LTF 59: Importance of Dealing with Hell Realms & Our Fear

Why Are We Afraid to Think about the Hells?

Actually, that is a very interesting and important topic to investigate, not only the hells themselves. If we don’t want to hear about them and are turned off by hearing about them, we need to investigate why we are turned off by them and why we don’t want to hear or think about them. 

Of course, there could be many reasons. One could be that we just don’t believe that they exist at all. The other might be that we have heard about them in other religions and that they are always associated with the fear of going to hell, with guilt and these sorts of things, and we don’t want to listen to it again. But for a Buddhist analysis, there are two ways of approaching them. One is thinking about our own experience, whether a possible future experience in a hellish rebirth or past experiences of a hellish rebirth, and the other is thinking about others who are experiencing a hellish rebirth and the sufferings of such a rebirth. 

Why is it that our minds are shut off from thinking about the most severe types of suffering? That’s a very interesting point. Why would we not want to think about that? Many of us wouldn’t even like to watch a movie about people being tortured and so on. Most people would find it quite unbearable to see someone being tortured for real. Even just seeing it in a movie where it is make-believe is something that a lot of us find very, very difficult and that would give us nightmares. The question is why? Anybody?

What Is the Reason for Thinking about the Hells?

Participant: I think also the question is, why look? 

Dr. Berzin: Why look? I suppose to develop compassion. I mean these aren’t the hell realms, but it’s very easy to ignore the suffering of, for instance, difficult human situations. How many people think really seriously about the slaughter that went on in Rwanda or the slaughter that is going on now in Darfur or what it must be like to live in Baghdad nowadays? You have to go to the market to buy food, and there is a very good chance that you’ll get blown up. A lot of us would just prefer not to think about it, to pretend that it doesn’t exist. I think that really cuts us off from compassion.

Participant: I don’t think so because it is very new that you can see pictures like this. For centuries, there were no televisions, no nothing. So, it is not necessary to see this, to look, to develop compassion.

Dr. Berzin: She says it is not necessary to see it in order to actually develop compassion because for most centuries before this, there weren’t pictures, television or anything like that to be able to see it.

Participant: Even now you could do everything without technology.

Dr. Berzin: Jorge is saying, by that argument, you could do everything without technology. Well, Shakyamuni Buddha became enlightened without technology, so I don’t think that is a valid argument. 

The question is how would you know about it? You could read about it. Some people find that that communicates very well. Reading, basically, allows for a lot of imagination – to imagine what it must be like. To actually see it on the television makes it a little bit more real. To actually see it live in front of you makes it far, far more real. Doesn’t it? 

Participant: It’s sort of perverse.

Dr. Berzin: Why is it perverse? 

Participant: For me, this is something… you know, “Look…”

Dr. Berzin: We’re not talking about a voyeur – to look at it like looking in the zoo. We’re talking about actually going and looking – like, if you are in a place trying to help the people, you see the suffering for real. It moves your heart much more than reading about it in the newspaper or even seeing it on television. On television, you can change the station if you don’t want to watch it anymore. When you are actually out there in the field, you can’t just press a button and change the station. So, from a Mahayana point of view, the reason for thinking about these hells is not just about ourselves not wanting to experience these type of rebirths; it’s about developing compassion for all beings who experience all spectrums of suffering and pain. I think that’s the main point here.

We discussed last time whether or not we can accept the existence of hellish rebirths, these so-called joyless realms. Looking at the mind in general, we saw that what the mind is able to experience depends on the type of hardware or body that is the support for the mind and that depending on what type of hardware or body it is, there will be certain limitations regarding the range of what any of the different senses can experience. 

So, with a human hardware, we can only see a certain part of the range of light, whereas other animals that can see in the dark much better than we can. We can only hear a certain part of the spectrum, whereas dogs can hear much more. Same thing with smelling and so on. So, why can’t it be the same with the range of happiness and unhappiness and pleasure and pain? The human hardware shuts down when there is a certain level of pain or unhappiness; we become unconscious or go into shock. Likewise, when there is too much pleasure or happiness, we tend to destroy it because it is too much – as with an itch. 

An itch is actually very, very pleasurable, but it is too pleasurable, so we have to scratch it and get rid of it. This type of thing. But we could, by inference, by extension, think that it is possible for a mind to experience much further on the spectrum of pain and unhappiness and much further on the level of pleasure and happiness than one can on the basis of a human body. Based on that thinking, we can start to relate to the existence of these hell realms and ghost realms and all these other things. 

But what I wanted to explore a little bit is fear. There’s a description of the hells. We started to describe them last time. And Nagarjuna devotes many verses to describing them. We will read through them. There isn’t very much to say about each verse, but the interesting thing to analyze is what our response to these hells is. Well, there’s what we just discussed – that there could be an objection to thinking about them or considering them. We also saw what the purpose of thinking about them is from a Mahayana point of view: to develop compassion. 

