What the Hell?

[Tao of Buttercup]

This isn't a question about Christianity (of which I'm vastly familiar) or Buddhism (of which I currently know very little)...

 

...it's a question about Hell. Or rather, a place of torment and suffering for the wicked after death.

 

I was surprised to read (page 36 of Japanese Death Poems - in its Introduction section) that, beginning around 700 AD, a concept of Hell was introduced to Japan (prior to that, Shinto beliefs were dominant...as probably everyone here knows but me, until tonight).

 

I've formerly (mid-1990s) done a lot of "comparative religion" reading, but most of that was Western.

 

I'm surprised (not sure why...just am) that Buddhism (or a portion of it) also introduced the concept of Hell, akin to Christianity's.

 

What is the psychology behind the rise of Hell? Is it an (unfortunate) progression in the human psyche reacting against being nomadic to agricultural to urban? Is it due to population growth (easier to dislike others "when crowded" versus "lots of wagon room")? Is it a side effect of increasing levels of formal education (alienation from physical/Nature into spirit/Cerebral)?

 

I'm simply wondering.

 

Any suggestions, insights?

 

 

[Zhongyongdaoist]

I suspect such things, both hell and karma arise out of a sense of justice. People need to feel that what they perceive as wrongs are righted, hell and karma serve two purposes, the assurance that all wrongs will be righted and also provide a socially approved story to discourage wrong doing in the first place, the moral of which is that 'crime doesn't pay', in the long run you never get away with anything.

[Nungali]

I f you dispute (or worse ... or less) with some they get angry. Apparently damaging someone or causing suffering to them is supposed to make you feel better. If one cant do it now, they will do it later. If not later, some other time, or maybe someone else will get them ... or they will have a nasty accident ( mwa ha ha har) .

 

If they seem to avoid all that ... karma will get them ... or better yet ... they will suffer after they die ... in an agony of burning and torture ... that goes on forever ... that'll show em! Mwa ha ha HAR!

 

... no ... I dont get it either.

 

Aside from that, it could relate to a combination of observation or memory of underground thermal activity and the idea of descent into the 'underworld' . The ealiest reference I have read to it is Egyptian.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_of_fire

[idiot_stimpy]

Hell is a state of mind.

[Nungali]

MEPHASTOPHILIS: Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands,
Which strike a terror to my fainting soul.

FAUSTUS: What, is great Mephastophilis so passionate
For being deprivèd of the joys of heaven?
Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude,
And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess.

 

MEPHASTOPHILIS.: Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed
In one self-place; for where we are is hell,
And where hell is, there must we ever be.
. . .
All places shall be hell that is not heaven.

FAUSTUS: Come, I think hell’s a fable.

MEPHASTOPHILISS.: Ay, think so still, till experience change thy mind.
. . .
FAUSTUS: Think’st thou that Faustus is so fond to imagine
That after this life there is any pain?
Tush, these are trifles and mere old wives’ tales.

Edited July 30, 2014 by Nungali

[Bearded Dragon]

There are a few views. Buddhism and Taoism would advocate that heaven/nirvana and hell exist within. The former being a state that is free from impurities and of open unadultered awareness. There is the topic of reincarnation whereby spiritual impurities carry over into the next life, so the idea of after death is not really applicable.

 

Buddhism/Taoism traditionally do not care to mention a place called heaven or hell because the idea is not important. Any accomplished teacher that I've heard mention this seems to avoid commenting.

 

I don't know why it would just pop up other than to introduce a term that controls unlike any other. Perhaps religious leaders presumed that fear would lead to moral refinement. I do not believe that it can help in that regard. On the surface level, yes, but deep down the roots are merely buried.

[GrandmasterP]

Professional Clergy.

Once you get those guys they need a USP to maintain their power.

Frightening the punters with some sort of 'Hell' is an almost universal con trick.

Hence every religion with full time paid guys in silly priest hats goes in for 'Hell' in a big way.

They promote the concept along with their own sure fire 'avoid going to Hell' sales pitch.

That, of course; always involves giving monetary or equivalent offerings to the professional clergy.

It's a sweet business, there can be never be any unsatisfied customers Issuing writs or complaining to the media because none of the 'faithful' realise what BS it all was until after they have left their body ( " Died").

Edited July 30, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[Stosh]

The idea of a hell, in its best use , is to remove the need for a person to feel

they need to enforce justice for themselves ...to obviate retribution.

[GrandmasterP]

Obviate as in 'remove'?

[Jetsun]

This isn't a question about Christianity (of which I'm vastly familiar) or Buddhism (of which I currently know very little)...

 

...it's a question about Hell. Or rather, a place of torment and suffering for the wicked after death.

 

I was surprised to read (page 36 of Japanese Death Poems - in its Introduction section) that, beginning around 700 AD, a concept of Hell was introduced to Japan (prior to that, Shinto beliefs were dominant...as probably everyone here knows but me, until tonight).

