Hell

"L'enfer," wrote Jean Paul Sartre in his play, Huis clos ("No Exit"), "c'est les autres." Hell is other people. Mind you, he carefully crafted his characters to prove the point. And then there's the famous "War is hell" quotation from General William Tecumseh Sherman--though if you read the full text of the impassioned letter in which he expands upon this thought, you'll see how inadequate its famous abbreviation sounds. In any event, war--like Sartre's, like every other imaginable hell--is man-made.

My thoughts of hell, this morning, are inspired by watching only a few minutes (sadly, I would have liked to watch more, but my weary head dictated otherwise) of a program about hell on the History Channel. I had surfed there somewhat idly on my way to sleep, and was grabbed by the (man-made) images and words that have defined humanity's view of hell throughout the ages. It seems that most religions preach some form of hell, where the wicked are punished for their evil deeds in an afterlife. Regrettably, Budhhism is no exception. I checked with Access to Insight on the subject, and came upon these faintly risible verses--in translation by none other than Than Geoff. Here's one I thought should be heeded by those generals in Burma:

An ochre robe tied 'round their necks,
many with evil qualities
— unrestrained, evil —
rearise, because of their evil acts,
in hell.

Better to eat an iron ball
— glowing, aflame —
than that, unprincipled &
unrestrained,
you should eat the alms of the country.

It does seems strange to me that those who preach the gospel of a loving God should envision one so cruel and vengeful in the afterlife. There had to be some way, of course, to control the behavior of naturally wayward human beings, and the threat of damnation to an eternity of torture seems like an effective way to maintain the upper hand.

The Evangelical Christians, it seems, have an interesting twist on the Sartrian concept: for them, "Hell is for other people"--i.e., not for me. Unconverted Jews join Muslims, Hindus, atheists--and, presumably, Buddhists--in the fires of hell. They, the Christians, get raptured away to heaven. Although they might want to take note of another of Than Geoff's translations:

Ashamed of what's not shameful,
not ashamed of what is,
beings adopting wrong views
go to a bad destination.

Seeing danger where there is none,
& no danger where there is,
beings adopting wrong views
go to a bad destination.

Imagining error where there is none,
and seeing no error where there is,
beings adopting wrong views
go to a bad destination.

But knowing error as error,
and non-error as non-error,
beings adopting right views
go to a good
destination.

I'm all for heading for the "right destination", of course. But I believe in neither heaven nor hell. Except, of course, those made by man. How about you?