This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Conflict and Wisdom; Realms (1 of 5) Hell Realm. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.
Dharmette: Realms (1 of 5) Hell Realm; Guided Meditation: Conflict and Wisdom - Kim Allen
The following talk was given by Kim Allen at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on March 03, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Introduction
Good morning, folks. We'll start in just a few minutes. I see you coming in. Good to see some familiar names there. Let's go ahead. Welcome to you as you're joining.
I want to say a bit about what we'll explore this week. Gil has been talking about love for many weeks now. One aspect of love, metta1, or care is that it conditions the mind in many good ways. The mind becomes softer and kinder, and it also becomes more flexible and less rigid. It's more likely to give another person the benefit of the doubt or to see the goodness in another person when we have love in the heart. We might say then that love creates an environment or even a world that is beautiful. We can still live in this ordinary world with all of its various conditions, but with love, our heart is oriented in a way that is peaceful, caring, and beneficial overall. Maybe you've seen that in your own experience through engaging with love in these past weeks or even months now.
The premise for this week's teachings is that the mind state that we're in projects or creates a world. Just as love creates a certain world, fear also creates a scary world. Anger creates a world that is offensive or threatening. Desire creates a world where it's as if we're looking through rose-colored lenses. We see certain aspects of our environment when we are under the influence of, or living in the world of, various emotions or mind states. There are, of course, many worlds that we could and do create.
The good thing regarding practice is that we have some choice about these worlds, which ones we create at all, or at least whether or not we enter them and live in them if we're mindful and aware. We don't want to live in some of the worlds that our mind creates, and we do want to live in some of them.
The frame for this week is a Buddhist teaching called the realms of existence. There are five of them, and it talks about five different worlds that our mind can project and then live in. Some of them have a lot of suffering, some of them have a lot of pleasure, and some of them can incline toward freedom. We'll be exploring mind states in general and the mental worlds that they create.
Today we're going to start with the realm that has the most suffering, the most dukkha2, and that is the realm of anger, opposition, and conflict, which is also called the hell realm. That's a dramatic name, I understand, but I needed to name it up front because in the sit we're going to explore the movement of mind that is about opposition, not liking, conflict, and aversion, and we'll notice how it can be met in a healthy way.
So that's the introduction, and let's see how that unfolds this week.
Guided Meditation: Conflict and Wisdom
Let's sit now. Let's sit together. Finding a posture for meditation. Closing the eyes. Bringing the attention inward and sensing that you're in the sitting posture or whatever posture you're in. Maybe you're lying down or something else, feeling the body in that posture.
Sensing the points where you're sitting. The thing that you're sitting on, your bottom against the chair or the cushion. Your legs or feet might be against the floor or resting on the chair, or you might be lying on something. Just feeling that contact, that support. Feeling the stability of what you're sitting on and allowing yourself to be supported.
Softening into the body. Softening the eyes, the eye sockets, and the face. Down through the shoulders, down the arms to the hands, and then through the torso area. Softening the heart area, the chest, muscles of the upper back. Down into the belly, hip joints, down through the legs, all the way to the feet. Just inviting ease, because it helps us to be present and helps us to have some gentleness in the mind. If we start with gentleness toward the body—and if the body is uncomfortable today, that's okay, too. We can still have mental ease about how the body is. It's doing the best it can.
To help orient the mind, invite a simple connection to the breath, breathing in and out, or to the body sensations. A simple present moment object. Just knowing that in a relaxed, simple way.
Noticing how the mind is in terms of energy. Is the mind somewhat tired right now? Dull, fatigued? Or is there perhaps busyness or agitation, thinking? Or is the mind feeling fairly balanced and present? Anything is fine, but we just want to invite the smoothing out of the energy. Sometimes simply knowing that the mind is a little bit dull helps us to be present even with dullness, if that's what's happening. The same with agitation.
Now the invitation, with whatever degree of mindfulness we have, is to notice movements of mind that are about being displeased with something that's happening in experience. It might be something that's happening now, like pain in the body. We're irritated that our back is hurting yet again. Or maybe we're irritated that the mind is so busy trying to be peaceful, but our mind is not doing what we want. Or we might be having a thought that is about displeasure with something else. I'm irritated with my neighbor right now, some family member, or a certain situation in the world.
Notice this feeling of opposition or irritation. Maybe it's strong, maybe it's anger. Please stay connected also to the breath or the body in the present. We're not entering the world created by that displeasure, but feeling what it feels like to have that in the mind. It might take a little practice to find that balance. If you're not feeling any opposition, that's fine. Just stay with the object.
It helps to soften the mind and the body. Noticing any tensions that may be created and then softening them in order to continue to be present. Does mindfulness give us some degree of choice about how we see and relate to this mind state? Even if the mind wants to be in conflict with something, could we at least not be in conflict with that?
If at any time it feels like it's been enough of this kind of investigation, just returning to the present moment as we do at other times in meditation. Softening out. Feeling the breath coming in, going out. Perhaps touching into the skills in love that you've developed over the last few weeks. Love is also a good way to meet states of mind that are irritated and peaceful. It's okay. It's another thing we can tell the mind: it's okay. We're just sitting here. Softening back into present moment experience, the flow of the mind and body.
