What’s It Like to Be Me Right Now?

IN THE BUDDHIST COSMOLOGY there are six realms. One is entirely inhabited by angry gods. They like to break things, and they are perpetually at war. Another realm contains ghosts, who are always hungry but have tiny throats and can barely eat and are never satisfied. At the level below the ghosts there are demons, whose lives are tormented by fire, water, ice, shame, their own attempts to ease themselves. The other three realms are separately populated by their own creatures, too. There are gods, who move like sleepwalkers through bliss, happy in their fashion but unconscious in their