Do you believe in HELL???

[diamond girl]

I believe that hell exists...sometimes when I look at the sufferings of samsara and how much we live in samsara and keep hurting...I tend to be cynical and think that Hell is on Earth...

I read this article:

http://wisdomquarterly.blogspot.com/2008/10/is-there-buddhist-heavenhell.html
Is there a Buddhist Hell?

Interesting and may give some perspective... This paragraph caught my attention:

"The Buddha taught that heavenly and hellish worlds exist not only beyond this world but also within it, within beings. Here and now, beings "burn" with greed/lust, anger/fear, delusion/ignorance. Beings endure emotional as well as physical pain. No matter what plane of existence or state of consciousness, Buddhist hells are places where there is more unpleasant than pleasant sensation. Buddhist heavens are places where there is more bliss than suffering. In either, living beings who experience experiencing an extremely rare and "precious human birth" can learn and progress toward enlightenment faster than beings in other realms.

Beyond death, Buddhist teaching holds that there is an incredible spectrum of possibility. It is inevitable that no new state of conditioned existence can become eternal. Hells are terrible, and there are some horrific representations of the lower more gruesome ones. Heavens may be pleasant, sublime, and filled with ecstasy, but they're transient. Final peace lies beyond Samsara and clinging to attachments to the pleasant. Liberation from the cycle of rebirth is nirvana, the unconditioned."

[brian]

if we believe in Buddhism, we believe in karma. if we believe there is an existence of God/Buddha, then we should believe ghosts/spirits exists. If you believe there is Heaven, then you should accept the fact that HELL exists and it is not a mere imaginative realm.

Hell for me not only exists in subtle form (or the realm that we don't see) but on earth itself there are Hell everywhere in the world. When you see places without food, war zones, places where it is very cold in TV or you witness yourself that is hell itself.

[hope rainbow]

I recently heard someone describing how hell and heaven were understood, or explained, by some spiritual traditions as a state "beyond", as "another world" separate from "this world" while Buddhism did explain hell as a "world" not separate yet not together with our world.

Not separate because there is no such thing as a "separation", as "distinct objective worlds", as "limits or boundaries" other than conceptual or chronological.
So hell (as a place other than were I am now) exists as such if we accept to talk about it in conceptual terms only.
In whole terms, there is no such "place" until it is actually experienced and then it is no more a "separate" place.

Is hell another place in the understanding of it is as a result separated from our actions by a distance of time?

Maybe we experience hell now as a separate experience from the action that created it, example: a kind hearted person suffers from cancer. The relation between cause and effect is not obvious as the witness of the cause has vanished and it is no more a known cause other than by extrapolation and intellectual understanding of it over faith in previous lives.
Maybe we fear the experience of hell in the future as we project conceptually the result of some of our actions that we recognize as non-virtuous, this based on faith (faith that our actions will bear fruits resembling their causes and experienced by the doer) and intellectual cognition.

But even the chronological "separation" is conceptual because an understanding of the past can only be conceptual simply because the past does not exist anymore nor anywhere else than in the result of our actions.
Thus the past IS our present (as a result) or is a conceptual limited understanding, the latter not being a reliable understanding and merely a thinking tool.

One that believes in hell is one that believes in future lives, either "eternal" hell as portrayed by some traditions or temporary hell by others.
This belief is an intellectual conceptual foundation propelling one to refrain from non-virtuous actions and engage in virtuous actions. All religions have this in common and conceptualize it in various forms for our understanding.

I think all religions would say that the Truth is beyond our intellectual understanding, yet they do rely upon our intellectual understanding and thus conceptualize it to various degrees for us to grasp.
Hell is thus a concept that is easily grasped.

Attached herewith is an image by Jerome Bosch depicting the "HELL BOUND ON A SHIP OF FOOLS" in case we have too little imagination to grasp the concept of hell.

[Barzin]

I do believe in hell.  And I do believe in heavan, if not where do all the enlighted beings stay?  we heard heard of paradise but we do not know where and how they operate, so does hell.  I was taught since young, we do have a hell realm and it is either we go up or down to exhaust our negative karma so that we can take rebirth after all is purified.  But this does not make sense to me anymore.  We can actually purified our karma even we are living, same goes with gaining merits.  Therefore, what is the purpose of hell if everything operates on the law of karma knowing that we are the very ones to take charge of our karma?  Hence, the "punishment" is based on our human weaknesses such as ignorance, selfishness and lack of dharma?  It just doesn't make sense to me.

After knowing the law of karma, I do see hell is not a place but it is an existence of our after life depending on our actions in our present life.  For example, if we are very attached to a place and very lustful, it is most likely we contribute ourselves in to becoming a lustful spirit who hangs around in that place that we are very attached to.  It seems like the spirits is on the loose and there is no physical place for them to live and punish them.  Hence hell is not a physical place but a state of mind.  It matches Buddhism very much because everything is about consciousness and not physical.

[DS Star]

After knowing the law of karma, I do see hell is not a place but it is an existence of our after life depending on our actions in our present life.  For example, if we are very attached to a place and very lustful, it is most likely we contribute ourselves in to becoming a lustful spirit who hangs around in that place that we are very attached to.  It seems like the spirits is on the loose and there is no physical place for them to live and punish them. Hence hell is not a physical place but a state of mind.  It matches Buddhism very much because everything is about consciousness and not physical.

Barzin, your last statement says it all 

In Buddhism everything is in the MIND. The whole world exists in our mind... that is to say, without the concepts formed in our minds, our worlds does not exists. Having said that;

Why do we feel that our 'physical' world is so real?
Why are we affected so much by what is happening 'outside' of our minds?

Does it means natural disasters like earth quake or Tsunami only exist in our mind???

So HELL is not a physical place but only a state of mind?

In my opinion, psylotripitaka gaves the best answers for this question on existence of 'Hell'.

Hell is both an external place and a state of consciousness. To say something exists 'externally' does not necessarily imply external from mind. The environment around us appears to be external from our mind but it is inside our mind. This is even proved by scientists! Nonetheless, we can say something is 'external' in order to speak conventionally - 'the outside of the body is external to the inside which is internal' and so forth. The hells are external places that are appearing inside the mind of hell beings but appearing to their mind to be outside their mind just as our world appears to be outside our mind.

Yes, hell exists. Buddha explained it extensively and even told anecdotes about going there, and he is not the only one to have done so. If we gained deep conviction in the existence of the hells and how they are achieved, we would be very different people indeed, much more careful about our actions for sure!