5）The Realm of Hungry Ghosts 餓鬼

Ghosts can be divided into three kinds: poor ones, less wealthy ones, and wealthy ones. Some ghosts have a flaming mouth, some have a mouth as small as a needle head, some with a mouth with foul smells, hair as sharp as needles, hair with foul smells, or a neck goiter. Some feed on food bestowed unto them, and some on discarded food. There are also ghosts with power and so on. Ghosts are subjected to constant suffering of thirst and hunger.

6）The Realm of Hell 地獄

This is the realm with the greatest suffer-ing. Some of its denizens are burning in the fiercest fire in the Eight Hot Hells, some are being tormented by bone-chilling coldness in the Eight Cold Hells, some are suffering in the Solitary Hell, while some are won-dering about at the edges of hell and experi-encing all kinds of suffering in being home-less roamers.

Amongst these six realms of rebirth, hu-man beings (which are us) and animals are the two realms that we can see and touch, while others such as those of heaven, asuras, hell and hungry ghosts are intangible to us. While we can say that asuras reside in the heaven above and hungry ghosts in hell, we still need to ask ourselves, where is heaven and hell

Heaven is above while hell is below us. While this is true, it is reasonable to say that heaven and hell also exist within the human world. Wouldn we say that people who enjoy a happy life are like heavenly beings, while the poultry that are hung in the mar-kets depict a scene in hell

Nevertheless, the true place of existences for these six realms is in fact our minds.（完）







1.Eight Hot Hells 八熱地獄

2. Eight Cold Hells 八寒地獄

3.Solitary Hell 孤獨地獄