Initial and Intermediate Scope Motivations for Thinking about Them

From a Hinayana point of view, we can think about them either with an initial scope motivation or an intermediate scope of motivation (from lam-rim). 

The initial scope motivation is not wanting to have a worse rebirth state. Now we have precious human rebirths, which are not going to last forever, and we don’t want our future lives to be terrible, just overwhelmed with pain and suffering and without any opportunities to continue improving ourselves. Therefore, we look at the causes for such a rebirth. The main cause is destructive behavior. We then put a positive direction in our lives – Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha – and practice the ethical discipline of refraining from acting in destructive ways. OK, that’s one level. 

The other motivation, which is the one that fits into the outline here, is wanting to gain liberation from uncontrollably recurring rebirth altogether, for which simply refraining from destructive behavior is not enough. That’s because we can act constructively on the basis of thinking in a very strong way of a solid “me, me, me” – for example, “I want to be good,” and this type of attachment (as if there were an independently existing, solid “me” that has to be good in order to be loved, in order to be a good person, or whatever). That could become very neurotic and would just further our uncontrollably recurring rebirth because, as a result of this constructive behavior, we may take rebirth in one of the better situations. But any type of body and mind that is thrown by or comes about from disturbing emotions and disturbing attitudes, like this grasping for a solid “me,” will be a basis for the first two of the three kinds of sufferings – (1) the suffering of suffering – so, pain; and (2) the suffering of change, which is tainted happiness that never satisfies and doesn’t last – so, the ups and downs of samsara. 

So, even with better rebirths, we still have the all-pervasive affecting suffering of having these types of tainted aggregates – having a body and mind that is caused by disturbing emotions and that is the basis for experiencing the suffering of suffering and the suffering of change, our ordinary, samsaric happiness and unhappiness. 

So, we think about hell rebirths as being just one of all the possible rebirths that we want to avoid. And not only avoid, we want to eliminate completely the possibility of having such a rebirth. 

What Are We Most Afraid Of?

Now, the question to investigate is: what is the place of fear here? That, I think, is a very interesting question to investigate. I have one friend, a Western Dharma teacher who teaches in Los Angeles, actually. So, we’re talking about La la Land, as it is called in America, with Hollywood and all the fantasy world – Disneyland, etc. – of Los Angeles. Primarily, what he teaches about is the hell realms. It’s very interesting. He reported this at one of the meetings of Western Buddhist teachers. What he has people do is to imagine or to think about whatever it is that they are most afraid of. That’s very interesting. What is it that each of us is most afraid of, of actually facing?

Participant: Death.

Dr. Berzin: Death. Right. 

Participant: Sickness.

Dr. Berzin: Death, sickness, pain, being abandoned. A lot of people are terrified of being abandoned by loved ones, by anybody. It could also be spiders, snakes, rats and these types of things. Getting Alzheimer’s Disease – that’s pretty frightening. Getting cancer. Being burned alive….

Participant: For me, it’s some kind of war situation where everybody is competing for food and for resources.

Dr. Berzin: A war situation or post-war, like here in Germany right after the Second World War, where everybody was fighting with each other to get some food. It sounds like the clutching ghost realm type of thing or any sort of drought or famine area where people are starving. So, then the question is why? Whatever it might be – each of us has our own personal thing that we are most afraid of – why we are afraid of it? What is fear? 

Participant: Because we have no knowledge of it. It is an enigma.

Dr. Berzin: But it could be something that we know already. We could have severe attacks of some sickness like epilepsy or whatever, and we are afraid of getting another attack. We could have been raped and are afraid of getting raped again. So, it doesn’t necessarily have to be something that we don’t know. 

Participant: Death is unknown.

Dr. Berzin: If it is death, yes. But if you’re afraid of death because it is something that is unknown, does that mean that you are afraid of everything else that you don’t know? 

Participant: Not really.

Dr. Berzin: So, why death?

Participant: Because you think it hurts.

Dr. Berzin: It hurts… what? To die? Or it hurts after you are dead? 

Participant: I’m not sure. But all these situations that we were just talking about are usually accompanied by pain. You think that it could be painful, that it could become painful.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Whatever we are afraid of entails pain and suffering and unhappiness. Some people might be afraid of really enjoying themselves and really being happy because it could be taken away from them. That’s possible. “I am afraid to relax because then I’ll be hurt.” “I am afraid to trust you because you are going to hurt me.” There are many possibilities here. But I think pain and unhappiness is a large part of it. 

What Is Behind the Fear?

But what’s behind that?

Participant: Our attachment. We are afraid of….

Dr. Berzin: OK, our attachment. But that’s the question: attachment to what? 

Participant: Losing control of it.

Dr. Berzin: Losing control, very good. Who is losing control?

Participant: We lose control over a situation that we would like to control.

Dr. Berzin: Who loses control?

Participant: This concept of “me.”

Dr. Berzin: Me! Very good. Very good. Big, big solid “me,” who should be in control. That’s what’s behind fear, I think. I don’t know. What do you think?

