There seems to be some strange trend that people refuse to believe a place like hell exists. Some people think this is a fear based teaching devised by unscrupulous religions. Some are therefore in denial about it, wanting to keep their heads in the clouds and pretending that life is perfectly happy and nothing ever goes wrong. Strange way to think, because they are usually devastated when anything really bad happens in their life, betrayed by their pollyannish thinking.
I am not teaching these things to try to put fear into you, rather I am teaching these because I love you and do not want you to suffer. A hell realm would be the worst rebirth filled with suffering with no relief, that you could take. I want to help prevent you from ever going there, again. Yes, again. The idea that you have one life, and at the end of it you either go to heaven or hell and spend eternity there is wrong. First of all eternity is forever, so that is impossible because you have this life now and you are not in heaven or hell, so that is ruled out.
Hell is just one realm that you can take rebirth in and you have been there before. In fact, all of us have been there many times over. How can we know that hell exists? Well, if we have ever experienced hellish traumas or abuse, this indicates that things can get really bad, so bad things exist. If we hear on the news about people suffering horrific torture or other atrocities, this shows us that humans are capable of these extreme negative ways of thinking and behaving. Horror movies and demonic characters also show us these things are possible. Hellish nightmares we may have also let us know that we have suffered greatly like this in the past. Simply the fact that we fear that horrible things may happen to us, also indicate that hell is possible. We may fear these sufferings because we have endured them before.
People also think there is some omnipotent being that chooses where we take rebirth when we die. There is no omnipotent being that exists. It is our own actions, the karma we create that dictates where we will take rebirth in our next life. If we live a life of crime, harming others with no thought or care of the well being of others we are going to end up in hell. The more selfish and self absorbed we are the greater our chances of taking rebirth there. Every time we engage in negative actions we create the cause to suffer in the future. The more suffering we cause others, the more suffering we will experience eventually. The actions from all of our past lives that we have not purified yet are also waiting to ripen upon us, so even if we have been a good person in this life, it does not guarantee we will not end up in hell at some point.
Anyone that frequently causes others harm, is a life time criminal or is a negative person, most likely has imprinting from their previous lives of behaving in these ways, and has brought that with them into this life. If they are unable to stop acting badly, then they are going to go to hell. There are many levels or areas within hell, all with their own brand of torment. Where you end up depends on how you behaved in this and your other lives. The worse your behaviour the more terrible hell you will take rebirth in.
There are eight hot hells that burn with an unceasing fire. They all have different magnitudes of suffering. In some of them, the beings that have been born there attack each other constantly with terrible weapons. They are cut to pieces over and over dying many times, only to be reborn there until they clear up the negative karma that landed them there in the first place. In other realms, their bodies are stretched out as thin as possible over burning hot surfaces and branded all over with hot irons. In other realms they are pelted with molten hot rocks and coals or end up in boiling molten liquid they cannot get out of. There are torturous beings that control some of these realms and are relentlessly cruel to the inhabitants.
Along with the hot hells, there are six various areas you could end up with other horrific experiences. Places of fiery ash or excrement. Some places of acid and others of sharp sword and knife like plants that cut you up when you try to climb them to get out of danger. You are doomed to suffer greatly no matter which type of hell you find yourself in. The one hell that sent shivers up and down my spine was the one where a wonderful object that you have attachment for appears at the top of a tree. You climb up it as razor sharp downward pointing thorns shred your skin as you go, but your desire for the object is too great to stop you. Once you reach the top you discover the item has disappeared and then reappeared on the ground below you. Determined to obtain that object you are so attached to, you climb back down. The thorns on the tree have all turned pointing upward to catch your skin and continue to cut you all the way down. You repeat this action over and over trying in vain to possess that desirous object, but never getting it, until your karma is worn out and you stop being there.
Along with these, there are eight cold hells. The ground is completely made of ice and the area you end up in is surrounded by impenetrable mountains of ice. These hells are pitch black so you cannot see anything and a horrendous blizzard is constantly blowing and howling around you. You are trapped in the place, naked and freezing in the bitter cold. There is no warmth to be found. In some of these hells, your skin turns blue and cracks with open sores from the exposure. In others, disgusting boils and blisters form from the cold erupting on your skin and form on top of each other only to eventually burst and ooze. Your body can freeze solid and break into pieces, shattering on the icy ground, only to be reborn again and again until you once again clear up that karma that caused you to take rebirth there.
As if that wasn't enough there are places called resembling hells. These are hell like places that cater to individual negative karma that have greater suffering than the animal or hungry ghost realm, but not quite as bad as the actual hell realms. Unlike the hell realms where there is no respite from the agony suffered, the resembling hells can have breaks occasionally depending on the karma you have created.
It may surprise you to learn that we have all spent the most number of our lives in hell. If we were to get our mail forwarded from life after life, hell would be our main address it would be sent to. This is due to our self cherishing and putting our desires above those of others, from causing harm to others for our selfish gains. We all behave this way from time to time and we have all had lives when we behaved most abhorrently towards others causing us to collect such negative karma as to cause us to return to hell over and over again. Serial killers, mass murderers, terrorists, tyrants, abductors, war mongers, torturers, executioners to name some of the worst offenders will all obviously end up in hell. The worse our behaviour, the worse hell we will end up in. The hot hells being the worst.
If you are afraid of taking rebirth in hell that is a good thing, as it will help to motivate you to do what is needed to avoid it. Fear is just an emotion, it is not realistic to avoid it. It is good to fear taking rebirth in hell or any of the lower realms for that matter. That is actually logical. It would not make sense to fear something that will benefit you, but fear of something that will cause you suffering can be used wisely. Your fear can help you to stop behaving in negative ways, to stop you from harming others, so that you reduce the risk of going to hell. If you pretend hell doesn't exist, you will not adjust your actions and could very easily wind up there in your next life.
Since we are all guilty of doing negative actions like killing, cheating, lying, and stealing in this very lifetime and have definitely done them in our past lives we will all end up in hell at some point, unless we can learn to discipline our minds to stop us from engaging in these bad behaviours. If you don't think you have ever done a killing action, think back over your life to see if you have squished a bug or killed a rodent of any kind. These count as negative killing actions. It is still killing if you kill something other than a human. We have all done these things, and denying that we have only creates issues for us later. As we are unable to go back in time and undo all the negative actions we have performed, we need to do the four purifying actions to clear up our lousy karma that is waiting to ripen on us.
Currently, we are unable to choose where we will be born, so we need to be careful of how we behave. We need to try our best to cause no harm. We need to do as many good and virtuous deeds as possible. We need to dedicate those good actions, so we don't lose them if we do something negative. Doing these things helps us to avoid taking rebirth in hell. If we do enough positive actions and safeguard them by dedicating them, we may take a higher rebirth in the future. The place that is the opposite of hell is the god realm. We rarely take rebirth there because we rarely overcome our self cherishing enough to put others before ourselves. This is the place we will look at in the next podcast.
The podcast can be heard here: https://youtu.be/v4MKXkmOyH8
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