3f) The explanation of the suffering of the gods (devas)

There are four sections

1) The suffering produced by death and transmigration.

Thus in the heavenly realms:

Also gods in the realm of desire have measureless suffering.
Drunk with desire, they are careless. They fall in the change of death. Their flowers wither, their thrones no longer give them pleasure. Abandoned by their friends, they dread their coming state.
For a week these gods will have unbearable emotions,

The victorious Four Great Kings, the Thirty-three, the Twin Gods, the Joyful Heaven gods, the gods who Delight in Emanations and gods with power over the Emanations of Others appear to be happy. But even this happiness does not go beyond the suffering of change and the suffering of conditions. At the time of their deaths, the color of their bodies becomes unpleasant. Their thrones do not please them. The flowers wreathing their brows wither. Their clothes smell bad. A pain they have never experienced before arises. They are troubled by the perception that they will leave their divine companions and be alone. With the divine eye, they see the place where they will be born, and they are terrified.

When they faint away, from far away the gods who are their father and mother or intimates call their names, saying, "May you be born among human beings in Jambuling. There having practiced the ten virtues, once again may you be born here in the god realm." Having said that and scattered flowers, they depart. The day of such gods is a week. The Friendly Letter says:

In the celestial realms, as they are very happy.
The suffering of death and transmigration is therefore great.
Having contemplated that, superior ones
Do not crave for celestial realms that will be exhausted.

Their color of their bodies becomes unpleasant to see.
Their thrones no longer please them. Their wreaths of flowers wither.
Their clothes smell bad; and irresistibly in their bodies,
Arises a dread that they have never felt before.

These are the five presages of being summoned by death
And their transmigration from the celestial realm.
That arise for gods within the realm of the gods.

As with men on the earth who are going to die
There are signs of death that summon^[1] them.

2) The associated suffering of their subsequent samsaric birth

Furthermore:

The samadhi gods of such realms of form, as the realms of Bhrama,
Exhausting their former karma, fall down into samsara.
They suffer the suffering of having foreseen this change.
And exhaustion of their karma of formless shamatha.
They suffer anticipating their subsequent state of samsara.
Though they have gone to heaven, they cannot rely on it.
Therefore, fortunate ones should gain enlightenment.

During their great fruition in the Bhrama realms, the samadhi-gods have natural bliss. But they too die, and this is transformed. They suffer over entering into their subsequent births. Nagarjuna says:

With self-existing samadhi, as in the Bhrama realms,
Though they have the brilliance of limitless light and color,
Since they have not seen their latent ego-conceptions,
After they die, they cannot help being born in Hell.

Those gods who remain one-pointedly in formless shamatha also die and transmigrate, and then with formations of suffering on seeing their subsequent samsaric birth, they must be reborn. The Friendly Letter says:

Since they are in such a samsaric state, asuras
As well as Hell beings, animals, and hungry ghosts
Are not good births, and therefore we should know these births
To be the vessels of many further kinds of harm

3) The suffering of defiled bliss:

All beings who are attached to samsaric happiness
Are tormented by their craving in a fiery pit.

Moreover, they sow the seeds of subsequent existences in the lower realms where there will be nothing but the flow of the four great currents.^[2] The Letter to a Student says:

Gathering fiery suffering in this world of destruction,
Expecting to be happy, beings manifest pride.
They will be flung to the giant mouth of the Lord of Death.
They sow the seeds of the tree of subsequent rebirths.

4) The summary. How we should establish liberation

4.a) How if we do not establish it, we shall not attain liberation

We may think that we will really be protected by the Buddha from the lower realms, but if by ego we have done evil deeds, the fruition of the lower realms is ripening within us. As for the teaching that it is difficult to have an opportunity of being seen with compassion:

Enlightenment and the means to it depend on us.
So it has been said by the Teacher of gods and humans.
It is never the incidental gift of others,
Just as dreams in the coma of sleep cannot be stopped.
If this could be done, samsara would already be empty.
By the rays of compassion of the Tathagata and his children.
You yourself must gird yourself in the armor of effort.
Now is the time to ascend the path of liberation.

