entirely from the Pure Land tradition of Mahayana- which is the largest lineage of Buddhists. I taught at the Pure Land temple in Richmond where, instead of meditating the patrons would come in and bow and chant with devotion to Amitabha Buddha, whom they believe to be an enlightened celestial Buddha of infinite light that will save them at death. I founded the meditation classes there but they had to help find some new space for my class because even though it was the largest temple in Canada they did not practice meditation, except for the nuns. In their cosmology the Mahayana Buddhists (the northern tradition) have something new which the Theravadins don’t, plus they also have enlightened bodhisattvas. “Bodhi” means “awake” and “sattva” means “being” and these are a class of celestial beings believed to be fully enlightened, unlike the devas. Oriental “worshippers” pray for blessings to the female bodhisattva of compassion Quan Yin. In Tibetan Buddhism this same deity is male. At the Dalai Lama’s local Vancouver Centre, Zuru Ling on East 1st, Tibetan monk Zasep Rinpoche teaches that the Tibetan people believe that the enlightened bodhisattva of compassion is incarnate in human form as the Dalai Lama, although he explains that the Dalai Lama does not make this claim.

A twist of institutional one-upmanship can be seen when the Mahayanists explain why the Thai temple or the Sri Lankan temple in Surrey don’t have those deities- the celestial Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. They suggest that the southern tradition somehow did not receive the “higher teachings” of the Buddha, and that chanting to an unenlightened deva is not as good, safe and effective as chanting to a fully enlightened deity. The problem with this approach is the evidence of history which points out that such enlightened deities do not exist. British Professor Edward Conze and other scholars have clearly shown how the teachings of the Buddha were changed by cultural forces, which is natural to ancient religions. Chapter 21 “Changing Buddha’s Words” in “Freeing the Buddha” describes how Buddhist cosmology got mixed together with Zoroastrianism around 150 AD to produce Pure Land Buddhism which is the most dominate form of Buddhism in China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam. This occurred when the Kushana empire bordered on Iran and India. Many Iranians who worshipped the sun god religion mixed together with the Buddhists along the silk route which brought this new tradition into China. These Iranians decided to change their devotion from the sun god and instead worship a Buddha of infinite light and everlasting length of life- this is the meaning of Amitabha Buddha. This charade invented by people about six centuries after the Buddha is a big shock in Buddhist history. For 1900 years about one billion Oriental Buddhists have been worshipping a celestial Buddha which has never existed- it’s just a concept that came from another religion- Zoroastrianism. Indeed, Pure Land Buddhism is a mix of religions because such great emphasis is placed upon theistic devotion for this external saviour, which is exactly the kind of belief that the Buddha came to renounce.

In the Vancouver area, all of the Oriental temples are Pure Land- the Vietnamese temple on East 1st Ave. near Commercial, the Japanese temples on Jackson St. and in Steveston, and the large Chinese temples on Broadway and in Richmond. At the IBS temple on the Steveston Hwy. in Richmond where I taught in 1997, the centre statue represents the Buddha. On the left is a statue Amitabha Buddha and on the right is the Medicine Buddha- another celestial Buddha. Further on the right is of a statue of the very popular bodhisattva of Compassion- Quan Yin which stands 20 feet high and is beautifully hand carved of wood with one thousand arms which represents extending a helping hand to a thousand suffering beings. “The historical Buddha taught nothing of this,” according to Venerable Dhammika, my kalyanamitra (spiritual friend) whose is a monk at the Sri Lankan temple in Surrey. Chinese temples are the most noticeable forms of Buddhism in the city but their cosmological beliefs are the furthest away from Western Buddhists who are generally drawn by meditation and the need to go within to solve their suffering.

Zen Buddhism began and flourished around 500 AD in China largely as a reaction against Pure Land and overly elaborate rituals which took people away from meditation. In Zen meditation practice the emphasis is on direct experience and not believing in anything that you can’t test for yourself. Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh is the inspiration behind the Mindfulness Practice Centre of Vancouver (MPC), located at 2050 W. 12th Avenue. Jeanie Seward Magee, from the MPC, says that Thich Nhat Hanh teaches “The Pure Land is here right now”. In other words, we can have heaven on earth in this moment. Peace in our hearts is possible, it can be here right. We do not have to believe in devas or deities. We have everything we need with our next breath, or foot step, to be fully alive and in touch with life.”

Rev. Eshin at the Zen Centre of Vancouver on Brant St. echoes this same lack of belief in higher realm devas. Kristin Penn at the Karuna Zen Society also spoke in terms of this life now and did not acknowledge the existence of beings in other realms. Kristin said “in this life we experience the heaven realms of joy, the jealous god realm of envy, the angry hell realm of fighting and the animal realm of not knowing.” This seems reasonable but one wonders if Zen has thrown out the devas with the deity bath water.

It is inspiring to discover that there are about forty different Buddhist groups in the Lower Mainland of Vancouver, probably as many as in any other city in North America. If you’re interested in Buddhism you are truly blessed with opportunities here. The largest English speaking Buddhist community in B.C. is the Shambhala Centre at Heather St. and 17th Ave. in Vancouver. This is where I first became a Buddhist in 1991. As a Tibetan Buddhist Centre they also teach the existence of both devas and celestial deities, however the Tibetan tradition does not have the theism of Oriental Buddhism. The devas and deities represent qualities that do not exist apart from your own mind and they practice meditation and contemplative techniques to tune into those benefits. John Fox, a senior teacher at the Shambhala Centre explains “It is important to bring these heady cosmological views down to earth in terms of how we experience the daylight or the moonlight, how we experience a flower. Distinct from Buddhism, we provide the Shambhala teachings from Tibet” John said, “and we learn how these energies called dralas are self existing and we can tune into them. There are subtle and skillful methods to work with this natural energy and the Shambhala teachings enable a practitioner to relate to this experience in a down to earth way and life must be down to earth.”

This lightly covers the highest cosmologies of all the major Buddhist traditions. Which one is right if any? You are free to decide. I was once a Tibetan Buddhist but switched in 1994 to being a Theravadin Buddhist over this issue. Because the Theravadin record of what the Buddha taught is considered far more accurate than the northern tradition which has been changed, I don’t accept enlightened deities but I do acknowledge the devas and the six realms of existence. Even just one universe is big enough for us all.

Brian Ruhe