ACI 8 «Смерть и сферы существования», занятие 7

       Class Seven: The Lives of Hellbeings
       March 30, 1996

       960330-1.TXT



Say {nyel-wa} [repeat]. High tone for the Tibetan people, okay? {Nyel-wa}
[repeat], {nyel-wa} [repeat]. Okay. {Nyel-wa} means "hells" and today we're
going to talk about the hells. We've reached the hells. I'll go through all the hells
first, which I've been in many times, and then I'll talk about why they're possible
and why it is important to study them because this is part of our upbringing, you
know, in the West and especially Christianity and Judeo-Christian tradition that,
um, you know, most of us rejected, most of us thought was weird or irrelevant
or maybe didn't even exist and so I, I want to talk about that. But first we'll talk
about what they are and then we'll get into whether or not they're possible,
alright? Logically possible, alright? So, first we'll talk about...

[silence]

Say {tsa nyel gye} [repeat], {gye} [repeat], {tsa nyel} [repeat], {gye} [repeat]. {Tsa}
means here "hot." Okay? Hot. {Tsawa} means hot. {Nyel} means "hell" and
{gye} means "eight different kinds," the eight different kinds of hot hells, okay?
Supposed to be that the hells are located directly under {Vajra Asana}, "The
Diamond Seat", which is where the Buddha became enlightened. In, in Tibetan
nowadays it's called {Dorjeden}, {Dorjeden}, Bodhgaya, and they are supposed to
be...I don't remember the exact thing but like three-hundred and twenty
thousand {yojanas} to the bottom of the hells. So the hells are like a huge
chamber. I believe it's twenty-thousand {yojana} which would be like ninety
thousand miles across and they are sha..they are shaped like that. They are
stacked on top of each other and the lightest one starts up here and then it goes
down to the heavier ones...to the, to the worse ones. So, we'll go from top to
bottom. There is a big debate about how they fit under the earth and they say
where those...the continents are bigger at the bottom then at the top where they
come out of the ocean, so...alright?

[silence]

Say {yang-su} [repeat], {yang-su} [repeat]. {Yang} means "again" like the re in
English, okay? Like re-born, re-generate, re-...it's like r-e. {Yang} means again.
{So}, {su} comes from the verb {so}, and by the way sometimes it's spelled
without the {gawo}, sometimes it's spelled like that for you Tibetan track people.
But {so-wa} is the {so} in {sojong} for example. What's {sojong} mean? I mean,
it's, it's, it's the monk's confession ceremony but the {so} part means "to fix
something that was broken, to repair something, to renew something" and that
is the meaning of, the basic meaning of {so}. Even in modern Tibetan you say
{so chu gyap} means "What are you up to today?" You say "Oh, I'm fixi...I'm
renovating my house or I'm fixing my house." So {so} means to renovate or to
fix something. {Yang-su} is the...especially without the {ga} is the imperative
which means regenerate or, or, get back up. It means...I don't know, what do
you say? How do I translate it? "Revive," okay? You could say "Revive." This
hell is called "Revive".

[student: Together Yang-Su means that?]

Yeah, "re-vive", okay? "Revive." So what it means is when you, when you get
born in this hell...by the way, what kind of...do you have a hell mommy and
daddy or you just show up there?

[students: Just show up.]

No, you show up complete, okay? After a bardo, after a bardo existence. You
go there, you get there through the bardo and then you appear in that hell and,
and, it's this experience where it's, it's very much like what Dante wrote so if you
want to read a really good exam...I mean, read Dante, okay? [b.The Inferno.]
It's very, very similar to what Dante wrote. But, anyway, it's this huge, huge
chamber, ninety-thousand miles across and burning, hot, and this mass of
confusion, you know, people just screaming and struggling and running and
the...what happens when you get there is that you...because of your karma you
feel this intense hatred for the other people there, the minute you're born there,
the minute you show up there, you're part of them and you just, you just feel
this tremendous hatred for everyone else there, so you take any type of thing
you can get your hands on, like if there's a stick there or a piece or rock or a
piece of metal or anything you can get your hands on and you start beating each
other with it, even if...with your fingernails or something, anything you can, you
can think of that can be a weapon you start to attack the other people there and
they are attacking you and you just keep beating each other, ripping at each
other, until you're, you just fall down senseless. I mean after this huge mass of
beings is finished beating each other and smashing at each other then they, they
just fall down unconscious and then a voice comes from the sky and says {yang-
su} and {yang-su} means "get back up". So you've been unconscious and this this
voice that comes out of the roof of the place and it says "get back up" and the
karma is that when you hear that voice, you, you, your life comes back and you
get back up again and you start struggling again, you start fighting with
the...each other again. There is a special kind of pain when you die in this life
and, we talked about it before, it's called {nechu gi dugngel} but it's a special kind
of pain like it's the pain of a bug that gets crushed or it's the pain of a person
who's burning in a fire in a house, but it's that last final pain and it's supposed to
be very, very extraordinary. I guess it's why...we've probably been through it
countless times and it's probably why we fear death so much because it's some
kind of extraordinary pain that people have as they die, as any being has as they
die. So they say in this hell, everyday you're going through that many times.
You reach that point of that kind of pain where you're dying, you, you, you feel
the kind of pain of dying and you go through that special kind of agony and
then that voice says {yang-su}, "get back up," and you have to get back up and
you go through it again, and people start beating you, you start beating them
and then...and it, and, and so they say in like, in this life you'll only feel that kind
of pain once in fifty or sixty years but in {yang-su} you're going through it many
times everyday and there is no end, you just keep going, like that. How long
does it last? I have the calculation here. I didn't have time to figure it out but
basically time in the hells moves hundreds of times slower than it does here so
that a day in our, in our world would be years in a, in a hell...many years. And
they, they live very, very long lives, they live millions of years and time is going
extremely slow. You know it when you get a headache or something, time
seems to slow down [laughs]. When you're having a good time, time speeds up
and when you're suffering, if you have a back ache or your sick or something, it
seems like the day will never end and in the hells it's, it's much, much worse. So
that's the experience in, in {yang-su}, that's the lightest hell. They say that one
moment there, one moment of pain there is more pain than a person could feel
in a whole lifetime as a human. You know, they say you can't compare it to all
the collected pain of a person in this existence in a lifetime.