Being liberated from the lower realms and from samsara depends on our own efforts. This cannot be done by someone else through any amount of effort or skillful means. The vinaya scriptures say:

I have taught to you the means of liberation.
Strive for liberation depending on yourselves.

That is the right idea. Trying to make karma of self-accumulated projections reverse itself, is like eliminating a dream, by going to sleep and having another dream. If that were workable, these immeasurable samsaric beings would already have been emptied long since by the light rays of compassion of the buddhas.

4.b) Since we have not been tamed by the buddhas in the past, if we do not make an effort, we will not be liberated by them now.

Therefore, by our own defects:

Those like us who have not practiced the remedy,
As was done by countless buddhas in the past,
Will wander on the desolate path which is samsara,
Whose nature is to be a path of evil deeds.
Think how, as before, if we do not make an effort,
We will produce the sufferings existing in the six realms.

The Bodhicharyavatara says:

For the sake of benefiting sentient beings
There have been countless buddhas, teaching in the past;
Though this is so, simply because of my own defects,
I have not been the object of their curative actions.

If now again I act in such a way as that,
Having acted again and again in just that way,
How will I be worthy of their consideration?

4.c) The instruction that compassion will not enter into bad karma:

Moreover:

The sufferings of samsara are as limitless as the sky.
As unbearable as fire, and as various as all objects.

You with your thoughts of being its receptacle
Are staying in bad places, places where you should not.
With no self-respect or conscientiousness,
How can you have a chance to enter into compassion?

The wise and skillful deeds of buddha activity
Are said to depend on the karma of those who are to be tamed.
Therefore having come to recognize your faults,
Mindful in your heart of the suffering of samsara,
So that yourself and all beings may be free from samsara,
You should truly embark upon the path of peace.

The sufferings of samsara are as limitless as space and cannot be encompassed by thought. They are a mass of fire difficult to endure. Enduring the variety of this seeming net of red and white apparent external objects of different kinds is not right. The Bodhicharyavatara says:

This is an inappropriate and shameful object of patience.

In such patience there is truly a lack of self-respect and conscientiousness. By the rays of the sun of the Buddha's compassion, these things are seen as they are. We are like people in the darkness under the earth who do not take their opportunity to enter into that sunlight. Just as the darkness under the earth has its own impure manner of existence, unassociated with conditions that produce light, within the murky darkness of our own being, it is difficult for compassion to have an opportunity to work.  The compassion of the Victorious One also appears only in accord with the merit and good fortune of those who are to be tamed, The Avatamsaka Sutra says:

Even if the circle of the moon arises,
When there is no vessel, it is not reflected there;
In the same way the moon of compassion of the Buddha
Will not shine where there is no vessel of good fortune.

Since this is so, it is right to exert ourselves in the means of true liberation.

4.d) How, even though suffering has been explained, we are not saddened Suitability for that is like this:

If our suffering now is hardly bearable,
How will we bear the truly unbearable pains of existence?
If we are not even a little sorry when this is told,
Our hearts must be great lumps, composed of the hardest iron.
Our minds must surely be as thoughtless as a stone.

Shantideva says:

If even this amount of suffering we have now
Is irresistible and more than we can bear,
What of the sufferings of sentient beings in Hell?
How would we be able to bear such pain as theirs?

Think about it like that. On the other hand, if we are not even a little saddened, as the Basket-like Talk says:

We hear of samsaric suffering, and yet we are not sad.
We who are like that are certainly very foolish.
As if we were made of stone or a piece of solid iron,
We clearly show ourselves to be just mindless fools.

Footnotes and references:

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[1]:

spron read sbron.

[2]:

Erik Schmidt. Four Currents: 'dod pa, desire; srid pa, existence; ma rig pa, ignorance; log par lta ba, wrong views.

Other Buddhism Concepts:

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Discover the significance of concepts within the article: ‘3f) The explanation of the suffering of the gods (devas)’. Further sources in the context of Buddhism might help you critically compare this page with similair documents:

Samsara, Good fortune.

Concepts being referred within the main category of Buddhism context and sources.

Six Worlds, Ten virtues, World of desire, Path of liberation, Suffering of samsara, Buddha's compassion, Heavenly realm.