No matter what plane of existence or consciousness, a Buddhist hell is a place where there is more suffering than pleasure. A Buddhist heaven is a place where there is there is more pleasure than suffering. In either place, either kind of place, we who experience the "precious human birth" can learn and progress toward enlightenment, beyond heaven or hell.
After death, traditional Buddhist teaching holds that there is an incredible spectrum of possibility. One truth only is inevitable: no new state of being will be eternal. Hell is terrible, and there are some terrible representations of Buddhist hells, and Heaven may be pleasant, but both are temporary states.
The cycle of birth, death and rebirth goes on and on unless one achieves Nirvana, which is permanent, actually beyond time. In the course of births and deaths, we each have been born into hells many times, into heavens many times.
But, according to Buddhist teaching, all of us always have within ourselves the potential for heaven and hell here and now. Again, to quote The Dhammapada, "All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him." In other words, within his (or her) own mind, a Buddhist creates a unique heaven or hell.
