Naraka

Ficus_religiosa

What are your view on the idea of Naraka? I must admit, that it was kind of a bummer to me, that the Tipitaka contains teachings such as the Devaduta Sutta, where Buddha explains how humans are tortured in hellish realms by being burnt, beaten, pierced with spears, eaten by monsters and other gruesome things. It seems so out of line with the vast amount of day-to-day advice on real life..
Suddenly the teachings are just another religious looney farm where sinners roast in hell.. Or?

upalabhava

Really naughty people need the teachings about really naughty Hell.

Ficus_religiosa

So youre saying its just .. Essentially a load of it.. And that Buddha didnt believe it himself?

sukhita

The idea of Naraka is shared by almost all Indian religions (Vedic, Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism); so maybe it is not strictly a Buddhist concept - just borrowed and used to explain things to people who already believe in Naraka. Just a guess...

upalabhava

I don't know.

Hell realms are mentioned in every discussion of Buddhist rebirth that I have ever read. Before you read the Devaduta description of the Hell realms, what did you think they were?

What I think is extremely interesting are the similarities between the descriptions of Hell as found in the Devaduta Sutta and the modern Christian conceptions of Hell. We know that the Judaic concepts of Sheol and Gehenna are nothing like the Christian concept of eternal Hellfire. Sheol is just a waiting place for all dead people, and Gehenna was an actual place where the bodies of great sinners were cut up and cremated, which disallowed them the opportunity of ever being resurrected. The New Testament turns Gehenna into a place of "eternal fire", though.

How came the change from crematory grounds to place of punishment in the after-life?

Did the Christians get it from the Buddhist monastics that Ashoka sent all over the world and those that inevitably came after?

(Graves of Buddhists have been found in ancient Alexandria, I believe. And accounts of yogis and sramanas can be found in the early historians.)



I think there is much in the Buddhist literature that would make a rationalist, skeptic, or materialist doubtful of the authenticity of that which he found upsetting. I wouldn't worry about it though.

Buddha wouldn't want you to just take his word for it and, perhaps, this Devaduta Sutta is for those of lesser capabilities that can only do just that.

seeker242

According to Buddhist cosmology, there is more than one realm of existence. This human world is one of them and these hell worlds are simply other realms of existence. Just because it has cosmological teachings, I don't think that makes it a "looney farm"

Ficus_religiosa

Well, I think its a pity that this sound philosophy is scarred in the same way as other religions.. I find the teachings appealing, and I hadnt expected to find such gruesomeness in any of them - I imagined the hell realms as places of more 'relaxed' suffering, such as moderate cold/heat, thirst, restlessness - not the whole package with demons and stuff.. Anyway, Im not a buddhist, I just practice the Way.. I guess I was just turned a little off by this..
Anyway, the Buddha saw different realms - but we dont know if he saw everything or only glimpses - and a glimpse at our world at the wrong place and time would give equally disturbing impressions just a thought

Jason

Ficus_religiosa wrote: »

Well, I think its a pity that this sound philosophy is scarred in the same way as other religions.. I find the teachings appealing, and I hadnt expected to find such gruesomeness in any of them - I imagined the hell realms as places of more 'relaxed' suffering, such as moderate cold/heat, thirst, restlessness - not the whole package with demons and stuff.. Anyway, Im not a buddhist, I just practice the Way.. I guess I was just turned a little off by this..
Anyway, the Buddha saw different realms - but we dont know if he saw everything or only glimpses - and a glimpse at our world at the wrong place and time would give equally disturbing impressions just a thought

Often times suffering isn't relaxed, but excruciatingly painful, and we cause a lot of that suffering and mental torment through unskillful actions. I think that's partially what these vivid descriptions are trying to get across.

It should also be kept in mind that when the Buddha talks about hell (niraya), he's often talking about unpleasant or painful painful mental feelings "like those of the beings in hell" (AN 4.235). Personally, I think the Buddha held a more nuanced position than a lot traditionalists believe. For example, David Kalupahana notes in his book, Buddhist Philosophy, that:

A careful study of these concepts of heaven and hell, gods and evil spirits, reveals that they were accepted in Buddhism as regulative ideas or concepts only. The fact that they are merely theories based on speculation is well brought out it certain statements by the Buddha. To a Brahman who questioned the Buddha as to whether there are gods, the replied, "It is not so." When asked whether there are no gods, the Buddha’s reply was the same, "It is not so." And finally to the Brahman who was baffled by these replies, the Buddha said, "The world, O Brahman, is loud in agreement that there are gods" (ucce sammatam kho etam brahmana lokasmin yadidam atthi devati). The same is the attitude of the Buddha with regard to the concept of hell. In the Samyutta-nikaya he is represented as saying that it is only the uneducated ordinary man (assutava puthujjano) who believes that there is a hell beneath the great ocean. According to the Buddha's view, hell is another name for unpleasant feelings (dukkha vedana). [The first reference is MN 2.213, the second is S 4.206]

That's not to say that the Buddha didn't also believe in such things himself (or even know them via extrasensory perception), but it's interesting to note that he generally only mentions them in teachings concerning morality to those who already have a belief in such things (as the case seems to be here), which corresponds to what the Buddha called "right view with effluents, siding with merit, resulting in the acquisitions [of becoming]," and they never appear in his 'supramundane' teachings, which correspond to what the Buddha called "noble right view, without effluents, transcendent, a factor of the path" (MN 117).

And just for reference, I think Dhamma Dhatu gave a good response to a similar question elsewhere along the lines of what upalabhava said above regarding "those of lesser capabilities":

]Whatever the afterlife teaching, it is designed to encourage morality in people who are spirituality blind in that they cannot see good & evil for what they really are. The spiritually blind are taught via fear rather than via wisdom. The blind are not being taught 'sight' but, instead, fear.

The Bible states 'wisdom is fear of the Lord'. Buddhism also has its fair share of teachings about hell.

The Buddha said:

"Abandon what is unskillful, monks. It is possible to abandon what is unskillful. If it were not possible to abandon what is unskillful, I would not say to you, 'Abandon what is unskillful.' If this abandoning of what is unskillful were conducive to harm and pain, I would not say to you, 'Abandon what is unskillful.' But because this abandoning of what is unskillful is conducive to benefit and happiness, I say to you, 'Abandon what is unskillful.'

"Develop what is skillful, monks. It is possible to develop what is skillful. If it were not possible to develop what is skillful, I would not say to you, 'Develop what is skillful.' If this development of what is skillful were conducive to harm and pain, I would not say to you, 'Develop what is skillful.' But because this development of what is skillful is conducive to benefit and happiness, I say to you, 'Develop what is skillful.'"

However many human beings cannot understand this simple instruction due to their spiritual blindness. So they are taught stories about heaven & hell.