If the mind is feeling settled and happy, that's fine. But if we notice ways in which it is in conflict with what's going on—either something in the present moment that is irritating to it, or thoughts about things that are elsewhere that it feels unhappy with, unsatisfied, oppositional to—if it feels right, we can notice the world that is being invited by that mind state. Is that a world I want to live in?
Another approach to this kind of mind state is to ask wisdom questions gently. Not in a long, proliferative kind of way. For example, we can ask: What am I trying to oppose here? It helps to get clarity. The second one is: Do I have to oppose it? This helps us know where the choice is. Do I really have to oppose it? Then an open question that doesn't really need an answer that we pose is: Is opposing even called for? Is conflict even called for here? And then just allowing the mind to rest again. Perhaps the breath, the body.
As we move toward the end of this sitting, perhaps take a moment to reflect. Sensing in the body maybe some of the different energies that were felt during this sit. How different it feels to have an oppositional or a conflictive mind compared to having either a peaceful or happy mind, if we found those states, or even just a mind that's mindful of having some irritation present. How different it is to live in the world of a certain mind state than it is to know that that is happening and choose not to enter that world even if it's being invited by the mind.
And then taking the extra and important step of wishing for a world that has more peace, less conflict. May it be that, starting with myself, people can see alternatives to falling into that world. Perhaps we can imagine going through our day with that value of not acting in the realm of anger, irritation, or opposition, but instead bringing awareness, care, love, and peace to whatever degree we're able. We live in a shared world as well as the individual worlds that are projected by our mind. There is the shared world. We want to offer the best of the human heart that we have to offer.
Dharmette: Realms (1 of 5) Hell Realm
I said a little bit before the sit, but to recap, the teaching this week is called the realms of existence. It's a teaching given in Buddhism, and this is about mental worlds that get projected by various mind states or moods or emotional tones that are active at a given time in our mind. The realms of existence are somewhat Buddhist cosmology and also Buddhist psychology. They're mental realms. The point of this teaching is that we're invited to explore and experience each of these realms and understand how our mind participates in them. How do these different worlds work, essentially?
In Theravadan teachings, there are five different realms. So that'll be our focus these days this week. Later, a sixth realm was added. If you see this teaching in some of the later traditions, you'll see that there are six realms, but we're just going to talk about the five, and I think you'll see that that's plenty. I'll name them now. The five realms are the hell realms, the hungry ghosts, the animals, the humans, and the devas3 or the gods.
We're going to do them a little bit out of that order for emphasis. If you want to take them literally, I think you could. I mentioned that these are Buddhist cosmology. They are said to have to do with how one gets reborn; one cycles through these different realms. But even in this lifetime, there are certainly mental realms that we project, create, and live in at various times. We want to explore how they work, how to avoid falling mindlessly into these worlds, and how to escape from being held in their orbit as they're being created through our mind. We'll also see that for each of the realms—even the ones that have a lot of dukkha2—there is potential in them for waking up, even for finding beautiful states of mind. If we're aware of them being created and projected, and the choice that we have around it, we can discover some very beautiful things in the heart. There's a lot of interesting teachings that can emerge out of this.
It is important to see that we're not just judging these worlds. We're not saying, "This realm is unskillful. Don't do it. Eliminate it from the mind." That's not actually the teaching. This is a teaching about understanding each of these realms. Remember that the task for dukkha2 is to be understood. We need to be able to experience the energies of each of these worlds, how they have a certain shape in the mind, how it contracts the body in certain ways, and then its transformative potential. This is not about deciding that the hell realm is always the wrong place to be and we should, as quickly as possible, get somewhere else. Let's experience it. Let's really see what it's about, and then let the heart figure out its escape.
The hell realm is where we're starting today. I realize this is a huge contrast from the world of love that you've maybe been occupying for the last few months, and maybe that's a little bit helpful to see a big contrast like that. We know that this is possible in our heart also.
The hell realm—or realms, actually, because there's a number of them described in Buddhism—is really characterized by conflict, dominance, and anger. We know this feeling. We're just against a person or a situation. When we're in this realm, there is no room in the mind for listening, for caring, for flexibility. It is a world that is actually very restrictive and frankly very painful.
Let me point us to ourselves also. In this teaching on the realms of existence, we're not starting to think about examples of other people who are in these realms. We could think about that, but the invitation in the teaching is to notice how we do this in our own heart sometimes. How is it that we create a world of conflict and opposition, and then we suffer from that if we live in it? How is it that our own heart can fall into a hell state sometimes?
If you like cosmological teachings, there are the hot hells—hot anger, flaring up at people—and the cold hells—freezing people out through icy silence or hard eyes. When the mind creates, enters, and lives in a world like this—any of the worlds, but this one in particular—it colors what we see, even what we see in the whole world around us. A mind with anger sees conflict in almost anything that is happening. It can change anything into a judgment, a condemnation, a reason to be offended. That's the world that gets projected by a mind that is caught up in anger or conflict.