[silence]

[student: What's the physical form that beings take in the hell realms?]

Um, tha...I don't know [laughs] you know, they show them as some kind
of...they don't say much about it. When they get down to the lower hells they
describe it. I mean, my impression is that you look pretty much like a human or
something but I don't know. If, if the bardo is supposed to resemble the person
in the hell then maybe it's short and burnt and something like that but they don't
really...I haven't...don't remember seeing it. When you get down to the lower
hells, it does. Say {tik-nak} [repeat], {tik-nak} [repeat]. {Tik} means "a line," a line.
For example when you're laying out a house, Andy knows [laughs] but
somebody goes the day before you do the construction and they lay out the
lines, they do {tik}, in Tibetan it's called {tik gyap}, and two people hold a string
with chalk on it and somebody snaps it and it draws a line on the wood and
that's called a {tik}. When you do a mandala, for example, for a fire offering,
you, first you have to {tik gyap}, you have to lay out all the lines first, you have
to calculate all the lines so it means "to lay out a line," {tik}. And then {nak} means
"black," stands for {nakpo}, {nakpo}, which means "black." So in some of the hells
there are hellguards or hell...like torture...people who torture you there...beings
that torture you there. In {yang-su} there are no hellguards, you're, you're
torturing each other. In {tiknak} there are these very powerful beings, they're
much larger than humans, they are much stronger than humans and they, they
have the abili...they, they come to you and they just grab you and the force you
down on the ground, the ground is hot like steel anyways, hot steel, and then
they take like chains and they heat them up red and then they set them down on
your body, they force them down on your body, and then it, it produces this line
across your body like a, a black line, where, where it burns your body. So
they...you've seen those pictures of...in the butcher shops of how the cow is
going to be cut up, you know, like this will be the loin and this will be the...so
they do that, they do either four or eight or more, they quarter you up with
these...they draw lines on your body and then other hell guards come and they
either have saws or axes or weapons like that, knives, and they, and they split
you up along the lines, they cut you up along the lines and so eventually you're
just pieces of flesh lying around on this metal floor that's burning but you still
have the...your consciousness is not destroyed, the karma of the place is that
each part of your body is still experiencing the pain that it would feel when it was
connected to you so your parts are, are thrown all over the hell burning but you,
you still feel as though you're one being and you still feel the pain of each part
and that's part of the karma to be there.

[student, John Stilwell: And do you revive again or something like that?]

The thing ...the problem with the hell is that you can never go unconscious, you
can't...except {yang-su} temporarily, I mean before they tell you to get back up,
but in the other hells you can't stop feeling the pain, you can't...there's no rest,
you know, you can't get any, there's no point at which you just, it's so much pain
that you black out or something like that.         You, you, there's...you have the
karma to be aware all the time you're there.

[student, John: So what do you do, you just regenerate spontaneously in that
hell?]

Yeah, at some point the pieces come back together just by nature and they, and
then they draw the lines again and then someone comes and chops you up
again.

[student: What's the karma of the beings who do that?]

It's very hard to find the specific ones but I did search through all those texts and
they say especially whipping other people, like in some countries, like in Tibet
also, it was a common punishment to horsewhip people who, you know, as a
criminal would be tied down and lashed and they say that's for the lines and then
just generally all of the hells a) killing is a very typical karma for creating that
and then more specifically any extreme form of all ten non-virtues, so in general
if you commit the ten non-virtues in, in a heavy form like killing a human being
then it would take you to the hells and if you did it in a medium form, you know
like hurting other people, you'd be born as a {preta}, and then as a light form,
you know like causing minor injury to other people, that would be a...be born as
an animal.

[student: What about the karma of the guards?]

We'll talk about it. Basically it's like this...well, we'll talk about it. That's a good
question, it's often talked about. Say {dunjom} [repeat], {dunjom} [repeat].
{Dun} means "to collect together" or "gather together." {Jom} is related to the
{jom} in {drachompa}, so it means what? "To destroy." So {dunjom} means "to
collect together and destroy."