Participant: It’s quite a healthy state of mind, basically.

Dr. Berzin: It’s a healthy state of mind. Well, yes. There are levels of it. It depends on which “me” we are dealing with here, the conventional “me” or the false “me.” Because we don’t want to get hit by a car, we look both ways before we cross the street. Is that fear? Are we afraid of being hit by a car?

Participant: When you are healthy, you can cross the street. You are not afraid. You can… it’s just a prevention.

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, if you are not paranoid and have a healthy sense of self-preservation, you are not afraid of crossing the street. It depends what city you are in, of course! In any case, you just take care. So, we take care of the conventional “me.” That’s not really fear. But when we are really paranoid… you know, like a person who checks their door two or three or four times to make sure that it really is locked – this is an unhealthy level. 

Is it helpful to be afraid of a hellish rebirth or afraid to think about them?

Participant: If you have to experience a lot of bad things, it’s better to get prepared.

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, it’s better to be prepared and to think about this possibility if we are going to ever experience this thing and to be prepared if we need to deal with somebody who is like that. 

Imagine walking down the street and somebody right in front of you is hit by a car. They aren’t killed, but they are in very bad shape. They’re bleeding and splattered on the road. How do you deal with that? Are you afraid and just walk by because the person is screaming and crying and so on, and it’s just too much? Or do you have the strength to try to take care of it – call an ambulance or see if there’s anything that can be done to help? For a lot of us, that might be quite difficult. Quite difficult.

I am reminded of when my grandmother was in a nursing home, an old age home. She had cancer. One of my aunts, her daughter, wouldn’t visit her. She wouldn’t visit her because she said it was too painful to visit her own mother. Sometimes that happens that people are just… it’s too fearful. They are afraid to face suffering, particularly when it is somebody that they love. So, that reaction can happen, can’t it? That’s not very compassionate. 

So, taking seriously the heavy pain of others (and here, we are just dealing with human situations) is helpful for developing compassion, which is what we said at the beginning of this discussion. And not wanting to think about the pain that either I would experience or that somebody else experiences is usually based on fear, which is based on grasping for a big, solid “me.” 

Three-Step Meditation on Being on the Brink of Falling to a Worse Rebirth

Let’s deal now with our own possible future experience of a hellish rebirth. After all, this is in the discussion of renunciation of samsara. The usual meditation of it is in three steps, and usually, it is done imagining falling off a cliff – so, going to a lower realm, a lower rebirth. 

[1] First you imagine that you are actually falling and how you really wouldn’t want that to happen. So, now you are going to take measures to prevent that. This is usually where it comes in, in the lam-rim. Standard lam-rim, initial scope, is avoiding worse rebirths – so, just avoiding the destructive behavior that will bring that about (the context of avoiding samsara altogether isn’t mentioned here, but I like to bring it to that level). So, you think, “I am falling, and I really don’t want this to happen.” You are not yet thinking in terms of voidness of the solid “me,” so there is some fear here (although that might not be the optimal state of mind). So, then you put a safe direction, or refuge, in your life: “I am going to stop acting destructively. I wish I had not acted destructively and brought this situation about, but now it’s a bit too late.” 

[2] The next step is to imagine that you are on the edge of the cliff, just about to fall off. At that point, you really don’t want that to happen, and you really want to avoid it and to take some steps to avoid it. 

[3] Next, you imagine that you are a little ways off but approaching the end of the cliff. So, there is still a little bit of time before you reach it, and you think, “I really want to avoid this.” So, based on fear, thinking of a solid “me,” you could refrain from acting destructively and act in a constructive way to avoid that type of rebirth. But then you’d be thinking in terms of a solid “me”: I don’t want to experience that; I am afraid of that. What does that bring about? It brings about another samsaric rebirth but in a better realm, a better type of situation.

How Does the Understanding of Voidness Affect the Meditation on an Emotional Level? 

So, what would it be like if we applied here an understanding of voidness, understanding that we don’t exist in an impossible way – that there isn’t a solid “me”? How would that affect this type of meditation? What do you think? Why don’t we take a minute to think about that and make a pause. 

OK. So, if we do this type of meditation concerning the suffering of the hells and wanting to avoid them, and if we do that with an understanding of voidness – at whatever level we might understand it – how would that affect the meditation? 

Participant: For me, it kind of takes off the panic of the immediate situation so that I can look. And I think that it kind of enables compassion because before, I was so scared of falling off the cliff and was upset. If I take voidness and apply it, then it’s like, OK, I can take a step back and look at what’s happening.

Dr. Berzin: What Georg says is that it takes away the panic and allows us to develop compassion for others who might be experiencing this and to be a little bit more objective, to step back a little bit. 

Anybody else? 

