“And if I say all that, will Flaming Mouth leave me alone, master?”
“Flaming Mouth will not bother you after that, Ananda, I assure you.”
“Oh thank you, master, thank you thank you thank you,” Ananda whispered as he kissed my feet.
15
“Today we will talk about the most fearsome realm of all, bikkhus: Hell. Or perhaps I should say ‘Hells,’ because the truth is that there are many of them. (LSV 14:10–14) There are, to begin with, the eight hot Hells and eight cold Hells, all of which lie beneath the surface of the earth, below where the Hungry Ghosts live. In the hot Hells, the flames are so hot that they will literally melt your bones while in the cold Hells, well, let me put it this way—one of the cold Hells is called ‘Split like a Blue Lotus.’ Do you know why that is, bikkhus? Because that is what will happen to the blisters that will form on your naked body there, they will split like blue lotuses! Yes, exactly.”
As I strolled among them, I continued: “Moving on to the Secondary Hells. ‘Oh,’ you may think to yourself, ‘Secondary Hells, that doesn’t sound so very frightening.’ If you think this, you are deeply mistaken, bikkhus, because the truth is that the Secondary Hells are far worse than any of the hot or cold Hells. In Milahakupa Hell, for instance, you will live in a pool of shit and piss while you are endlessly eaten by giant hordes of worms. In Kukkula Hell, you will be cooked and then eaten by birds with metal beaks. After these birds have eaten you, your flesh will then quickly grow back and the birds will eat you again! (ASV 14:14) If you are an adulterer in Kukkula Hell, demons will make you climb a tree of sharp, metal thorns! In Asipattavana Hell, you will be eaten by dogs with metal fangs! But that’s not the worst part of Asipattavana Hell. Guess what your food there will be, bikkhus?” (ILL, Hells)
“Feces, Tathagata?”
“Much worse than feces, Anuruddha. Red hot iron balls. And what do you think your drink would be?”
“Urine, Tathagata?”
“Again, much worse, Anuruddha. Molten copper. But Asipattavana Hell is still not as bad as Vetarani Hell, bikkhus. Disagree with the Buddha’s ideas in Vetarani Hell and you will end up walking a trail of razor blades where you will be sliced up like a piece of meat before being brought back to life by a sort of ‘magic wind,’ only to instantly be sliced up again.” (OJO, Hells)
“And then brought back to life with more magic wind, Tathagata?”
“No, Moggallana. The second time you die someone will simply command you to come back to life. ‘LIVE!’ they will scream at you and you will live—only to be sliced up like a piece of meat again! Below Vetarani Hell lies Black Rope Hell, bikkhus. Here the demons will chop you up with hatchets into 100,000 tiny pieces—yes, they will be very small pieces. After that, the magic wind will blow you back together and the demons will force you to walk a tightrope and when you fall (which you will, do not doubt that), it will be directly into a hot cauldron and as you roast in your hot cauldron, do you know what the demons will say to you, bikkhus?”
“Burn, fool?”
“That is a decent guess, Sariputta, but no. What the demons will say is, ‘You did this to yourself, sinner, now suffer.’ And so you will, for billions of years perhaps. Beneath Black Rope Hell is—yes, Ananda?”
“Does the ‘Black Rope’ refer to the tightrope, master?”
“Yes, obviously.”
“Why is it not called ‘Tightrope Hell’ then?”
“Because it is called ‘Black Rope Hell,’ alright, Ananda? Continuing: Beneath Black Rope Hell is Compounded Hell. Here, once again, you will find trees made of knives, bikkhus. But this time there is a cruel twist. This time, at the top of these trees wait nubile young women. When you frantically scramble up a tree to get to one of the women you will be sliced to pieces. Then, when you finally get to the top you will look down and see that same lovely woman on the ground, calling up to you, ‘Come to me, my darling, come and embrace me.’ So you will scurry back down the tree, being cut to pieces once again as you do, but when you get to the bottom of the tree, where do you think the pretty woman will be, eh, bikkhus?” (OJO, Hells)
“At the top of the tree, Tathagata?”
“Exactly right. And this up and down will go on for something fairly close to infinity, bikkhus.”
“Will the men never figure out what’s happening to them, Tathagata?”
“No, Assaji, they will not because they are blinded by lust.”
“You’d think they’d figure it out eventually.”
“Well, they will not.”
“What about the women in the trees, master?”
“What about them, Moggallana?”
“How are they being punished?”
“They are women, Moggallana. That is punishment in itself.”
That night at bedtime, as we laid in the darkness: “Master?”
“What is it, Ananda?”
“Is it bad that I don’t hate the idea of the cold Hells?” I half-turned, looked at him. “What I mean is, being frozen doesn’t sound that terrible to me. Being a block of ice and then maybe being reborn as a talking tree or a two-headed horse—”
“First of all, Ananda, I never said anything about two-headed horses. Secondly, you wouldn’t be a ‘block of ice’ in a cold Hell. You would be in frozen agony, covered with open blisters, naked and shrieking in pain for billions of years before you were reborn, not as a demigod perhaps, but as a Hungry Ghost or even a demon.”
“Yes, master. Thank you, master.”
“Now go to sleep.”
“You are so very good to me, master.”
16
Sometimes during these sangha-building years I would venture
