The 31 planes of existence

“Bhūmi” has two meanings

The Abhidhamma uses “plane” in two senses. The first is the “plane of existence”, the place where beings dwell — the 31 planes of this lesson. The second is the “plane of consciousness”, the level of the mind, of which there are four as in Lesson 3: sense-sphere, fine-material, immaterial and supramundane.

The two are related but not the same. A human, living in a sense-sphere plane, can have fine-material consciousness while in jhāna. The 31 planes can also be grouped into three worlds: the sense world, 11 (4 woeful + 7 happy), the form world, 16, and the formless world, 4.

A map of the 31 planes

Arranged from the subtlest at the top down to the woeful planes at the bottom.

The four woeful planes

“Apāya” means “without progress”: planes of great suffering where it is hard to do good. Following the commentaries, teachers often relate each plane to a predominant unwholesome root:

• Niraya (hell) — the most painful plane, often associated with intense hatred.
• Petti-visaya (ghosts) — beings tormented by insatiable hunger and thirst, often associated with greed and stinginess.
• Tiracchāna (animals) — living by instinct, hardly able to tell right from wrong, often associated with delusion.
• Asura-kāya — beings of suffering and fear (the asuras of this woeful plane are different from the asuras who are enemies of the Tāvatiṃsa devas).
• No plane is eternal, not even hell. When the kamma that led there is exhausted, the being passes away and is reborn elsewhere.

The human plane: the best place to practise

The human plane has a balanced mix of happiness and suffering: enough suffering to see the danger in the round of existence, and enough happiness to have the time and heart to do good. Every Buddha awakens in the human plane.

In the Chiggaḷa Sutta the Buddha says: suppose someone threw a yoke with a single hole into the ocean, and a blind turtle came up to the surface once every hundred years. The turtle would sooner put its neck through the hole of that yoke than a being in the woeful planes would regain a human birth.

The six heavens

The sense-sphere heavens are the homes of devas. They still involve sense pleasures, but more refined than human ones; the higher the heaven, the subtler the pleasures and the longer the life. The Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha says the Cātumahārājika devas live 500 celestial years, one day of theirs equalling 50 human years, and in each higher heaven both the life-span and the length of the day double.

• Cātumahārājika — the heaven of the Four Great Kings, guardians of the four directions.
• Tāvatiṃsa — ruled by Sakka; where the Buddha taught the Abhidhamma to his mother (Lesson 1).
• Yāma — devas free from hardship.
• Tusita — the heaven of the contented, where the Bodhisatta dwells before coming down to awaken.
• Nimmānarati — devas who delight in what they themselves create.
• Paranimmitavasavatti — devas who enjoy what others create for them; the highest heaven of the sense sphere.

The 16 fine-material Brahmā planes

Fine-material Brahmās are born through the form jhānas: they are free of sense pleasures but still have a subtle body. The planes are divided by level of jhāna, and the strength of the jhāna (weak, medium, strong) determines the sub-plane. Brahmā life-spans are measured in “aeons” (kappa): Mahābrahmā lives one aeon, and Akaniṭṭha, the highest, 16,000 aeons.

• Asaññasatta (non-percipient beings) — born through jhāna developed with disgust for perception; matter only, with no consciousness at all for the whole life-span.
• Suddhāvāsa (the Pure Abodes), 5 — “abodes of the pure”, where only non-returners are born. Non-returners attain arahantship there and never return to the sense sphere.

The four immaterial Brahmā planes

Formless Brahmās are born through the formless jhānas. They are mind only — consciousness and mental factors — with no matter at all, and their life-spans are vast: from 20,000 aeons up to 84,000 aeons in the plane of neither-perception-nor-non-perception.

In the Pāsarāsi Sutta, after his awakening, the Buddha thought of Āḷāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta, the teachers who had taught him the formless attainments, intending to teach them the Dhamma. But both had already died and been reborn in the formless planes, so they had no chance to hear it. They reached the highest worldly state, yet missed the way to Nibbāna.

Which kamma leads to which plane

A summary of the fourfold kamma by plane of ripening, from Lesson 11.

Plane of existence and plane of consciousness

The plane of existence determines which levels of consciousness can arise. Beings in the woeful planes can have only sense-sphere consciousness, while humans and devas can have every level. Fine-material Brahmās lack some kinds of consciousness, such as smelling, tasting, touching and hatred, and formless Brahmās lack all consciousness that depends on matter.

Planes in daily life, and common misunderstandings

Besides their meaning in the texts, many teachers use the planes as a tool for examining the mind: a mind burning with anger is like hell; a mind wanting endlessly is like a hungry ghost. This view supplements, but does not replace, the teaching on planes of existence found in the texts.

• “Reaching heaven or the Brahmā world is the highest goal.” — No. Every plane has birth and death; when merit runs out, beings pass away. The goal is Nibbāna.
• “Hell is a punishment from some authority.” — No. It is the result of one's own kamma. In the Devadūta Sutta, King Yama tells the wrongdoer that the deed was done by him alone — not by mother, father or anyone else.
• “Once born as a deva, you're happy for ever.” — No. Devas suffer too when their life nears its end, and too much pleasure easily leads to heedlessness.
• “Being born human is nothing special.” — The blind turtle simile shows that human birth is an extremely rare opportunity, worth using well.