To me, the real question is the reality of the whole situation. With an understanding of voidness – that the hells don’t exist in impossible ways, that I don’t exist in impossible ways, and that they arise dependently on causes and conditions (so, understanding voidness in terms of dependent arising) – can you still retain the conventional reality of it and have an emotional response to it? This is the real question to me because it is quite easy to say, “Well, there is no ‘me’ that is experiencing it, and there’s no suffering and no hells. It’s just cause and effect,” and to become so distant from it that you don’t feel anything. If you don’t feel anything, will you do anything to avoid it? This, I think, is a very interesting question. 

The Rationale for Having a Graded Approach to Thinking about the Hells

Personally, I think that the more that you think about the graded stages of the path, lam-rim, the more you see how extraordinarily intelligent it is to have the path graded at this level. Why concerning this particular point? Concerning this point, first, you are taking the “me” and the suffering in the hells as being very real and solid, and we are developing fear, which, as we saw, is based on thinking of a solid “me” – “I don’t want this to happen to me.” So, there is strong emotion here. That strong emotion, as neurotic as it might be, gets us to stop acting destructively – if we take behavioral cause and effect, the principles of karma, seriously. “OK, I am really not going to act that way. I am really not going to continue fishing and hunting” or whatever we might do that is destructive and that could lead to this type of rebirth. So, there is a strong emotional basis, neurotic as it might be, and we definitely act. 

Now, if on that basis and the habit of not acting destructively, you go to the intermediate level and apply the understanding of voidness, then you would want to avoid any type of samsaric rebirth because you see that they all just go up and down and up and down. You could be in a wonderful, happy relationship (just to just limit it to a human realm) – “I am in love, and it’s the most blissful thing.” Then, all of a sudden, something happens in the relationship, like the person says or does something or doesn’t do what you want them to do, and all of a sudden – bam! – it’s changed into a hell on a human level. “It’s horrible being with this person! We are always arguing, always fighting…” It just goes up and down and up and down. So, you develop disgust with that (that’s renunciation) with an understanding that to get out of that, you have to understand the voidness of the self and so on that just perpetuate rebirth in this continuing samsaric situation.

Now, to look at the hell realms, the heaven realms and these sorts of things in the same way, what is the emotion here? The emotion is disgust: “Enough already! I have had this over and over again. This is really horrible.” But still, we have to avoid the destructive behavior. And if we are going to feel anything like compassion for others, our hearts have to move; feelings have to move. Just to think, “Well, I don’t exist in a solid way, and it’s cause and effect. And cause and effect is the understanding of voidness of cause and effect and disgust with that…” Well, disgust could be a not very strong emotion. We could just feel, “Oh, enough already,” although that disgust – renunciation – is supposed to be a fairly strong emotion. 

So, if we start on the level of the initial scope of having fear and thinking in terms of a solid “me,” at least, we will build up the habit of not acting destructively. And that will continue once we get the understanding of voidness as well. There won’t be so much of a danger of giving that up. In other words, it becomes easier to affirm the conventional truth of things. I think. Of course, it is possible to go from one extreme to the other extreme – to go from everything solidly exists to nothing exists. But I think having some experience of believing that everything solidly exists helps us to reaffirm conventional reality. I think. I don’t know. These are just my own thoughts. What do you think? 

Participant: I don’t know if I can explain it. Sometimes we are brought into a situation where we have to learn. Then, we understand why it is like that – our desire or what we are afraid of. Through the situation, we learn. 

Dr. Berzin: Well, yes. That is an additional point, which is that sometimes we need to experience something that we are very afraid of in order to learn about it. Then we gain experience and see that it is not so terrible. This is a general piece of advice. 

When somebody is facing a difficult situation, a very helpful piece of advice is to imagine the worst thing possible that could happen. What is the worst thing possible? You lose your job – what is the worst thing possible? Well, here in Germany, you live on government support. You have to go to the finance office every week or month or whatever it is. That’s the worst that could happen. “That’s not so bad; I can live with that.” Or if you are in America, well, at least there are food stamps. There is something. So, you imagine what the worst is. And if you can deal with that, then it is not so frightening. Similarly, if you have actually experienced what you are afraid of and have dealt with it without freaking out, then it is not so frightening. That’s why thinking of these terrible realms is helpful. 

But, still, it is very difficult, I think, to read the descriptions of these things – being boiled alive, having molten copper poured down your mouth, and a red-hot poker stuck up your anus, and so on – and to imagine that. Really difficult. As a human, the worst that can happen from that is that you die; then it’s finished. In the hell realm, that doesn’t happen. You die, and are revived, and you experience it over and over again, five hundred times a day. And that could be for thousands and tens of thousands of years. 

I think that this topic of the suffering of the hell realms, as uncomfortable as it might be, actually brings up many, many things to think about, starting from “Why don’t I want to think about this? Why don’t I want to hear about it? Let’s just hear the feel-good Dharma: be nice, be loving; everything is wonderful, go to a pure land… la-di-da,” and this sort of thing. Many people would like to hear only that in the Dharma. 

