d. The Defects of Samsara

Basically, wherever you are born within samsara, whether it is in the higher realms or the lower ones, you will only ever be tormented by the three kinds of suffering.

In particular, if you are born in the hell realms as a result of the karma of accumulating harmful actions, in the eight hot hells the entire floor beneath your feet will be of burning iron. In the first, the Reviving Hell, whatever you see turns into an enemy who attacks you with weapons. Your head and body are hacked to pieces, and you experience the suffering of dying and being revived time and again. The life span of beings in this realm is described in the Application of Mindfulness Sutra:

The beings of the Reviving Hell live for one hundred and sixty two thousand times ten million human years.

The life span doubles for each of the hells below this one.

In the Black-Line Hell multiple lines are drawn on your body which is then ripped apart with saws. In the Crushing Hell countless beings are wedged in mortars of iron the size of whole valleys and crushed with red-hot hammers. In the Howling Hell you are trapped in a doorless cell of burning iron and worn out with suffering and pain. In the Great Howling Hell you are trapped in an iron cell like before, but with double walls, and you scream out loudly in agony as you are beaten with hammers and other weapons. In the Heating Hell you are impaled on red-hot spikes and tridents, and wrapped in strips of heated iron. In the Intense Heating Hell you are boiled in great vats of molten bronze. Whenever your head is struck with a hammer you lose consciousness and in that instant you may experience a slight feeling a relief, but otherwise you experience nothing but suffering and pain. The life span of beings there is impossible to count in years. In samsara, there are twenty intermediate kalpas for each of the periods of formation, subsistence, destruction and void. The beings in the Intense Heating Hell live for half of one of these intermediate kalpas.

In the Avichi Hell of Ultimate Torment you are burned in a fire of the most intense heat, greater than that in the other seven hot hells. The bodies of beings there are indistinguishable from the flames and can only be perceived by the sound of their agonized screams. Weapons fall from the sky and hell-workers torture you with weapons causing you pain seven times more intense than that experienced in the earlier hells. In this one of the eight Hot Hells, the life span is one intermediate kalpa.

All the eight cold hells are surrounded by snow mountains, which are completely frozen at their base. There, in the dark, on terrifying precipices of ice engulfed by squalls and blizzards of snow, your tender naked body is lashed by freezing cold winds. You break out in blisters, which burst open into festering sores. You let out a ceaseless wail of agonized screams in the Hell of Lamentations. And in the Hell of Groans, you experience suffering hard to even think about, like a dying person whose strength is all gone, and let out deep gasps and groans. You grind your teeth and clench them together in the intense cold. Your flesh turns blue and the skin cracks open into four pieces like a blue lotus, and then the red raw flesh that is exposed cracks further into eight pieces like a red lotus. Finally it turns an even darker red and splits even deeper into sixteen, thirty-two and then innumerable pieces like a great red lotus. Worms with metal beaks penetrate the cracked flesh and start to eat away at your insides. These eight different sufferings are called the Eight Cold Hells.

The life span of beings in the Hell of Blisters is equal to the time it would take to empty a container capable of holding two hundred Koshala measures filled with sesame seeds, if you removed a single grain every hundred years. For the other cold hells, the life span and sufferings increase by multiples of twenty for each one.

Similarly, in each of the four directions surrounding the Hell of Ultimate Torment, there are four neighbouring hells, such as the 'Plain of Razor Blades'. When the karma that led you there is exhausted, you leave the Avichi Hell and see an attractive plain. You walk towards it, but when you reach it, it turns into a plain of weapons, cutting your feet to ribbons. Similarly, you see what appears to be a pleasant forest, but once you arrive there it becomes a 'Forest of Sword Blades' where your body is gashed and chopped. Then you see a river and go towards it to have a drink, but it transforms into a 'Swamp of Putrefying Corpses'. You become submerged in it up to your head and worms with metal beaks eat away at your flesh. Alternatively, you may see a shady trench, but once you arrive there it changes into a 'Pit of Hot Embers' and sinking inside it, you suffer as your flesh and bones are burnt away. These are the sixteen Neighbouring Hells that ring the Hell of Ultimate Torment.

The Ephemeral Hells are changing, in the sense that their location is not fixed and the degree of pain experienced there is also uncertain. You suffer through taking birth in a door, pillar, fireplace, rope and so on--in a mortar, a broom, or a pot. You suffer as you are trapped inside a stone, crushed between rocks, burned in a fire, boiled alive, or cut limb from limb as a piece of wood is cut. These are the 'Ephemeral Hells' in which you are always made use of and exploited.

