With discussions on:
-The Wheel of Life
-Buddhist Gods
-Buddhist Ghosts
-Intricacies of the Buddhist Hell
-Role of the Buddhist Hell
Presented by Quentin Kelly, John English, and Chucky Ashraf

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Everything in the world is a phenomenon and is constantly changing.
Time is understood as a series of individual moments.
Death is simply the movement from the last moment in one life to the first moment in the next life.
The law of Karma is a law of nature whereby each action is necessarily followed by reward or punishment.

 Life consists of interwoven activities that produce causes and effects.
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Death does not terminate this cycle. Our deeds continue to accumulate following death and influence our status in the next life.
Until enlightenment occurs, we are “locked” in an endless cycle of death and rebirth ,
Samsara , within the “wheel of life.”

 A representation of the six destinations, or realms, that one may enter at the onset of each life.
 The realms exist as a six-layered hierarchy:
Gods, Humans, Animals, Titans, Hungry
Ghosts, Denizens of Hell.
 Where we are placed at the onset of each new life is determined by our accumulation of past positive and negative acts/deeds.

http://www.thevisualrecord.com/dbphotopages/photopage.php?photo_id=511

http://www.exoticindiaart.com/product/TC58/

http://www.uwec.edu/greider/Buddha/Buddhism.Course/Images/Wheel.of.Life.Big.jpg

www.dharma-media.org/media/general/dwnld/thanka/deity_wrathful/wheel_of_life.jpg

http://www.buddhanet.net/wheel2.htm

 As seen in the wheel of life, Hell is just one of the six primary realms in the cycle of
Samsara.
 Hell is not the location for eternal damnation.
 Just like the Buddhist world view, there are many levels and sublevels in Hell.

 Hell is the coldest and hottest of places, consisting of eight fiery levels and eight icy levels.
 When a being is born in Hell, they experience pain.
 Pain is the way in which justice is carried out as a result of negative karma (acts of illwill in previous lives).

 The Buddhist idea of Hell has evolved over time. Different theories have evolved, but all maintain the similar essential elements we have discussed.
 Some have attempted to describe the eight different levels of hell; the names of the sublevels of hell and the punishments that occur in each.

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Known as the “Hell of retributive justice.”
 The destination of persons who have taken any form of life or eaten meat.
 Punishments include being beaten with iron claws; Smothered in mud and feces while repeatedly stung by millions of insects simultaneously being forced to eat boiling shit.

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Known as “The Hell of the black rope.”
 Destination for murderers and thieves.
 Punishments include being lashed with whips of fire and hacked with axes.
 A dog with burning teeth exists in this region of hell, which primarily feeds on the flesh of those being punished at this level.

 The destination of rapists and spouse beaters.
 The punishment for pedophiles is to watch the children they have raped undergo Hell’s punishments.

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Known as the “Hell of screaming.”
 Destination of merchants who cheat their customers.
 Punishments include being inflicted with
404 diseases as insects crawl into the body to devour it from the inside.

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Known as the “Great Hell of Screaming.”
 Destination for those who have lied about their ill-intentioned actions.
 Like level 4 of Hell, but ten orders of magnitude worse.
 Punishments include the impalement of burning sticks into the anal cavity.

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Known as the “Hell of Burning.”
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Punishments include having one’s body cooked into human yakitori.

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Known as the “Great Hell of Burning.”
 Destination of those who are chronic liars about many, many ill-intentioned actions.
 Punishments include receiving a burning stick up the buttocks that is twice as hot and lasts longer than the stick up the buttocks experienced in level 6.

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Also known as “The Great Hell of Unlimited
Suffering.”
 Located so far deep in the earth that it takes
2000 years falling to reach it.
 Destination of prisoners: Buddhists who were burned at altars, people who let others die of thirst, and children who kill their parents.
 Punishments include being burned, eaten alive, and being dropped off mountains.

 The Hell that has the most suffering.
 The Avici Hell contains innumerable layers, each with different names and different punishments.
 Examples of several different layers:
-the hell of Crying Out, the hell of Pulling
Tongues, the hell of Dung and Urine.

 Hell in which tongues are stretched out and plowed through by cattle.
 Hell in which excrement and urine are endless.
 Hell in which fiery spears stab repeatedly
 Hell in which bodies are stretched by iron mules.

 The cause of rebirth in hell is the accumulation of deeds instigated by ill-will in previous lives.
 The degree of unwholesome karma determines the length of time spent and amount of pain experienced in Hell.
 Beings are reborn into a different realm of the wheel of life following the extinguishment of unwholesome karma in
Hell.

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The punisher’s third eye is that which investigates the deeds of previous lives.
 His objective is to help those who experience the temporary sufferings of Hell find enlightenment in their next life.
 The punisher is actually Buddha in another form.

 Buddhism claims there is no order in the world.
 Moreover, there are no gods to model moral perfection after. Thus, Buddhists do not strive for ideal moral behavior.
 Yet, Hell creates a type of conventional order which scares humans into “right” moral behavior (reward/punishment model).

 In certain traditions, each time a person dies, their spirit spends an unspecified amount of time as a conscious ghost seeking rebirth.
 As a result, Buddhist monks traditionally chant special prayers to dead spirits, urging them to stop wandering the places where they died, and to detach themselves from loved ones - so the living can enjoy peace, and the dead can begin the purification process in Hell.

 In other traditions, a
Ghost’s purpose is to escort living people, who are soon approaching death, to
Hell.

 Many Thais believe ghosts are wandering tsunami-hit beaches, spooking taxi drivers, making the Andaman Sea hungry for more victims, and jinxing an economic recovery for devastated resorts.

 Unlike Western understanding of God.
 gods are simply another destination in the hierarchy of the wheel of life.
 gods have a finite lifetime, although they do live a considerably longer and more satisfying life.
 Interestingly enough it is the realm of humans, not gods, that is the most desirable position. Balance of pleasure and pain.

A very special thanks to: www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/dharmadata/fdd19.htm
www.vexen.co.uk/religion/buddhism.html
www.trocadero.com/Rhett/items/383109/en2store.html
www.corkscrew-balloon.com/02/07/1bkk/05b.html
www3.tky.3web.ne.jp/~edjacob/ojoyoshu.htm
www.boingboing.net/2004/04/23/photojourney_through.html
http://www.buddhanet.net/wheel2.htm
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/qanda05.htm
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/snapshot01.htm
http://www.buddhanet.net/funbud10.htm
http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=
Ghost+Festival&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1 http://www.hungryghost.net/descrip.html
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/g/gh/ghost.htm
http://www.biol.tsukuba.ac.jp/~macer/EJ144/ej144f.htm