Do Nāgas Really Exist?

Virūpakkha is one of the four World Guardians of the Cātumahārājika heaven. Virūpakkha is a sovereign king who rules the nāgas of the west, whether nāgas who are devas or nāgas who belong to the animal realm.

Nāgas are counted among the beings of the lower realms (apāya), in the animal realm. The word tiracchāna, “animal”, means a being that goes crosswise, that moves along horizontally. “Crosswise” here means that being an animal stands across the way to the noble paths and fruits. Their rebirth-linking (paṭisandhi) takes place through the unwholesome investigating consciousness accompanied by equanimity (upekkhā-santīraṇa), and they have no wisdom. Animals have no chance of realizing any Dhamma at all, even if in that life they meet a Perfectly Self-Awakened Buddha. At most they can go for the Three Refuges and undertake the precepts, nothing more.

Some nāgas have great psychic power, because in a past life as renunciates they made merit well, but near the time of death they slipped: delusion (moha) was strong, so they were reborn as powerful nāgas with great wealth, gems, rings, silver and gold.

There are 1,025 kinds of nāga, divided into four types:

1. Nāgas whose bite makes the body stiff as wood.
2. Nāgas whose bite makes the wound rot, with fluid oozing out.
3. Nāgas whose bite leaves streaks, as though the whole body had been scorched by fire.
4. Nāgas whose bite is like lightning severing the heart.

There is a Jātaka about the Bodhisatta, who once held a wrong view and so slipped into rebirth as a nāga. In a life when he was king of Magadha, there was a dispute with the kingdom of Aṅga. Defeated, the king had to flee. He thought, “Why should I let myself die at the hands of my enemies?” and so he leapt into the water to kill himself. The nāga king, seeing this, helped him, letting him stay in the city of the nāgas and helping him win back his land.

The Bodhisatta, then a king, saw that the nāgas were beautiful and very wealthy, and his heart took a liking to it. He thought that to be born a nāga would surely be grand, so he hurried to make merit through giving, virtue and meditation, wishing to be reborn in the nāga realm. A wish like this is micchādiṭṭhi, wrong view, because it wishes for a state of existence out of ignorance. With the full power of his merit, when he died he was reborn as Campeyya, king of the nāgas. Once a nāga, he felt deeply shaken at having been born an animal, so he hurried to keep the precepts to fulfill the perfections (pāramī) ever further, to be free of being a nāga and be reborn as a human, so as to fulfill the perfections until he was free from the mass of suffering.

Signs That Nāgas Dwell in a Place

Some nāgas hold right view (sammādiṭṭhi) and some hold wrong view. If nāgas of wrong view live in a place and people go to live there, good people with morals cannot stay: the place is abandoned, or misfortune strikes. Even if you set up a factory there to earn a right livelihood, it runs at a loss. On the other hand, if you make it a place of vice, it prospers unnaturally, because it supports what is bad and intoxicates people with what is bad. A liquor shop in a bad place, where there are nāgas and humans of wrong view, will prosper. People who go in become infatuated and superstitious and are overpowered. But if you do good things there, they fail to flourish, and good people fall sick. Even in a temple, in any monk’s hut or hall where there are powerful nāgas of wrong view, monks who stay there fall ill, meet misfortune, and die for no reason.

Nāgas of right view come to venerate the relics of the Buddha because they want to fulfill the perfection of virtue (sīla-pāramī) and want to leave the state of being a nāga. We may pay respects to nāgas, but we must be careful never to incline our minds toward being reborn as a nāga. For if a Buddha arises in the world, even if you meet him, you will have missed a great opportunity, because you will not be able to realize the Dhamma at all.

Beliefs about nāgas are found everywhere. However far the world of science advances, it cannot find them, because this is a matter that involves insight and wisdom. It is a matter for the Buddha’s omniscient knowledge (sabbaññutañāṇa), which knows and sees all beings. It is the duty of Buddhists to study, to know and to understand thoroughly the matter of the realms of existence, of karma and the results of karma.