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MANY LIVES AND MANY HEAVENS Salvation Versus Liberation, The Limitations of the Paradise Worlds

Salvation Versus Liberation, The Limitations of the Paradise Worlds

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The Bhairava in spite of having a fierce side that can deal with evil and injustice is essentially a bodhisattva and a spiritual guide who is dedicated to helping suffering beings. His approach to paradises is a Mahayana Buddhist one. He therefore does not recommend that individuals seek paradises following death because such places tend to halt learning and creativity, and do not provide opportunities to help the suffering.

From a Buddhist perspective, there are many gods and many paradises and we will generalize about them rather than talking about a specific heaven or a specific deity. The Bhairava describes the attributes of the paradise worlds by answering questions.

Many Buddhists question what becomes of a person's Karma when he or she enters a heaven world. In western terms, the question is more correctly stated: "Is it true that all sin is forgiven when an individual is admitted to a paradise?" The Bhairava answers as follows:

Many paradise worlds revolve around deities who are powerful enough to create the world and are therefore also powerful enough to manipulate the karma of the souls who enter that world. Many paradises are made with a sort of coat closet at the entrance - a place to check your karma until you leave. The karma has not disappeared - it is just waiting in the coat closet. It is returned when the person or being leaves the paradise.

This approach emphasizes that there is not really a "forgiveness of sins" when the individual enters the paradise as much as there is a suspension of karma where retribution is delayed perhaps for a very long time.

To the question, "Why not enter a paradise rather than seek Buddhist Nirvana?" the Bhairava responds:

In a paradise, the individual is a kind of slave to the deity. Many of the deities are quite nice, but there is no tolerance for rebellion. If you do not worship the deity, you are out. Some gods are notorious about requiring constant worship, and they are very sensitive about any concern for or loyalty to other gods.

The Buddhist paradises are more tolerant, but the individual is still expected to behave in a certain way. He or she should be meditating, or planning how to become a Bodhisattva. The individual in such a paradise can focus on mercy or emptiness but not on passion or creativity. Being in a paradise means you cannot even think about such things, or your karma will be thrown around your neck like iron chains, and you will be reborn.

Paradises are very good places to meditate and pray. However, they have limited options for creativity. These paradises already exist, and are decorated and furnished. They do not need creativity and change. And there are limited options for helping the suffering. Beings who suffer usually have karma too heavy to even consider paradises. If you are in a paradise, you cannot help them. You are too busy pleasing the deity or pleasing yourself. As Bhairavas, we value helping suffering beings, and we work in the worlds of form and formlessness.

People in paradises take the easy way out. They could be struggling and striving for enlightenment, and instead choose a feathered nest without responsibility or maturity. For the sake of temporary happiness, they renounce knowledge and freedom. They then have no choice but happiness. Their growth is stunted like a child who will never leave his mother's lap, no matter how old he gets.

From a certain perspective, the individual carries his karma like a knapsack full of stones. Most are heavy and dirty, but some are like bright jewels. These two classes of stones represent bad and good karma respectively.

Though the individual lays the bag at the coat check room in the paradise, some paradises require an entrance fee. It may be your total love and devotion, and it may be a renunciation of spiritual maturity. In some cases, the individual must offer those jewels of light - the light of his or her past kindness and good deeds. They are taken away as the individual enters, and if the individual should turn his or her back on the god, he will be left with nothing [i.e. no good karma]. It is like a woman giving up her dowry in marriage - she will have nothing to turn to if the marriage does not work out.

Liberation is not easy, but it is the birthright of every person. Frittering away time in the heaven worlds may be enjoyable, but it is a form of spiritual gluttony. You are fulfilling your own desires and those of a powerful and often egotistical deity, but what are you doing to help the universe?

Paradises are places for the weak and traumatized, who need shelter and cannot take life's intellectual challenges. This is why paradise deities emphasize love [as opposed to knowledge]. Only those who cannot go forward will choose to stay back forever. And paradises fulfill a valid need - the world is full of people seeking shelter.

The Bhairava because he focuses on wisdom has a somewhat harsh view of the paradise worlds. He views Buddhism as a path towards spiritual maturity rather than towards happiness as an end in itself.

The Bhairava's approach to paradises is generally consistent with the Buddhist worldview though many Buddhists believe that the individual who enters a paradise will eventually run out of good karma and be forced to reincarnate. The Bhairava takes the approach that individuals can stay in the paradises for eons, and may never be forced to reincarnate. Paradises can be virtually eternal for those that live according to the rules of the paradise world. However, any place where staying is contingent upon certain attitudes and actions which could cease is not truly eternal since at least theoretically, access to that paradise could end at any point in time.

It is clear that certain Buddhist paradises such as Amida's paradise offer more freedom of choice than some other paradises. They allow the person to choose from a variety of options for their future rather than requiring surrender where "the will of God" will determine what happens to a person in the paradise. But the bhairava still seems to prefer making the effort to go directly to enlightment rather than stopping along the way to rest and refresh oneself in a paradise. Also certain Buddhist paradises can be used as a platform for advanced meditation where one can enter nirvana from within the paradise possibly with the aid of the presiding Buddha of the paradise. This option would make the paradise an especially attractive one from the Bhairava's point of view.

A common notion is that good karma is basically a kind of currency. Being in a paradise is like living in a luxury hotel where because it is expensive to stay there, the guests will eventually run out of money, and need to reincarnate (leave the paradise) when they become destitute. However, a different approach to paradises is that once the individual enters one, there developes a self-sustaining system where the individual gives devotion and service to the deity or to those who reside in the paradise and the deity gives grace in return so the individual may remain in the paradise. Here, we have a kind of perpetual motion machine which does not require good karma to sustain it. A certain amount of good karma is required to enter the paradise but not necessarily to stay there.

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