An Open World
October 30, 2023
The Rains Retreat ended this morning at dawn. And in Thailand, today is the day they call Taak Baat Thewo or, in Pali, Devorohana. The story goes—and this is a story that comes from after the Canon—that the Buddha spent an entire Rains up in one of the heavens teaching his mother who had passed away when he was only a few days old and now was a deva up there. He spent the whole Rains Retreat teaching his mother. Then, after the Rains Retreat, he came down a jeweled stairway escorted by devas and brahmas.
People who had been deprived of the opportunity to make merit with the Buddha, to put food in his bowl during the Rains, learned that that was where he was coming to a place called Sankassa. So as he came down the stairway, people thronged around. He started his alms round, and the crowd was so great that people started taking their rice and wrapping it up in leaves, like the rice wrapped in leaves we had this morning, and threw it at him to get in his bowl. It’s not a very inspiring sight, but apparently it landed safely in his bowl. So ever since then, there’s been this tradition that this is the day that people come and make merit.
A special feature of that day was that, as the Buddha was coming down that stairway, the world opened up. This is why it’s called devorohana—orohana means opening, and the devas inspired it. The world opened up so that everybody on all the different levels of the cosmos could see one another. The punishments in hell stopped for just a moment. The devas up in heaven could see the hells. The hell beings could see the devas. Human beings could see the devas and the hell beings and all the other levels of beings there were.
You can imagine the impact that would have on people. We hear about rebirth, we hear about the different levels of the cosmos, but as long as we haven’t had evidence of our own, there’s going to always be an element of doubt about these things. So you can imagine what it would be like if the Earth opened up, and you could see the levels of hell, the skies opened up, and you could see all the different levels of heaven, how people would behave differently. They would take their actions a lot more seriously, realizing that their actions have consequences. You can’t just kill somebody and get away with it.
Some people figure out that they’re powerful enough that they can lie, they can steal, they can cheat, they can kill all kinds of beings and get away with it somehow. But if they could see that, no, nobody gets away with things like that—even the most powerful people can’t get away with things like that—people would behave themselves a lot better.
This is why the Buddha said that even though he couldn’t prove to people that there were other levels of being, it would be for their own benefit to take that on as a working hypothesis. He didn’t use the word working hypothesis, but he said basically have conviction in this principle. Give it a try, realizing that if you believe in these things, you’re going to behave a lot better. You become a better person.
Years back, I commented to a person who was in one of those clubs where people get together to discuss how they would live their life if they had only one more year. They get together and discuss what’s important in their lives, what’s not important in their lives, and how to make more room for what’s really important. I said, how about getting together to see how they would live one year if the really believed in rebirth and karma. How would that change their behavior?
The following year after that, I met this person again, and he said, “When you said that last year, I really resisted it. So I looked into my resistance, and I realized that if I believed in rebirth and believed in karma, I’d have to behave a lot better. I’d have to become a better person.” Which is one of the reasons why the Buddha taught these things. We become better people if we take our actions seriously.
So think of the world being opened up so that you could see all the levels of being, and then act in line with the insight that you would gain that way. That way you can take this story and get some use from it.
Now, it is a story. As I said doesn’t come from the Canon—it comes from later, but there is some evidence that it was believed in the time of King Asoka. The spot where the Buddha supposedly came down in Sankassa has an Asokan pillar to commemorate the event. But even though the story comes later, we can take it and get some use out of it, thinking about if the world were to open up and you could see all the levels of being, how would that change your behavior? How would that change your life? If you feel that would make a change for the better, okay, do that change for the better. That’s how we benefit from stories like this.