The Difficulty of Accepting Responsibility for the Suffering We Experience

Participant: It’s really too much to be convinced that one is really responsible for the suffering of this hell realm. It is difficult to think of what happened to all the Jewish people in the Holocaust and to think that this was their fault in a way. For me, this is very difficult. Also, when you see the witches that were burned… these were women who were a little bit not like the average. They were a little bit strange, so they were burned alive or tortured. To think that these people were really responsible for their own suffering, for me, is very difficult. 

Dr. Berzin: Mariana points out a very important point to really think about, which is that it is quite difficult to think about the terrible suffering, even just within a human realm, of the people who were in concentration camps, the Jews during the Second World War, the gypsies and many other groups or the witches in the Medieval times who were burned alive, and to understand that they are responsible karmically for what they experienced.

Participant: So, then to say, “OK. As a result, I will do only good. Then I won’t suffer all this,” doesn’t fit together.

Dr. Berzin: The question really always revolves around whether there is a cause to what happens to us. Is there a cause of suffering? What’s the true cause of suffering? That’s the real question that’s behind the topic that you are bringing up. And is the true cause of suffering external, external circumstances? All the various cause that brought about the Nazi regime or the witch hunts in Medieval Europe and the circumstances that were available at that time for torturing and killing people – was it just everybody else’s fault, or is there any responsibility from one’s own side? And how does suffering arise? This is the question, really. 

Certainly, Buddhism is never saying, “You were bad, and therefore you deserve to be punished.” And of course, things don’t make sense when you think only in terms of this lifetime because people could have acted very nicely in this lifetime. But if I think back to when I was a very small child… we had a back porch, which was on the ground floor, and right next to the back porch were all the garbage pails. There were a lot of flies, and as a three- and four-year-old child, I delighted in going out there with a fly swatter and killing flies. Then you think, “Well, what’s the experience of the fly being hunted down and smashed with a fly swatter? And what would it be like for me to experience that?” Then you get to the hell realms. So, despite all my Buddhist training, Buddhist practice and so on and the instincts that were there to engage in that, there were certainly the instincts as well to go out as a three- and four-year-old child to swat flies for fun. That makes one think. 

Yeah, Karsten?

Participant: I was just thinking about this. Can you blame people if they really suffer and you see it? Then I thought, OK, it is brutal anyway, so it doesn’t matter which concept you take. Say it’s from a creator god. Still, the pain is there. It doesn’t matter somehow. If you say it’s by coincidence, or you say it’s caused by society… whatever concept you take, it’s still brutal. If you say it’s God, it’s also not a nice concept. If you say it’s by coincidence, it’s also terrible. If you say it’s society, it’s also…

Dr. Berzin: That’s a very, very good, Karsten. This is excellent.

Participant: It’s pain. And somehow it doesn’t matter which concept I take to explain it.

In Terms of Compassion, the Cause of Suffering Does Not Matter; We Want to Remove It Simply Because It Hurts

Dr. Berzin: Right. That’s an excellent point, Karsten. What he is saying is that, ultimately, it doesn’t really matter what the cause of the other people’s suffering is in terms of the development of compassion. Whether you conceive of that pain being sent to them by a wrathful god because they were wicked and bad or you think of it being created by society or you think of just happening by chance or coincidence or bad luck or whatever – that doesn’t matter in terms of compassion. Because as Shantideva says, pain and suffering need to be removed not because it is my pain or your pain but simply because it is pain and it hurts. Likewise, pain and suffering need to be removed not because god created it or because it came from bad luck or from a terrible society. It needs to be removed simply because it hurts. So, this is very good.

But then that reminds me of Chandrakirti. In his introduction to Madhayamakavatara (Supplement to [Nagarjuna’s Root Verses on] Madhayamaka), he speaks about three types of compassion. 

• There is compassion based on just thinking of the suffering of others – so, having the wish, “May it be removed.” 
• Then there is the compassion that is based on understanding impermanence – that the beings who are experiencing the suffering don’t understand that their suffering is impermanent, that it’s not going last; it’s fleeting, and so on (because the question is how to help them remove the suffering and how to avoid creating and experiencing more suffering in the future). So, in addition to the first type of compassion, there is the understanding of impermanence and wanting to give them the understanding of impermanence. 
• Then there is the compassion that is based on realizing that these beings who are suffering don’t understand voidness, which is the true origin – that unawareness, or ignorance, is the true origin of suffering (second noble truth). So, based on that, you have compassion and the wish to give them that understanding. 

So, there’s the compassion with which you want to give them a band-aid, basically, or an aspirin to get rid of their pain. Then there’s the compassion with which you want to give them the understanding of impermanence. Then there’s the compassion with which you want to give them the understanding of voidness. 

To be able to remove the pain of others and to remove your own pain, you need some sort of method to eliminate it so that it doesn’t recur. That’s very much involved with the meditations on the hell realms. What can you do to avoid it? Well, stop acting destructively, for one thing, or, on a deeper level, understand that what generates rebirth, whether it’s in a hell realm or a heavenly realm, is grasping for a solid “me.” Whether you act destructively or constructively is based on the solid “me.” So, you want to get rid of that. If you get rid of that, of course, you only act constructively. But your point is that – just immediately – suffering needs to be removed simply because it is suffering and it hurts.

