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Buddhist Hell: Visions, Tours and Descriptions of the Infernal Otherworld
There is a long tradition of Buddhist descriptions of hell, from the second century BCE until the twentieth century, stretching from Iran and India to China and Japan. These descriptions initially relied heavily on Hindu texts but developed their own distinctive features as elements from various cultural traditions were incorporated and as individuals sought to avoid hell by making additions to the text and then distributing copies freely as pious acts. This anthology includes twenty-two texts that range from “The Middle-Length Discourses of the Buddha” and “The Sutra Spoken by the Buddha on the Retribution of Sinful Karma,” to Chinese tales like “Governor Kwoh Visits Hell” and “The Voyage to the Western Sea of the Chief Eunuch San-Pao,” to the “Tibetan Book of the Dead” and a twentieth-century “Thai Near-Death Experience.” This anthology also includes a preface, introduction, glossary, notes and bibliography to provide a comprehensive overview of the nature of Buddhist hell. Buddhist Hell is published in conjunction with www.Hell-on-Line.org, a website that presents a comprehensive collection of materials on the more than 100 visions, tours and descriptions of the infernal otherworld from the cultures around the world dating from 2000 BCE to the present. Twenty-two texts, 216 pages. Web resources. Illustrated.
216 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
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May 1, 2016
This book is a collection of descriptions of hell in the Buddhist tradition drawn from Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan and Thai texts. "What?" you say. "Buddhism has a hell?" Well yes, apparently. As Buddhist Hell shows, the idea of hell has appeared in Buddhist texts alongside the teaching of reincarnation since not long after the birth of the religion in India more than 2000 years ago.
As is commonly known about Buddhism in general, people who accumulate enough good karma through right actions get a desirable rebirth and those who accumulate bad karma get an undesirable one. For example, some may be reborn as wealthy humans whereas others may be reborn as hungry ghosts (those pitiful demons who are always starving because their pin-sized throats will not admit food). But a lesser known doctrine is that before those with bad karma can be reborn, they have to work it off by being punished in hell for countless aeons.
This book provides descriptions of hell in chronological order, using excerpts from texts produced in the second century BCE to the 20th century CE. In most of these descriptions, there are numerous hells, each with a different kind of torture matched to a particular moral failing. For example, a rapist or pedophile might have their sexual organs burned off again and again, or a lier might have their tongue minced. The tortures performed in each hell are illustrated in meticulous detail, with all manner of grotesque burning, whipping, slicing, and battering (I was surprised though, with the great variety of torture on offer, that not one text considered the punishment for gluttony in the movie Seven, namely sewing the anus shut and forcing the victim to overeat, a method also mentioned in the Wutang album 36 Chambers).
My personal favorite is the Japanese version of the "sword tree forest." In this hell, the leaves of all the trees are swords. Sinners see their lost lovers in the canopy crying out for them to reunite and, seized with compulsive longing, they begin to climb. Immediately, the blade-leaves all begin to point downwards so that the sinner is sliced up by the time they reach the top of the tree, at which point their lover vanishes and appears on the ground. They must then climb back down again but now the blades are pointing up. This torment is repeated for literally billions of years. The texts repeat ad nauseum how mind-bogglingly long sinners will be stuck in these hells, presumably to scare them to be devout, ethical followers.
Most religions, it seems, need some sort of metaphysical "or else" mechanism to ensure that people obey precepts held to be important. You must not eat pork or else... You must not step on insects or else... You must not commit adultery or else... Usually Abrahamic religions, with their heaven-hell "or else" mechanism, are contrasted with Indian religions like Buddhim and Hinduism with their karma-reincarnation "or else" mechanism. However, this book demonstrates that the difference is not so simple.
From the outset, the group of religious schools referred to as "Buddhist" have had widely divergent teachings and it is difficult to know how many of them took this hell teaching seriously or how much they emphasized it within their doctrinal systems. The Pure Land Buddhist schools, whose central doctrine is that devout followers can be reborn in a realm of great bliss, tend to emphasize the existence of hell more than other schools. But it seems clear that many other Buddhist schools also taught and in many cases continue to teach of the existence of hell.
