How Do the Sublime States of Heavenly Beings Come About?

With shallow meditative concentration (samādhi), the body may exhibit some phenomena of swelling and expansion; this is a phenomenon that arises when the manas's grasping at the body is lightened, a reaction of the heartbeat stepping out of the human realm and slightly resonating with the devas of the desire realm. As long as one abandons the realms of the human world and lightens one's attachments to the five desires of the human realm, the realms of the devas will inevitably appear.

All concentrations prior to the first dhyāna of the form realm are concentrations that have not yet reached the first dhyāna; they are divided into multiple levels. When the mind differs, the coarse or subtle level of concentration differs, but to a greater or lesser degree they all resonate with the realms of the desire-realm devas. The further one departs from the five desires of the human world, the deeper the concentration, the greater the changes in the body, and the more comfortable the feelings of body and mind. Therefore we should know that by leaving behind the desires of the human world, one becomes more at ease, and all feelings are wonderful. How unwise it is to crave and cling to the six sense objects and the life of the five desires in the human world; how lowly and unbearable human life truly is.

Countless people crave and delight in the flowers and grasses, the mountains, rivers, and the great earth, the affairs of people and things of the human world, taking pride and arrogance in possessing power, status, wealth, sensual pleasures, and family relatives in the human world. In truth, compared with the magnificent realms of the devas, they do not even amount to a petty sorcerer's trick—there is nothing at all worth being proud or arrogant about. Only those with shallow vision who have never seen the wider world would behave this way.