 

I've formerly (mid-1990s) done a lot of "comparative religion" reading, but most of that was Western.

 

I'm surprised (not sure why...just am) that Buddhism (or a portion of it) also introduced the concept of Hell, akin to Christianity's.

 

What is the psychology behind the rise of Hell? Is it an (unfortunate) progression in the human psyche reacting against being nomadic to agricultural to urban? Is it due to population growth (easier to dislike others "when crowded" versus "lots of wagon room")? Is it a side effect of increasing levels of formal education (alienation from physical/Nature into spirit/Cerebral)?

 

I'm simply wondering.

 

Any suggestions, insights?

 

Its probably a form of manipulation to control the populace out of fear, when you have lots of feuding states and clans who regularly butcher each other having some sort of belief in severe consequence of action could be useful to pacify a country, maybe even compassionate belief to introduce at that time. The problem is when such beliefs outlive their usefulness.

[Apech]

Behold yond simpering dame, whose face between her forks presages snow, that minces virtue and does shake the head to hear of pleasure’s name. The fitchew, nor the soiled horse, goes to ’t with a more riotous appetite. Down from the waist they are centaurs, though women all above. But to the girdle do the gods inherit; beneath is all the fiends'. There’s hell, there’s darkness, there’s the sulfurous pit— burning, scalding, stench, consumption! Fie, fie, fie, pah, pah!—Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination. There’s money for thee.

[GrandmasterP]

Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination.

Not many laughs in King Lear but that's a classic for anyone who knows just how bad civet smells.

 

Edited July 30, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[Nungali]

In church, the preacher is pounding the pulpit and giving an emotive sermon on hell and punishment; " ... And in hell there will be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth! .... "

 

Little old lady down the front calls out : " But I havent got any teeth!"

 

The preacher pauses for a second, then pounds the pulpit again .... " The Lord will provide new teeth for those that have none so they will be able to ....... "

 

- and again:

 

Preacher; " We must all learn to live and love in forgivness of all our enemies."

 

"But I havent got any enemies!"

 

"Oh, Mrs Johnston ... thats wonderful and you show an exemplary Christian life for a woman of 92 years on this planet and you dont have any enemies! Please statd and tell the congregation how you achieved this remarkable attitude."

 

"Well ... I'm 92 ! All those other bitches I hated are dead and in hell now."

[gentlewind]

the mind provides the ingredients for us to visit 'hell.'

and anywhere else you'd like to go!

[Stosh]

Obviate as in 'remove'?

Nah, the other definition , as in .. make unneccesary ,

as in Vengeance is mine ....

( and not yours to effect )

"Ill handle it , you just go on and be better than they are ,rather than follow them to hell."

[GrandmasterP]

Ta.

 

[Daeluin]

The idea in taoism is to dissolve polarity via creating harmony, melting away patterns and returning to a state of oneness. The more one becomes whole, the more one becomes self-sufficient, even as one becomes more one with all. This is often referred to as a process of "reversal", given that most practices of life create more polarity and separation.

 

Either way, when you have moving parts in a system, there must be some framework of balance. When things get out of balance they dominate and life suffers. Suffering is really just experiencing the pressure of balancing.

 

So... as many of us go through our lives we're learning to find balance based on how life responds to us. Some of us have wax in our ears and ignore these messages, and thus end up cultivating patterns where we force our way into the positions we want, without the proper give and take and respect for balance. Well that's fine, but when we die we take this pattern with us.

 

On the spiritual level, my understanding is we don't have as much say over where we go, but we tend to follow the law of "like attracts like". The earth, moon and sun are all spinning around in various cycles, and most of us are rather limited in how far we can go beyond these gravitational vortexes. In any case, depending on the mix of yin and yang and the patterns there in, we are drawn to end up in various situations.

 

All this is just my best guess based on what I've read and what follows principle. Beyond that, I speculate there are some who are drawn to end up with family groupings, but perhaps that mostly applies to whose who cultivate a great sense of familial piety in life. I suspect there are those who travel to areas of spiritual gathering more in our atmosphere or solar system, and those are remain on earth as ghosts and spirits based on the attachments they cultivated. These attachments might be, on the lower level, fixations on ways of living, on people, unresolved issues of a deep nature, or on a higher level, attachments to fulfilling a specific purpose in a spiritual form, or perhaps being directed to guide others based on a higher power, etc.

 

In the end I believe it all just follows the natural principles of gravity based on the pattern. If one is strongly attached to belief in the polarity of heaven / hell, perhaps one gravitates to where others with this attachment have gathered.

 

In the end, "hell" is probably as simple as someone who cultivate selfish attachments and patterns, being drawn to similar circumstances, such as in ghost form being drawn to another life form who also cultivates a similar pattern, and thus one remains stuck with the unfolding of the same types of patterns. Or perhaps in a more distant spiritual realm where one gets stuck to a bunch of other entities of similar patterns, where none of them have any control over changing these patterns until they are reborn again.

