Buddhism Has a Lot of Hells

brought to you by one dream descriptions of people laying on iron beds with nails driven through their bodies or having their intestines filled with blazing iron pellets these might not sound like any buddhist texts you've ever heard of but in fact they come from some of the earliest buddhist texts these are descriptions of buddhist hell realms called naraka in sanskrit while hell realms seem pretty distant from the serene meditating monks and mindful contemplation that buddhism is usually associated with in the western imagination when compared to other religious traditions buddhism actually has some of the most elaborate and most extensive hell realms in the history of religion buddhist texts first describe hell in detail in the devaduta sutra which is part of the pali canon or the first collection of buddhist teachings in this text the buddha tells the story of an evil man who gets dragged to hell at the end of his life while there the man is interrogated by yama the king of hell on whether he turned his mind to buddhist practice while alive yama says did you notice the divine signs around you a child being born a man getting old sick and dying and not realize that you too were subject to rebirth and must one day pay for your evil deeds the man of course did not and is subsequently condemned to torture in hell for his poor conduct while alive the text describes him as running through a forest of leaves that slice off his fingers and toes one by one of being boiled alive in a river of lie of having molten metal poured into his mouth really gruesome stuff but from the teleological perspective of the text's cosmology this is all for his benefit see while in religions like christianity many adherents view hell as a place of eternal torment and buddhist traditions hell is more of a temporary state one of the six realms into which someone can be reborn based on their karma someone may suffer in hell for hundreds of thousands of years but eventually once their bad karma has been burned off they'll be reborn in a different realm what this means is that hell has an important function in buddhism as a place to be punished so that a practitioner can have a better rebirth free of that bad karma in fact several texts describe yama as a buddha himself who is actually acting compassionately for beings this does not mean that buddhists are excited to go to hell many contemporary buddhists are deeply invested in encouraging others to buddhist practice by communicating the potential future that awaits those who earn bad karma in this life this is most obvious in the variety of life-size hellscapes built to communicate hell's realities in vietnam the subterranean amphu cave in the marble mountains is believed to provide a glimpse of what hell might look like local vietnamese artists have filled the cave with life-size dioramas of hellish torment and the cave features a shrine where visitors can repent and confess their sins before climbing the stairs to the sunlit pavilion above many temples in thailand feature similar hell theme parks as does japan's senkoji temple in osaka which features a similar display complete with presentations that light up as you walk along the path as part of the experience visitors complete a questionnaire detailing their own activities in this life to determine how likely they are to go to hell themselves the temple also features a large stone with a hole cut into it if you stick your head inside the hole you can supposedly hear the screams of those in hell the brothers behind the popular herbal lotion called tiger balm built a similar park in singapore called ha par villa where visitors can come to learn the importance of moral action and buddhist practice one version of buddhist cosmology about these hell realms is laid out in the text abhidharma kosha which dates to the 4th century ce the text describes eight cold hells and eight hot hells with a near endless supply of what are called neighboring hells that allow for some local variation there is the blue lotus hell where it's so cold that frostbite blisters form all over the skin the liquid inside then freezes causing the blisters to burst open making it appear that the suffering being is covered in blue lotuses there is the black line hell where black lines spontaneously appear on one's body hell workers then use knives to slice and dice the individual up along these lines the recently chopped up person then spontaneously reforms to do it all again hell can provide a useful framework for historians to track how buddhism transformed as it entered new areas the concept of places of torment is so expansive and so imaginative that it enabled local buddhist communities to develop their own hell-themed practices texts and stories these usually revolve around the story of a devout buddhist traveling through hell and returning with information on the horrors that they witnessed and what can be done to avoid that fate this is a major theme of the ghost festival versions of which are celebrated all throughout east asia but today we'll just focus on his iteration in china in china they celebrate the ghost festival every year on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month usually around the middle of august chinese buddhists believe that if they give offerings of food and money to buddhist monks on this day it will aid the suffering of their ancestors in hell the foundation of this festival is the story of the buddha's disciple mulian or modgliana in sanskrit after the death of his parents he takes vows to become a buddhist monk and gains the ability to travel between realms from the power of his meditation in this way he discovers that his mother has been reborn in hell for sins like stealing for herself donations that were meant for buddhist monks despite this mulian is a devoted son and he searches through hell for his mother finding all sorts of ghastly horrors along the way mulian eventually convinces the buddha to help save his mother and the ghost festival is created as a way for those in the future whose relatives may suffer during the ghost festival families come to the buddhist temples to offer money and food to the monks believing that in this way their loved ones will be given comfort and sustenance in hell they may also repeat these offerings individually at family grave sites or ancestral altars in their homes many monasteries even sponsor performances of the moolian story that blur the line between religious ritual and entertainment with the families of the recently deceased coming up on stage during the performance with pictures of their loved ones asking mulian to save them historians of religion are especially interested in the ghost festival as a way to chart how buddhism was integrated into chinese society the ghost festival is celebrated all over china but often in ways very different from its buddhist iterations this indicates that it likely existed in some form prior to buddhism's arrival in the 1st