I'm not entirely sure if three stars is fair. As a collection of English translations of source texts on the topic of Buddhist hell, one could hardly hope for a better book, at least until scholarship on the topic in the English speaking world improves. But as a book considered in comparison to other books generally, it is quite boring. Many of the texts repeat the same tortures of prior texts over and over (almost as though the act of reading them were replicating in a much milder form the unending torture of the hells they describe). The narratives that drive these hell descriptions are often of low literary merit and the writing is often poor. This problem is compounded in some cases by exceedingly awkward translations (each excerpt has a different translator so the quality varies widely).
Highly recommended to those interested in the very specific topic of Buddhist hell. For everyone else, I would recommend reading the introduction and skipping everything else. Life is short and books there are many.
As is commonly known about Buddhism in general, people who accumulate enough good karma through right actions get a desirable rebirth and those who accumulate bad karma get an undesirable one. For example, some may be reborn as wealthy humans whereas others may be reborn as hungry ghosts (those pitiful demons who are always starving because their pin-sized throats will not admit food). But a lesser known doctrine is that before those with bad karma can be reborn, they have to work it off by being punished in hell for countless aeons.
This book provides descriptions of hell in chronological order, using excerpts from texts produced in the second century BCE to the 20th century CE. In most of these descriptions, there are numerous hells, each with a different kind of torture matched to a particular moral failing. For example, a rapist or pedophile might have their sexual organs burned off again and again, or a lier might have their tongue minced. The tortures performed in each hell are illustrated in meticulous detail, with all manner of grotesque burning, whipping, slicing, and battering (I was surprised though, with the great variety of torture on offer, that not one text considered the punishment for gluttony in the movie Seven, namely sewing the anus shut and forcing the victim to overeat, a method also mentioned in the Wutang album 36 Chambers).
My personal favorite is the Japanese version of the "sword tree forest." In this hell, the leaves of all the trees are swords. Sinners see their lost lovers in the canopy crying out for them to reunite and, seized with compulsive longing, they begin to climb. Immediately, the blade-leaves all begin to point downwards so that the sinner is sliced up by the time they reach the top of the tree, at which point their lover vanishes and appears on the ground. They must then climb back down again but now the blades are pointing up. This torment is repeated for literally billions of years. The texts repeat ad nauseum how mind-bogglingly long sinners will be stuck in these hells, presumably to scare them to be devout, ethical followers.
Most religions, it seems, need some sort of metaphysical "or else" mechanism to ensure that people obey precepts held to be important. You must not eat pork or else... You must not step on insects or else... You must not commit adultery or else... Usually Abrahamic religions, with their heaven-hell "or else" mechanism, are contrasted with Indian religions like Buddhim and Hinduism with their karma-reincarnation "or else" mechanism. However, this book demonstrates that the difference is not so simple.
From the outset, the group of religious schools referred to as "Buddhist" have had widely divergent teachings and it is difficult to know how many of them took this hell teaching seriously or how much they emphasized it within their doctrinal systems. The Pure Land Buddhist schools, whose central doctrine is that devout followers can be reborn in a realm of great bliss, tend to emphasize the existence of hell more than other schools. But it seems clear that many other Buddhist schools also taught and in many cases continue to teach of the existence of hell.
I'm not entirely sure if three stars is fair. As a collection of English translations of source texts on the topic of Buddhist hell, one could hardly hope for a better book, at least until scholarship on the topic in the English speaking world improves. But as a book considered in comparison to other books generally, it is quite boring. Many of the texts repeat the same tortures of prior texts over and over (almost as though the act of reading them were replicating in a much milder form the unending torture of the hells they describe). The narratives that drive these hell descriptions are often of low literary merit and the writing is often poor. This problem is compounded in some cases by exceedingly awkward translations (each excerpt has a different translator so the quality varies widely).
Highly recommended to those interested in the very specific topic of Buddhist hell. For everyone else, I would recommend reading the introduction and skipping everything else. Life is short and books there are many.
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May 21, 2022c. 200 BC Salistamba Sutra - (shows a few unique features which indicate a turn to the early Mahayana. It thus has been considered one of the first Mahayana sutras.)
see hell scroll; nara, mid-12th
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...
Also ‘Wonderland of buddhist hell scenes’
see hell scroll; nara, mid-12th
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...
Also ‘Wonderland of buddhist hell scenes’
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews