It’s four-cornered & has four gates
set in the middle of each side.
It’s surrounded by an iron fortress wall
and roofed with iron.
Its floor is made of red-hot iron,
heated, fully blazing.
It stands always, spreading 100 leagues all around.
Warned by the deva messengers,
those youths who are heedless
grieve for a long, long time—
people entering a lower state.
But those here who are good,
people of integrity,
when warned by the deva messengers
aren’t heedless
of the noble Dhamma—ever.
Seeing danger in clinging,
in the coming-into-play
of birth & death,
they are released from lack of clinging,
in the ending
of birth & death.
They, happy, arriving at safety,
fully unbound in the here & now,
having gone beyond
all animosity & danger
have escaped
all suffering & stress.
Notes
1. The word “no respect for father” (apetteyyo) does not appear in the Thai edition, but does appear in the Sri Lankan, Burmese, and PTS editions.
2. The Pali uses the word “kamma” in the singular here, as if it were an uncountable noun (like “water” or “information”). In other words, though singular in form, it could mean any number of actions. Because English does not have an equivalent uncountable noun for action, I have—in the translation of this discourse—kept the word “kamma” when it is in the singular in the Pali, and have used the word “actions” when “kamma” is in the plural or part of a compound where it could be either singular or plural.
3. In Asian Buddhist kingdoms, there was a custom that when a king was sentencing a criminal to death or to be tortured, he would not actually express the sentence, but would simply fall silent. The Commentary counsels that if a student asks not to hear the description of hell (which follows from this point), a teacher should teach the student meditation and then wait until the student has reached stream-entry before returning to the description of hell.
4. In the Sri Lankan, Burmese, and PTS editions, the sentence, “There he feels painful, racking, piercing feelings, yet he does not die as long as his evil kamma is not exhausted,” appears after each of the punishments listed in this paragraph. In the Thai edition, which I have chosen to follow here, it appears only at the end of the paragraph.
5. The Commentary does not explain the meaning of this ambiguous sentence. It could mean that when the hell-being’s foot is lifted from the hot, burning floor, either (1) his skin, etc., continues burning or (2) his body returns to its original form. Either arrangement would be gruesome.
6. The Commentary notes that not everyone who falls into hell is tortured with all of these punishments: Some of the tortures are skipped; in some cases the hell-being’s kamma is exhausted before the full round of tortures is completed, so that he dies and is reborn elsewhere; and not everyone undergoes repeated rounds. Also, we should note that punishment in hell is not for an eternity. As the discourse implies, when the hell-being’s bad kamma is exhausted, he dies and is reborn elsewhere, in accordance with his remaining kamma.
Origin URL: https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/MN/MN130.html