Participant: I agree with that. But that is another motive; it’s different from acting out of fear. To alleviate the suffering – that is another motive; it’s not the motive of fear.

Participant: But I understood that you had some problems with this concept of karma – that people are responsible. My point was to say that it doesn’t matter which concept you take: they’re all quite brutal.

Dr. Berzin: Karsten was saying that if you had a problem with karma – people being responsible for their suffering – that it doesn’t matter what karma is involved because suffering is brutal and it hurts and needs to be eliminated. 

But again, it brings us back to the topic of how seriously you take the suffering of others. Do you give it any reality? To just see it on the television over and over again or to just read it in the news, it doesn’t have much of a reality to most people, I think. You know, “Another twenty-two people were killed in a suicide bomb in Baghdad” – so, what else is new? On the other hand, actually living there and seeing it and knowing people who have been killed just because they went out to buy a loaf of bread makes it much more immediate.

Participant: But then also, what can I change for these people? 

Dr. Berzin: What can we change for these people?

Participant: I can speak with Americans. I can demonstrate on these things. But there’s a lot I cannot do.

Dr. Berzin: Then the question is: what can we do in the face of all this suffering? We can’t actually stop the whole American thing, and we can’t stop the sectarian civil war within Iraq. We can’t just easily stop the violence. As an individual person, it’s, of course, very difficult. Do we just go out and demonstrate? What do we actually do? 

Look at the example of someone like His Holiness the Dalai Lama. If we were developed spiritually to as high a degree as he is… well, he can’t stop it either. Buddha couldn’t stop it. There is no such thing as an omnipotent god. No such thing that anybody can become omnipotent. But he can sure influence an awful lot of people to think in terms of nonviolence and so on and, so, can make a larger impact. That brings us to the topic of bodhichitta, which is what motivates us to try to reach enlightenment so that we can be as best help as possible, which is to basically influence others to act in more positive ways and to look at the larger picture of causes for the situation. 

When we look at causes, causes are not just… This, I think, is part of the answer to your question about being karmically responsible for being in a concentration camp or being burned alive as a witch. Well, causality has a much, much vaster scope than that. We don’t live in a vacuum. So, it’s not that I have acted in a vacuum and that I did this, and therefore, I experience that as its result. There are also all the various other social, economic, and historical causes of the whole society in which one lives. All of that is interconnected. Those other causal factors provide the circumstances in which we experience a certain amount of suffering as the ripening of our karma.   

So, in terms of a certain ethnic group being persecuted, you have to also look at the behavior of the ethnic group in general, at the perception of it and why are they perceived that way… the whole thing, regardless of whether we are talking about the Jews during the Second World War or the Muslims and Arabs now in the Middle Eastern conflicts. There’s the whole worldview of good versus evil and the crusader mentality and that whole bit. Many, many causal forces are involved here. It’s not just solidly existent you or solidly existent me who was bad and that, therefore, one experiences this or that as the result. 

But the point is, I think, that a result, what we experience, is a combination; it arises dependently on internal and external circumstances and causes. And we try to at least change the internal aspects in terms of karma. I think that’s what is involved. 

Anyway, it would nice to go through these verses so we don’t have to deal with the hells again next time. So, let us do that.

Last time, we read Verse 77, which is:

[77] For limited beings who commit faulty acts there’ll be the constant suffering in joyless realms: (known as) reviving, black thread, intensely heating, crushing, howling, pain unrelenting, and the likes.

Here, Nagarjuna lists the hot hells. He doesn’t speak of the cold hells. He only speaks of the hot ones. Last time, we went through a description of them. The next verses basically describe each of them. So, I’ll go through the verses and relate them to the ones that are described here. 

Verse 78, the first half of it, is:

[78] Some are pressed like sesame, and likewise others are ground into powder like the finest flour. 

That’s the Crushing Hell. Remember, there was, for me, swatting the flies, crushing the flies. Also, if you’ve stepped on ants and this type of thing, then this is the type of hell where you go. You are placed between two mountains that have the shape of ram’s heads and are smashed in between them again and again. “Some are pressed like sesame, and likewise others are ground into powder like the finest flour.” 

The second half of that verse:

Some are cut up with saws, and likewise others are split with unbearable sharp-bladed axes. 

That’s the Black Thread Hell where a line is drawn on the beings there, and they’re chopped along the line and then put back together again and again. That’s for sadists and these types of people – people that like to catch flies and pull their legs or wings off and these sorts of really nasty things that, sometimes, sadistic children do. 

Then verse 79:

[79] Likewise, some are made to drink, till completely filled, flaming broths of melted, boiling liquid (iron); and some are impaled straight through on barbed iron stakes, blazing with flames.

