Today is the 7th day of Chinese lunar new year which is known as Ren Ri 人日. Based on Chinese custom, it is said that it is the day human beings were created.
Life is a gift and to be born as a human is very rare. Just look at the billions of animals around us from the sea, land to the sky in this planet earth alone.
Buddha was a skilful teacher who was able to teach others with parables (I think he was the first teacher using differentiated teaching). To help his disciples to understand the rareness of being born as a human, he said that to be born as a human is like a sea turtle that comes up to the surface once every hundred years and the sea turtle's head passed through a small hole of a wooden plank floating in the vast ocean.
According to Buddha, there are 31 planes of existence which include the lower realms like hell, ghost and animals and higher realms like human and other heavenly realms which include sensuous and immaterial world (form or formless).
Being born as a human besides being rare is also precious. It is the only realm where you can do good deeds and cultivate merit. Only a human can attain enlightenment as a Buddha. Thus we should use this opportunity to do good deeds and help others. It is said that to be born as a human being, it must also be your past life good karma as you have cultivated many merit in past lives.
Thus we should use the opportunity to do more good, follow the five precepts or eight precepts set by the Buddha for lay Buddhists and hopefully be enlightened in this life.
From Access to Insight here.
Scattered throughout the suttas are references to as many as thirty-one distinct "planes" or "realms" of existence into which beings can be reborn during their long wandering through samsara. These range from the extraordinarily grim and painful hell realms all the way up to the most exquisitely refined and blissful heaven realms. Existence in every realm is temporary; in Buddhist cosmology there is no eternal heaven or hell. Beings are born into a particular realm according to their past kamma. When they pass away, they take rebirth once again elsewhere according to the quality of their kamma: wholesome actions bring about a favorable rebirth, while unwholesome actions lead to an unfavorable one. And so the wearisome cycle continues.
Image from Fo Guang Shan website here
Image from Access to Insight, The Thirty-one Planes of Existence
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