I remember one time I read an email and something about it made my mind react by getting angry. I was so irritated with the person, what they had written, what assumptions they were making, etc. Fortunately, I didn't respond right away to that email. I noticed that there was dukkha2 in that anger, luckily, and I decided to wait. But I kept thinking about how irritating that person was. That was the mind state I was in. Fortunately, I slept on it and decided I would write back in the morning. When I went to my email in the morning, again somewhat fortunately, I decided that I would reread their email before letting them have my response. I was so amazed that the tone seemed completely different from the day before. When I read it again, it actually didn't sound that offensive. It was actually pretty reasonable.
I sat there kind of flabbergasted. Why was I so angry about this email? Looking back, probably my mind was in a somewhat aversive or oppositional state when I first read the email, and I just didn't notice that. It projected all this opposition, and it created a whole world around this other person's words that was just a projected world from my own mind. Aversion sees a world of conflict, and it creates more aversion and conflict. That's what it does. I'm really glad that I waited and that my mind state changed in the interim, and so then I saw it differently.
The Buddha used the image of a charcoal pit filled with glowing coals as an image for the hell realm. He imagined a person being dragged toward the pit. He said that when a person is in the world of anger and living in it, it's as if they are being dragged right toward that pit, and that's where they're going to end up. That's the destination of anger. It points toward how our own unchecked anger can drag us into a nasty mind state that eats away at us before it has any impact on others. It's harming us. And of course, if we do speak or act and impact others, it's not going to be in a beneficial way.
So hell is pretty hellish, right? I know that these are graphic images and powerful words, and it's meant to cover a range. It doesn't have to be an extreme version like that. But the invitation is to notice how even shadows of these states, or milder versions of these states, might be lurking in our mind and heart. I didn't notice a mild version of the hell realm in my own mind, and then it ended up creating a world that I stepped into for a number of hours about how I thought that person had written something really offensive and made a bunch of assumptions that they shouldn't have made, and it wasn't really true. It's important that we observe the dynamics of these realms operating in our life, including the hell realm, our tendency to oppose and fight things.
How do we practice with that? To effectively work with each of these realms, we have to develop a certain strength of attention. We have to have enough strength of attention or mindfulness that allows us to stay with that mind state, watch it project its realm, and then be able to choose not to enter it. We'll see this is true for each of the cases this week.
Andrea Fella, another IMC teacher, tells a story about how early in her practice she got into practice because of being in a particularly angry mind state about something that happened in her life that was disruptive, and she was angry about it for a long time. She wasn't a practitioner yet, and a friend helped her out and gave her a book about practice so that she could work with this anger. She began to practice and develop mindfulness. Even pretty early on in the development of her mindfulness, she had a particular moment that was pivotal in her life where once again the anger came up in her mind. But she had been practicing, and she had a moment where her mindfulness was stronger than the anger. She watched it arise, and she felt that it was like a train that she could get on, a train that she had gotten on so many times and she knew where it went because she'd done it. She had a moment where she said, "I'm not going to get on that train." She just looked at that anger and it faded.
Wow. She said that was the moment when she was sold on Dharma practice. Now that doesn't mean that the anger never came up again or that she never fell into it again, but having that first moment where she saw that world arise before her eyes and knew that she didn't have to step into it—that was huge. That's the practice of these realms: to notice when the mind is throwing something up in front of us, giving us a choice. "Why don't you step into this world? You could live in here. You could be that self. You could have that life." And deciding, "No, that's not the one I want. I'm not going to go into that one."
Cultivating mindfulness is, of course, the main approach for working with all of these realms. But it's also possible to work in a way that has counter realms, if you will. If we cultivate other wholesome qualities that counteract anger and conflict, that is also a good way to strengthen the mind into not falling into these worlds. So metta1, love—what you've been talking about with Gil for the last few weeks—is very important to develop. We can develop patience, we can develop compassion, even joy, ethics, restraint of the mind. All of these can help give our heart some choice about whether or not we enter certain realms. We don't want to enter the hell realm if we can avoid it.
We have a lot more to talk about. Maybe I'll just say one last thing, which is that we have to be careful not to disown the hell realm, saying, "I don't do that. I'm a spiritual person. I don't have that kind of thing." Then it's the realm of suppression. We're suppressing it and it will go underground and still rule us in some way. So it is important to acknowledge when these things are coming and then be stronger than it in order to let it dismantle itself. We have to practice with that. We'll say more about this dismantling process, but you've seen examples of it in this talk.
And then there is a hidden potential in looking at the hell realms, and that of course is peace. Not the peace of collapse or giving up or giving in. Not the peace of ignoring where there are real differences or challenges. Not the peace of ignoring pain that's going on. But the genuine peace of knowing that conflict can't suck us in, knowing that conflict is not the right choice. This is wise peace, if you will. We strengthen that quality in ourselves when we're able to acknowledge the hell realm, acknowledge the angers, acknowledge the conflict that our heart wants to project. Then we learn simultaneously about its wise contrast of peace, of care, of non-conflict.
Maybe that's good for now, and we'll have another realm tomorrow and talk more about this teaching. Thank you. I hope you'll stick through the journey. It's an interesting one. Be well.