That’s the Heating Hell in which people are boiled alive in molten iron and boiling copper is thrown down their mouths, and they are impaled on skewers of blazing hot iron things. You can think of people who boil lobsters alive – that’s not terribly nice for the lobster. Or sometimes, when there is a big infestation of ants, some people boil a kettle of water and pour the boiling water over the ants. This type of thing. 

The point here is, if you create suffering for others, eventually, you have to experience it yourself. The example that I always use, a funny example, is that if, as a baby, you go to the toilet in your diaper and make a smelling mess, you are the one who has to live with it, even though the mother might have to clean it up. But you experience it. So, that’s the Heating Hell. 

Verse 80:

[80] Some are overpowered by ferocious dogs having iron fangs and throw their hands up to the sky; and others, powerless, have ravens, with sharp iron beaks and unbearable claws, peck out (their eyes).

This is a description of the neighboring hells. Remember, we talked about the neighboring ones that you have to pass through on the way to any of the hells. One of these neighboring hells as the Shalmali tree, a type of tree with leaves that are like swords. When you climb up it to find your loved ones that seemed to have appeared on the top, you find out that they’re ravens that peck out your eyes. Then, when you then look down and see your loved ones on the bottom, you climb down and are cut all the way down, and those loved ones turn into dogs that eat you up.  

Then 81:

[81] Some, by having maggots, assorted bugs, horseflies, and tens of thousands of black hornets tremendously inflict the kinds of wounds that are unbearable to be touched, are eaten up and, pillaged, cry out with screams.

That’s referring to another one of these neighboring hells, the swamp of decomposing quicksand, which is where you are in this quicksand and it dissolves your body and where you also have these insects and things that eat you up. 

Then 82:

[82] Some are burned in a mass of blazing coals, without relent, their mouths just gaping open; and some are boiled in great cauldrons made from iron, (tumbling) topsy-turvy, like dumplings of rice.

This is the pit of hot coals that you have to pass through. 

Then 83:

[83] Anyone with negative karmic force, who’s not terrified, in a thousand ways, from hearing about the immeasurable sufferings in the joyless realms that they are cut off from by merely the stopping of a single breath, must have a nature (as hard) as a diamond.

This refers to the meditations that we were describing – that what separates us from the hellish rebirths is just one breath, like being on the edge of a cliff, about to fall off. The whole meditation is to think that that can happen in just one moment, at any moment, if you have built up the negative karma. Therefore, you really want to avoid it, though here, it says being “terrified” of that. And if you don’t have that, you have a nature as hard as a diamond. In other words, your heart isn’t moved. It’s important that you develop some sort of emotional feeling from it that actually pushes you to do something to avoid it. 

Then, there’s a very important verse that we have been discussing, Verse 84:

[84] (Because,) if even seeing paintings of the joyless realms, hearing (about them), holding (images of them) in your mind, reading about or (watching) physical enactments (of them) makes you generate terror, what need to mention when you’d actually have to experience (them) as the unbearable ripening (of your negative karma)?

That gets into the whole discussion that we’ve been having – that if we can’t take watching them, seeing them, reading about them and things like that, how are we ever going to deal with having to actually experience them, let alone dealing with other people who are experiencing them? So, this is important – to overcome our hesitation, our reticence, our distance, thinking, “I don’t want to look at severe pain. I don’t want to deal with it. Everything should just be nice.” It’s not easy. We shouldn’t think that it is easy. 

I mean, I don’t like to see horror movies; they give me nightmares. If there’s some horror scene in a movie, I shut my eyes. That is a natural response for a lot of people. You just don’t want to, in a sense, “pollute” your mind with that. But that’s really a very close-hearted attitude. Very, very close-hearted. And if I have nightmares and I can’t get that imagine out of my mind of… there’s a movie that I remember seeing in which somebody had their fingernails pulled out, and… Ah! I don’t want to have to see that! But that thought keeps coming, and there is fear. What’s behind that? That’s why I brought up the whole topic of what’s behind not wanting to experience that. It’s grasping for a solid “me” and grasping for a solid reality of that.  

Then 85:

[85] Just as, from among all pleasures, that of the depletion of craving is set as the overlord of pleasures; so too, from among all sufferings, the sufferings of the joyless realms of unrelenting pain are the most unbearable.

That refers to the lowest, most horrible of the hot hells, the one of unrelenting pain, what’s called Avici Hell in Sanskrit, where you are burned by fire in all ten directions around and above you and an eleventh fire inside you. 

Then 86:

[86] However much suffering there might be in this (world) from being violently stabbed for a day with three hundred spears, that doesn’t even roughly (approach), it doesn’t even match a fraction of the tiniest sufferings in the joyless realms.