The cause of being born in any of these eighteen hells could be a vast accumulation of harmful actions perpetrated out of desire or delusion. Even so, a single momentary act such as taking life or speaking harsh words to an exceptional being, when carried out with a mind of intense anger, will propel you straight to the hells. As it is said in the Bodhicharyavatara:

If a single moment’s negative action,

Can lead to an aeon in the Avichi hell,

Then with all our harmful acts accumulated in samsara without beginning,

What chance is there of going to higher realms?

Pray with the words of the text, “Whenever intense hatred and aggression arises, O Guru Rinpoche, turn my mind towards the practice—care for me! Omniscient masters Longchenpa and Jikmé Lingpa, keep me from straying onto the wrong paths! Compassionate lama, you who are one with them—care for me!”

It is essential to give up your conflicting emotions. The Letter to a Friend states:

Having heard of these boundless sufferings,

Only someone with a mind as hard as a diamond

Would remain unaffected and unafraid.

And if just seeing pictures, hearing descriptions,

Or reading and thinking about the hells brings you such terror,

What will you do when you actually experience there

The full, inexorable effects of your actions?

Likewise, with sufferings similar to those of the hells, the preta realm is destitute of food and drink, creating hunger and thirst. It is a grim place of rocks and charred tree stumps, where the words 'food', 'drink' or 'comfort' have never even been heard. In the past, Shrona travelled to the preta realm and, growing thirsty, he asked the beings there where he could find some water. They replied that although they were born there twelve years previously this was the first time they had heard mention of water. Since these pretas do not find anything to eat or drink for months and years on end, their bodies are emaciated like skeletons and they lack even the strength to stand. There are three different kinds of suffering they experience.

Firstly, those with external obscurations will go for many months and years without even hearing any mention of food or water. Then, from time to time, they might see a stream or some fruit trees far away in the distance. With weak limbs and aching joints they struggle to get there, but as they approach they find that the water has all dried up or the trees have withered away. Or else the water and trees are still there, but they are guarded by beings who carry weapons, which they use to beat the pretas and cause them pain.[i]

The pretas with specific obscurations undergo sufferings such as having many creatures living on their bodies devouring them.

The life span for beings in this realm is about fifteen thousand human years.

There are many reasons for being born as a hungry ghost, such as eating in the afternoon after taking the vows of a one-day fast, but the principal cause is being miserly or greedy for wealth and possessions.

Animals living in the wild are in constant dread of being eaten by one another or killed by hunters. Domestic animals are exploited and worked until exhaustion, forced to pull ploughs or carry heavy loads. Even when sores break out on their backs they are just given more to carry. They are made to carry people on their backs and they are often killed. Bewildered as to what to do or not to do, they have no idea how to practise virtue and only amass negative actions, so they are oppressed by limitless suffering and lack any means of escaping from samsara.

The seed or cause for being born in such a state is wandering into the darkness of stubborn stupidity, and thereby failing to undertake virtue and refrain from non-virtue. So pray as follows, “From this day forwards, O Guru Rinpoche, turn my mind towards the practice—care for me! Omniscient masters, Longchenpa and Jikmé Lingpa, keep me from straying onto the wrong paths! Compassionate lama, you who are one with them—care for me!”

Therefore we must practise virtue and give up negative actions.

Even in the higher realms of the gods and human beings there is no real happiness.

As the Application of Mindfulness Sutra says:

There is never any joy in samsara,

Not even the tip of a needle’s worth.

 And the Lord Maitreya said:

There is no joy among the five classes of beings,

Just as there can be no pleasant fragrance in a cesspit.

As humans we face the three fundamental sufferings, the four great rivers of suffering of birth, aging, sickness and death, the sufferings caused by fear of encountering hated enemies, or parting from loved ones, and the sufferings of facing situations we do not want, or not getting what we do want.

The asuras or demi-gods suffer from wars and strife. The gods face the suffering of death and transmigration, and the suffering of falling into the lower realms.

So, no matter where we might take birth, among any of the six classes of beings, there is nowhere that is beyond the nature of suffering.

As the Treasury of Essential Instructions says:

Our cherished homes and countries are like the iron cells of hell,

Wives and children are like the forest of sword blades,

Decorations and fine clothes are like the fiery tongues of flame,

Food and drink are burning lumps of metal,

And servants and workers the guardians of hell,

Angry quarrels are like a hail of glowing embers¾

Understand that they all bring virtue and goodness to ruin.