The Six Realms of Rebirth in Buddhism

Classical Buddhist cosmology, set out most fully in Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakosha around the 4th or 5th century CE, pictures each world system around a vast central mountain, Mount Meru. Around Meru lie rings of mountains and oceans, and in the outer ocean four continents. Humans live on the southern continent, Jambudvipa, often identified with India and the known world. The sun and moon circle the mountain’s slopes.

Above and below this disc the universe is arranged in levels. The heavens of the lower gods sit on Meru itself: the Four Great Kings on its slopes and the Heaven of the Thirty-Three on its summit, ruled by Shakra, the Buddhist form of Indra. Further heavens float in the sky above. All these, together with the human, animal, ghost and hell realms, make up the desire realm, the world of beings driven by the senses. Above it lie the form realm, with heavens of subtle bodies reached through meditation, and the formless realm of pure consciousness. Beneath Jambudvipa lie the hells.

Different schools counted the heavens differently, and many Buddhists, ancient and modern, read this cosmology as a map of states of mind as much as of places. The six realms of rebirth sit within this larger picture.

Buddhism inherited from its Indian setting the idea that beings are reborn according to their actions, but explained it in its own way. There is no unchanging soul that travels from body to body. Instead, a continuous stream of consciousness, shaped by intentional actions, or karmakarma Action and its consequences. Good and bad deeds shape a person’s future, in this life and in lives to come. Glossary, gives rise to a new life when the old one ends. Ignorance, craving and aversion keep this process going.

Early discourses speak of five destinations of rebirth: hell beings, animals, hungry ghosts, humans and gods. Many later traditions, especially in the Mahayana, count six by adding the asuras, jealous demigods at war with the gods. The heavens bring long lives of pleasure, but when merit runs out the gods fall. The asuras are powerful but consumed by envy. Animals suffer from fear and instinct. Hungry ghosts, the pretas, are tormented by a hunger they cannot satisfy. Hell beings endure intense suffering in hot and cold hells, the deepest of which is called Avici.

No realm is permanent. Even an aeon in the deepest hell ends, and even the highest heaven is left behind. For this reason Buddhist texts praise human birth as the best opportunity: humans know enough suffering to seek a way out and have enough freedom to follow it. The layers shown here follow the traditional order from the formless heavens down to the hells.

Traditions differ on what happens between lives. Theravada teaching, followed in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, holds that rebirth follows at once. Other schools, including many in India and especially in Tibet, describe an intermediate state that may last up to forty-nine days.

The goal of the Buddhist path is not a better rebirth but nirvananirvana Literally “blowing out”: the end of craving and suffering, and release from rebirth, in Buddhism. Glossary, a word that means “blowing out”, as a flame goes out when its fuel is gone. Buddhist teaching insists that nirvana is not a place within the cosmos, not even the highest heaven. It is the end of craving, of suffering and of rebirth. The Buddha generally declined to describe it in positive terms, and later traditions have discussed its nature at length.

Mahayana Buddhism also speaks of Pure Lands, realms created by the vows of Buddhas such as Amitabha, known in Japan as Amida. Rebirth in Amitabha’s western Pure Land, Sukhavati, is a central hope for millions of East Asian Buddhists. These Pure Lands are not counted among the six realms: they are understood as ideal places for reaching awakening, not as rewards within samsara.

Buddhist traditions also teach that the living can help the dead. Merit made through generosity, chanting and offerings to monks can be dedicated to a dead relative to support a better rebirth. In Theravada countries families invite monks to chant and receive food in the days after a death; in East Asia memorial services are held on each seventh day up to the forty-ninth; and offerings for hungry ghosts are made at festivals and in daily rites.

Many teachers add that the six realms can also be read as states of mind experienced in this life. Moments of pride and pleasure resemble the heavens, jealousy the asura realm, dull instinct the animal realm, insatiable craving the realm of hungry ghosts, and rage or despair the hells. Read this way, the realms describe the human condition as much as what happens after death, and the path to nirvana begins with seeing them clearly.

The most famous picture of the six realms is the wheel of life, or bhavacakra. A Buddhist story collection, the Divyavadana, tells that the Buddha ordered a wheel to be painted in a monastery gateway to teach visitors, and a fragmentary example survives at Ajanta in India. The image became a fixture at the entrances of Tibetan monasteries.

The wheel is held in the jaws and claws of a fearsome figure, usually identified as Yama, lord of death, or as impermanence itself. At its hub a pig, a cockerel and a snake stand for ignorance, greed and hatred. Around them, beings rise towards higher births or sink towards lower ones. The main ring shows the six realms, often with a Buddha in each, teaching. The outer rim depicts the twelve links of dependent origination, the chain of causes that keeps beings bound. Outside the wheel a Buddha points to the moon or to a symbol of liberation, the way out.

The realms inspired art across Asia, from Chinese and Japanese paintings of the hells to the hungry-ghost offerings of the Ghost Festival and Obon. In Japan, the monk Genshin’s Ojoyoshu of 985 paired terrifying descriptions of the hells with the bliss of the Pure Land. Whether read literally or as a map of the mind, the six realms remain one of the most widely known pictures of rebirth in the world.