This makes it quite clear that when we are talking about the hells, we are not talking just about the hellish types of sufferings in the human realms. It says here that that “doesn’t even match a fraction of” the actual suffering that we are talking about here. So, don’t be satisfied and say, “It’s bad enough – I can’t handle thinking about medieval tortures people poking out other people’s eyes and stuff like. Don’t make me think of the actual hells. That’s a bit too much.” Nagarjuna is saying that if you’re going to deal with it, deal with the real thing, not a human version of it. And it’s going to last for a long time. It’s not only the intensity of the pain and suffering but the duration of it, which is very long. 

Verse 87:

[87] Even if you experience extremely unbearable sufferings like that for hundreds of millions of years, so long as your destructive force has not been depleted, you’ll not be parted from (that) life for that long.

So, it is going to go on and on and on in any of these hellish rebirths until the negative karmic force from the destructive behavior has been depleted and is finished. Until then, it is going to go on. That’s why we really need to practice purification and all these things to try to lessen, if not eliminate, the negative karmic force and to prevent that negative karmic force from getting bigger and bigger by adding to it, by not regretting it and these sorts of things. 

So, what do we need to do? Verse 88:

[88] The seeds of these fruits of destructive force are the faulty actions of your body, speech, and mind. (so,) with all your strength, make effort such that you’ll not have had even a speck of them from anything whatsoever. 

The causes for this type of negative karmic force and the hellish rebirths and suffering that come from it are the faulty actions of our body, speech, and mind – so, our destructive behavior. So, with all your strength, make efforts not to build up that negative karmic force by acting destructively, which is the cause of negative karmic force.

That is the rather long section that Nagarjuna has on the hell realms.

Participant: I think Gampopa goes deeper into detail about these hells.

Dr. Berzin: Oh, yes. Gampopa, Tsongkhapa and all the lam-rims go into further detail. But you’ll find that when they quote a source for it, they quote these verses. 

Participant: My question would be: are those random pictures Nagarjuna gives about these hells?

Dr. Berzin: No. I am sure that they come from sutras. I don’t know the specific sutras where they come from, but I am sure that they are there. 

Descriptions of Hells Are Found in Many Religions

But this is in common with the Hindu scriptures as well. These descriptions are the standard Indian descriptions of the hells. And if you look at Dante, the Christian descriptions of the hells and so on, you find something very similar… also in the Muslim description of the hells. It makes you wonder. What is it based on that so many different cultures and so many different religions describe them practically the same? Did they borrow from each other, or is it based on some experience?

Participant: Did the Greeks have hells?

Dr. Berzin: I don’t really recall. Some of the Greeks spoke about rebirth. But hell realms? They had, certainly, the god realms. But could you be reborn as a god? I don’t think so. Did they have the hells?

Participant: Yes. Hades…

Dr. Berzin: Oh, Hades. You could go to the underworld. They certainly had the underworld. But what happened in the underworld if you went there?

Participant: There are persons who experienced these hells.

Dr. Berzin: So, the ancient Greek did have them?

Participant: There are persons in Hades that experienced different things.

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, yes, they’re there. I wonder how far back it goes – Babylon, Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt? I don’t know. I think the Egyptians must have had hells as well. 

Participant: They had hells.

Dr. Berzin: I would guess so.

Participant: And for the Hindus, what is the reason to land up there?

Dr. Berzin: For the Hindus? Again, it was negative behavior – negative behavior particularly in terms of not living up to the mores of your caste. That’s the whole thing in the Bhagavad Gita, which, of course, comes later in Hindu philosophy. But in the Gita, Arjuna is faced with a decision whether to fight in the Mahabharata Wars against his relatives or not. Krishna advises him that it is better to kill and to die doing your duty (this regards the warrior caste) than not to do your duty and, also, that you are only killing an illusion and stuff like that. Then it gets into a whole discussion of maya, of illusion. 

Participant: I don’t know if I recall this correctly, but I think that Freud had the point of view that the notion of hell comes from very deep layers of consciousness, like from very archetype thinking.

Dr. Berzin: I don’t think that it was Freud. I think that it was Jung. Jung certainly identified this with the negative aspects, with the shadow and these sorts of things as an archetype within the collective unconscious. So, how do you explain that? There are just different ways of explaining it. You could say that if there’s beginningless rebirth, everybody has experienced a hellish rebirth; therefore, that is part of the collective unconscious – if you want to accept that concept from Jung. 

In any case, it’s not a topic to just totally dismiss. I think this is the main point that I wanted to make here. There are many, many different levels on which it can be very productive and helpful to meditate on and think about these hell realms, whether we think about them with the initial scope of motivation of just wanting to avoid terrible rebirths or with the intermediate level motivation, which is where it’s presented here – wanting to get rid of samsara altogether – or with the advanced level of motivation with which we develop compassion for others who are experiencing this and wanting to help them as much as possible to overcome that.

Let’s end here. After this, Nagarjuna goes into the suffering of the other realms – the animals, the pretas, the clutching ghosts, the gods and the asuras. Then he goes into getting rid of samsara altogether. So, he goes through all the different types of rebirth realms. As I say, these are the source of the quotations that you find everywhere in the later literature about these rebirth states.