century ce what's even more interesting is that the ghost festival blends both confucian and buddhist elements in mullion's quest to rescue his mother from hell buddhist monks are supposed to have left home and renounced ties to their families making mulian's concern for his mother a bit of a surprise from a buddhist perspective however in a society heavily influenced by confucian values which emphasizes filial piety and children's dedication to their parents a story about a buddhist monk rescuing his mother from hell reveals how buddhists in china may have used narrative to make their religious ideas more inviting to chinese confucian society moulin is not the only monk known for his journeys in hell however buddhists in thailand celebrate pramalae who also gains the ability to travel to the hell realms through his meditative prowess while he's not there to save his mother like mulian pramalai observes the workings of karma and returns with messages from those suffering in hell on the centrality of appropriate buddhist practice and the need to make buddhist offerings on behalf of those suffering illustrated palm leaf manuscripts depicting his journeys are very popular most from the 18th and 19th centuries and the text was often chanted by monks at funerals and weddings depictions of pramaly are frequently seen in thai murals and sculptures as well however it's not only buddhist monks who travel to hell buddhist women often also make the journey a particularly important example is the story of kishiti garba bodhisattva originally born as a high-class maiden in india she discovers her mother has fallen to hell after her death for neglecting buddhist practice she journeys there to find her mother and becomes so distraught at the suffering that she vows to stay in hell to provide comfort and buddhist instruction to those reborn there she's subsequently reborn as the male bodhisattva kashiti garba who remains in hell to provide comfort to the beings who suffer there scholars have noted the similarities between this story and that of moolian making it possible that the story was actually composed in china and not in india as it claims in tibet people performed the story of nangsa obum a 12th century woman beaten to death by a jealous husband and father-in-law who were spurred on by malicious lies while dead she journeys to the hell realms and meets yama impressed by her dedication to buddhist practice he tells her to return to the human realm and preached to everyone on the realities of buddhist hell nangsa obom is not the only tibetan to return from hell many villages and towns have their own stories about local daelok or literally those who die day and return lok and the tradition continues to this day in some tibetan communities the u.s even has its first buddhist day look samuel burkles who created a graphic novel depicting his own tour of hell after his heart stopped beating during surgery it's tempting to look at these stories and think maybe these are not meant to be taken literally maybe these are meant as metaphors for the suffering we cause ourselves or the mental anguish brought about to others by our inappropriate actions and some buddhists would definitely say that some interpret naruka as mental projections and debate their metaphysical reality but we've also seen lots of examples that for many buddhists today these are understood as very real places of very real torment and some of us may be surprised to learn about buddhist hell realms in the first place especially if we hold a stereotypical understanding of buddhism as all about peaceful meditation scholars generally argue that this sort of stereotyping is rooted in something called orientalism first coined by the philosopher edward saeed orientalism is the general tendency of thought in which the so-called east was made to be europe's other a land of exotic beings and exploitable riches that could service the economy and the imagination of the west historically orientalist perspectives have led to all manner of stereotypes including the tendency to represent eastern cultures as one-dimensional inversions of western cultures indiana jones and the temple of doom is an explicit example if indiana jones is the rational and scientific anthropologist from the united states then the high priest of kali is the ritualistic passion-serving madman for anyone who's studied orientalism i think negative examples like this are the first to come to mind but there's also what we might call positive orientalism positive not in the sense that this is the good type of orientalism but rather orientalism that romanticizes or idealizes asian culture if i dislike this thing about western culture then surely eastern cultures have it all figured out for example consider the beat generation poets like jack kerouac and alan ginsberg their work portrays american culture as strict and uptight and asian culture as focused on free-wheeling journeys of self-discovery we see this in kerouac's novel the dharma bums in which kerouac employs buddhism as a counter-cultural response to american consumerism and materialism we also see this in stereotyped opinions of religion if christians emphasize hell and eternal damnation then surely buddhism is more compassionate and gentle while positive orientalism might seem harmless it's something scholars work really hard to avoid because it focuses our attention on what we want the religion to look like as opposed to what it really looks like on the ground thus buddhists can become caricatures and we're at risk of overlooking the immense internal diversity of the tradition thanks to wondrum for sponsoring this video one dream is an online learning platform where you can find tons of high quality educational content everything from academic lectures to really practical do-it-yourself tutorials so today's topic was buddhist narika which are afterlife destinations of punishment so i thought it would make sense to highlight what happens to be one of the highest rated religious studies series on one dream death dying and the afterlife taught by the scholar of asian religions dr mark berksen this is basically a multi-disciplinary examination of how world cultures have grappled with mortality the series brings in perspectives from both philosophy and religious studies and includes episodes on judaism christianity islam hinduism and buddhism i highly recommend it because it's a more thematic approach to religious studies you're examining the world's religions but through a specific theme in this case mortality but one dream also offers a bunch of other content and they're adding new series all the time if you'd like to give one dream a try you can get a free trial by heading on over to onedream.com religion for breakfast or click the link in the comments below thanks everyone you

Channel: ReligionForBreakfast

Views: 1,696,719

Keywords: Yama, Abhidharmakosa, Devaduta Sutra, Orientalism

Id: xKWmMLlSPsM

Length: 12min 38sec (758 seconds)

Published: Mon May 30 2022