HEAVEN
By Buddhadasa Bhikkhu
Lecture at Suan Mokkhabalarama, Chaiya
Translated by Roderick Bucknell
"Heaven" in everyday language
means some wonderful, highly attractive, celestial realm up above. Spend
a certain amount of money in merit making and you're entitled to one
mansion in heaven, where there are angels by the hundreds. In Dhamma
language, however, "heaven" refers first of all to infatuating sensual
bliss of the highest order. This is the lower heaven, the heaven of
sensuality. Higher up is the heaven called the Brahmaloka, where there
are no objects of sensuality. It is a state of mental well-being that
results from the absence of any disturbing sensual object. It is as if a
certain person with a hunger for sense objects had indulged himself
until becoming thoroughly fed up with all sense objects. Then he would
want only to remain quite empty, still, untouched. This is the state of
freedom from sensuality, the condition of the Brahma gods in the
Brahmaloka. The ordinary heavens are full up with sensuality, the
highest of them, the Paranimmitavasavatti heaven, being completely full
of sensuality. The heavens of the Brahmaloka, however, are devoid of
disturbance from sensuality, though the "self", the "I" still persists.
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