 

But on the level of suffering, I don't know if it applies. On the level of spirit, perhaps there is limitation over changing one's pattern in any significant way (as we can in human form in any case), but also there is likely no longer attachment to good or bad. It simply is as it is. We can see clearly the imbalances, and when we are reborn we know what our karma is and what we need to do to dissolve it. Trouble is, by the time we're reborn there's a lot of distraction and it's hard to get to a still enough place to be able to recognize the importance and need to dissolve this pattern.... even as we are constantly facing the unfolding of present day life based on the karma of the past.

 

So I think it is people in the flesh who are afraid of things like hell - maybe it's true that one who consistently does "evil" get stuck where there are spiritual patterns of "evil", but at that point it simply is what it is.

 

So really in this whole dance it's about all of us as a whole learning to work a little harder at creating balance, then the stagnation, and what we perceive as evil will go away. But even then, evil is a good thing, as it teaches us a lesson about reality and the importance of balance.

[Tao of Buttercup]

Thank you for all of the replies.

 

 

I suspect such things, both hell and karma arise out of a sense of justice. People need to feel that what they perceive as wrongs are righted, hell and karma serve two purposes, the assurance that all wrongs will be righted and also provide a socially approved story to discourage wrong doing in the first place, the moral of which is that 'crime doesn't pay', in the long run you never get away with anything.

 

Agreed. However, injustices and crimes occurred amongst humans before the advent of Hell (as defined by Christianity at least). The ancient Jews had "Sheol" and "Hades" - which (to my limited knowledge and it's distant memory) was more a place "of Shades"; an unhappy and melancholy limbo.

 

At some point, something triggered the horrific concept of Hell: Real suffering, terrible torments, anguish, torture. Extreme punishment; in the case of fundamentalist Christians, never-ending.

 

I'm wondering what exact trigger prompted such a concept. Was it social? economic? a combination of factors?

 

The Bronze Age or Iron Age? Some Pagan/Wiccan feminists have suggested that is when "things" changed (not for the better) in many religions.

 

Maybe it's impossible to know.

 

I much prefer the earlier stages of human spirituality: Nature, rhythms, cycles; that innocence. Which somehow got lost to most religions, it seems. Yet Taoism retains that youthful exuberance, simplicity, optimism...which is exactly what I've been seeking.

 

Ah well. Just my curious mind.

Edited July 31, 2014 by Tao of Buttercup

[thelerner]

Hell is a state of mind.

Hell is a form of control. It's often religion's 'big stick'.

 

Western religions have no monopoly on it either. Some olde Taoist systems have nasty hells that you can pay a priest to get your relatives out of. I tend to doubt nature/universe is quite so moralistically punishing over human foibles.

[Brian]

My personal take is that hell is synonymous with being eternally outside of the Light and that Darkness turned into an awful physical location in part because the abstract concept was too hard to express for people who increasingly hadn't personally experienced the Light as the various religions developed. It is impossible for an adept to adequately express the Light in words and it is even more impossible (whatever that means) for a religious functionary to do so.

 

Bureaucracy takes over after that...

[GrandmasterP]

Cycling around Hyde Park Corner in the London rush hour.

That's ' Hell'.

Edited July 31, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[PLB]

Dante filled up Hell with a lot of people he knew or knew of. In that way, his narrative was a reflection of life seen through death. Not a mirror exactly, but a looking glass.

 

Apart from analyses of comparitive depravity, the story of Hell emphasizes the fixity of repetition; Doing the same things over and over again. That is the water shed of many very different streams ending in opposite oceans, carving the land as they flow.

 

I see the thing but know enough not to put it in a box with a cat or spread it out like pieces of yarrow on a table.

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

Loki is Hel's father; who presides in Hell, over the dead and is half corpse (legs and torso) and half beautiful woman (abs and head).

[GrandmasterP]

Dante filled up Hell with a lot of people he knew or knew of. In that way, his narrative was a reflection of life seen through death. Not a mirror exactly, but a looking glass.

 

Apart from analyses of comparitive depravity, the story of Hell emphasizes the fixity of repetition; Doing the same things over and over again. That is the water shed of many very different streams ending in opposite oceans, carving the land as they flow.

 

I see the thing but know enough not to put it in a box with a cat or spread it out like pieces of yarrow on a table.

As a union rep, many the meeting with management have I pleasantly passed in imagining our 'esteemed leaders' in various circles of Dante's Inferno.

Edited August 1, 2014 by GrandmasterP

[Stosh]

Loki is Hel's father; who presides in Hell, over the dead and is half corpse (legs and torso) and half beautiful woman (abs and head).

Does anyone have the other pieces?