A View on Hell

The Watercooler
21

I think your use of the phrase “single integral self” makes your question a bit of a loaded one. The point is that there is enough causal, numerical, and, at least in this life, psychological continuity that it is rational to be very concerned about the particular future suffering your future selves will face if you make poor decisions now, at least for beings who still have craving. It seems to me this is true in both one-life and multiple-life scenarios.

The drunk who says to himself that the next day’s hangover is somebody else’s problem is probably not viewing phenomena appropriately as they have come to be.

22

I agree that’s our ordinary samsaric condition of ongoing personal identity, and the machinery of instrumental rationality that goes along with it. But if we can ever manage to fully put the burden down, and turn of the I-making and my-making process that produces this sense of identity, we wouldn’t care any more which future events are part of “my” life and which are part of “another’s” life.

23

Anyway, it seems to me that hell-fearing and heaven-craving only reinforce the egoistic processes of self-production and painful anxiety we are trying to dismantle.

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24

I believe you are correct. But there’s that saying: ‘you have to be somebody before you can be nobody’. In other words, we shouldn’t jump the gun and give up the desire to be free of dukkha because we think desire is the cause of dukkha. And we shouldn’t give up a healthy sense of self until we’ve used enough self-compassion and self-integration to overcome our unhealthy habits.

25

It all comes down to whether you already take rebirth seriously or not. If you really think that people are in danger of going to hell, potentially for hundreds of thousands of years, it makes sense to warn them. But if you don’t take it seriously then obviously it would be perverse to make people worry about it.

In the context of rebirth, one seeking awakening should completely give up fear, craving, egoistic processes, self-production, anxiety etc. But that isn’t the route most humans want to take, and so the cycle continues and motivation is necessary, since the path to heaven is attained by few while to the path to hell is far easier to follow.

Then the Blessed One, picking up a little bit of dust with the tip of his fingernail, said to the monks, “What do you think, monks? Which is greater: the little bit of dust I have picked up with the tip of my fingernail, or the great earth?”

“The great earth is far greater, lord. The little bit of dust the Blessed One has picked up with the tip of his fingernail is next to nothing. It doesn’t even count. It’s no comparison. It’s not even a fraction, this little bit of dust the Blessed One has picked up with the tip of his fingernail, when compared with the great earth.

“In the same way, monks, few are the beings who, on passing away from the human realm, are reborn among human beings. Far more are the beings who, on passing away from the human realm, are reborn in hell. SN 56: 102-113

If you thought hell was real, would you still be under the impression that people are ultimately better off not considering the possibility? I mean someone could construct an argument suggesting that people are more motivated to be ethical when only positive motivation is used or something like that.

26

Sounds good. But it also sounds like, “live a normal practical life and leave that enlightenment business to the saints.”

But also again, I don’t think hell-mongering is helping anybody acquire either self-compassion or healthy habits. It’s a mentally crippling trick of authoritarian psychological control: a way of extending more crude and worldly systems of terrorizing discipline and mind-management into a life beyond the grave. If people rally want to have compassion for themselves they can start by working on the effacement of the externally imposed fear and dread that crush us and imprison us in authoritarian and hierarchical social control systems.

It’s not surprising that these attitudes about imagined post-mortem tortures seem come along with associated anxieties about women liberating themselves from male control, about uppity refusers not groveling before soldier-killers and their uniforms, and about military-dominated governments dictating the norms of spiritual practice.

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27

No of course not. By the same token, if I thought my neighbors could cast magic spells on me and my wife to give us agonizing joint pains, I would tell her, “Be nice to the neighbors!” But that the hell beliefs have any more rational basis than the magic spell worries is a doubtful proposition.

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28

Always mindful, Mogharaja,
Regard the world as empty,
Having removed any view in terms of self.
This way, one is above and beyond death.
One who regards the world in this way,
Isn’t seen by death’s king.

29

Sounds good. But it also sounds like, “live a normal practical life and leave that enlightenment business to the saints.”

More like live a normal practical life and incorporate that enlightenment business in when and where you are able and willing. But since you are living a normal life you won’t have as much time nor the appropriate external conditions to actually give up all attachment. In fact your life is probably centered around attachment, to family, friends, society, hobbies etc. And you’d probably take offense if people told you to live in such a way that you’d feel no grief on account of change in anything impermanent, whether wife, son, home, or society. So basically just learn to hold it all lighter since you obviously aren’t planning on letting it go completely and be a good person because it will make you happier in the long run. (the “you” is generic, not you specifically)

But also again, I don’t think hell-mongering is helping anybody acquire either self-compassion or healthy habits. It’s a mentally crippling trick of authoritarian psychological control: a way of extending more crude and worldly systems of terrorizing discipline and mind-management into a life beyond the grave. If people rally want to have compassion for themselves they can start by working on the effacement of the externally imposed fear and dread that crush us and imprison us in authoritarian and hierarchical social control systems.

I think it is a very complicated empirical question whether belief that unwholesome actions lead to an unpleasant destination after death is helpful in eliminating unhealthy habits. While I wouldn’t find a monk yelling about hell-fire inspiring or a trustworthy guide to attaining inner peace, I don’t think all mention of early buddhist teachings on hell can be categorized as a crude worldly system of terrorizing discipline and mind-management. But encouraging healthy discipline and guiding minds towards wholesome qualities is part and parcel of being a dhamma teacher, and hell notions are part of early buddhist dhamma. Also buddhism isn’t about effacing external systems, but internal obstructions. Getting rid of bad institutions is good and all but is something separate from dhamma, which is all about inward individual transformation. Tibetan prisoners in China didn’t perfect self-compassion by fighting the Chinese, but by never losing universal compassion and thereby maintaining their own serenity.

It’s not surprising that these attitudes about imagined post-mortem tortures seem come along with associated anxieties about women liberating themselves from male control, about uppity refusers not groveling before soldier-killers and their uniforms, and about military-dominated governments dictating the norms of spiritual practice.

Without an argument I don’t even know how to be charitable to or what to make of this statement. Some kind of implied slippery slope argument? Post hoc ergo propter hoc?

Just FYI, I’m ambivalent on how I should regard buddhist notions of kamma and rebirth. I consider their possibility and imagine what it would be like it they were true. I read rebirth suttas like stories and think about the kind of feeling that I get from the story. I think I would be pretty motivated to be circumspect in all my actions. So I try to take that feeling I get from reading the suttas and use it as one aid among many to increasingly become more circumspect in my actions of thought, word, and deed.

30

"Hell is other people"
Sartre.

:yum: