Aniduan:
I understand your difficulty. Belief is a big thing to do because what if you are fooling yourself by believing, and others are fooling you? There are so many of them. Which one, if any, is based on truth, even if in part?
My view is that precisely because of ‘the mundane and boring lives that we go through’, the sense of poetic justice, of the rule of right over wrong and that everything ‘falls into order’IN THE LONG RUN in the most perfect way possible demands that Existence must of necessity have the workings in place for all that to come about,whether we are aware of it or not. To me personally, it cannot be otherwise. Since coming across Buddhadhamma I see that that corresponds there in one sense to Atta.
The 31 realms give the opportunity or place for all that to transpire. Of course, for a materialist with the mentality that this short life is all there is so ‘make the best of it and enjoy’, all that is a dreamer’s dream. But I am not urging you to believe, not even Buddhadhamma. Go a bit into it and see for yourself:
-‘If I know someone who has developed the powers to see these worlds then I can believe it. But I don’t know anyone like that.’- :
One is claimed to have SEEN Reality in its totality around 2,500 years ago. After about 500 years of oral tradition, the Teaching was put into writing. The doubt arises whether what was written was what the Buddha had actually said, and for that one will have to go into it deeper to see whether IT ALL MAKES SENSE. Because Reality MUST make sense. If I am ‘guilty’ of one belief, that would be it, but, again, ‘make sense’ in the long run, seeing that it does NOT make sense that a being’s life spans just 80 years or so in all eternity and on one planet among an infinite number of them in all infinity.
The one realm of the 31 I had difficulty with was that of the niraya, and then again, not so much the existence of niraya per se but the conditions there, the sheer intensity and duration of the suffering there, both of which I saw as grossly disproportionate to the causes that lead there. Lal later gave the reason for that as well.
Tho only advice I feel confident to give is to keep reading about these 31 realms and see what your mind will come to make of it as time goes by. Of course, you can never force your mind to accept anything, and you should not try either.
y not