Bringing the Five Realms of Existence Onto the Path

Date: 2025-10-02 Thursday

For this Thursday, Oct. 2 sit we’ll be exploring the five realms of existence, as laid out in Theravada Buddhist cosmology, and what these may mean to your practice lives.

The five realms are the human, animal, deva, hungry ghost and hell realms. We can take these five as truths or as metaphors, but in either case they’re useful as tools or understandings on the path.

To be sure, these are closely tied to the idea of rebirth, which the Buddha very much taught, but which is much harder for most Westerners to digest. Let’s explore this idea of rebirth a bit together, tied to these five realms, and see what range of understanding may emerge for each of us.

Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.