eight difficulties ［八難・八難処］ ( hachi-nan or hachi-nansho): Eight places, states, or circumstances wherein one is unable to see a Buddha or to listen to his teaching. They are (1) hell; (2) the realm of hungry spirits; (3) the realm of animals; (4) the heaven of long life (any of the eighteen heavens in the world of form or the four heavens in the world of formlessness where beings live long; or, by another account, the Heaven of No Thought in the fourth meditation heaven in the world of form); (5) Uttarakuru, the continent north of Mount Sumeru where pleasures dominate; (6) obstructions of the sense organs, such as blindness; (7) attachment to and satisfaction with secular knowledge; and (8) the period before a Buddha’s birth or after his death.