[student, John Stilwell: Was there a name for the last hell?]

Uh, "Blacklines" or "Lines of Black." This hell you could call "Gather and Smash"
or something like that, "Gather and Smash." The idea is that there's...the...there
are hell guards in this hell, they force you into like a canyon, like they drive you
into a space between two big mountains and they say the mountains have the
appearance of a animals head like sometimes they say a goat's head, sometimes
a horse's head sometimes other kinds of animals' heads and then they force you
in-between those and then the two mountains collapse, the two sides of the
canyon just close and they smash all the beings inside. Then they, they open
again, then your body just regenerates, the karma is that your body just
regenerates again and then they force you back in again and then the mountains
take on a different look of a different kind of animal's head and then they, they
close again and they smash you, so it's like that. That's the quality of this hell.
Mmm.

[student: How is this worse than black lines?]

[laughter]

They say something like the pain doubles in each hell or something and the, the
time, the time you're there increases, the life span is longer. They say the
particular karma that gets you to this hell is killing and then I've seen scriptures
when I was checking it that it relates to the kind of animal that you used to kill,
so you'll see, if you used to kill sheep or cows, you'll see the...the mountains will
be shaped like the head of the animal that you used to kill.

[silence]

Say {ngu mbu} [repeat], {ngu mbu} [repeat]. Mmm. The main thing here is that
you're on a...the whole ground of the hell...they say the whole ground of the
hells are steel anyway...steel, iron...and that they're like red-hot, they're like a
black smith's...what do you call it? I don't know, but they're red hot.

[student: A forge.]

Like a forge, they're red-hot and you're...you are, you're just naked, you're just
running across this red-hot steel, there's...and I think the characteristic here is
there's nowhere to go. I mean it's ninety-thousand miles to the corner of hell
and all you c...and you can't stand still cause you're in such pain that you can't
bear it so you're just running and every time you put your foot down then more
of your foot is burned and it just starts burning up your leg. I mean you...the,
the, the bottoms of your feet start to actually burn away and then it reaches the
bones of your feet and they start to burn away and then eventually you're just
running on your knees, you're trying to run on your hands and knees
and...across the steel and it's just burning, your flesh is just burning off and at
some point you can't run anymore and the flesh regenerates, your feet...your
legs regenerate and then you can get up and start running again but they're
nothing...I think the point is sort of this helplessness that you...there's nowhere
to go, you're naked, there's nowhere to run, it's just a huge, ninety-thousand
mile piece of...sheet of steel, and there's no place to go, all you can do is run and,
and you just spend countless lives, basically, you keep regenerating and you
can't, there's nowhere to go, there's nothing to do you just run, and scream, and
the meaning of this word is "to scream", "to scream" {ngu mbu} means "to
scream."

[student, John Stilwell: So, what is this one called?]

"Screaming" [laughs]

[student, John: Did you say all the hells were iron or just this one?]

Oh, they all are but this one in particular the...they're like f...they say that you're
like a piece of fried meat on a...what do you call it?...frying pan.

[student, John: So, is it true that in the other hells you're burning your feet also?]

You're also...yeah, but not as severe. {Pu}, I mean linguistically {pu} related to
the word for what? What's {pu} mean?

[student: Oh, oh, Tibet!]

Tibet, okay [laughs]. I mean they say, they debate why Tibet is called {Pu} and
some people say because it's a stone's throw from India meaning you could...if
you stood at the border of In...of the holy land, you could call to someone in
Tibet and they would hear you, so it's {pu}, it's only a call away from the holy
land, if you stood on the border of India you could, you could call to somebody
in Tibet so therefore Tibet is called {Pu}. I mean that's one...nobody really knows
why but they, sometimes they say that.

[silence]

Say {ngu mbu} [repeat], {chenpo} [repeat], {ngunbo} [repeat], {chenpo} [repeat].
That's number five. {Chenpo} just means "Great Screaming Hell", "The Great
Screaming Hell" and the pain is just, is just, say double of the previous hell,
just...everything hurts more.

[silence]
[student: And you say they're twice as long?]

Like the pain is twice as bad.

[student: And you stay there twice as long?]

Uh, much longer, I don't know if it's exactly twice, I believe it is, but I think it
depends on each person's personal...typical life span is like that. Mmm.

[silence]

Say {tsa-wa} [repeat], {tsa-wa} [repeat}. {Tsa-wa} just means "heat" the hell is
called "Heat" and the characteristic is that there's a...it's like a, a small hut made of
metal, steel, and it has one door and they shove you inside and they close it and
then they heat the steel, so the steel becomes red hot and you...there's no
windows, there's no door, there's no nothing...you're locked in, the door's sealed
and you can't do anything, there's no place to go, it's that feeling of nothing you
can do, you just have to stand there and you...people are running, every time
they touch the wall it's burning off their hands and there's nothing they can do,
they can just run around in there and suffer and scream and that's the nature of
that hell, that's all it is.

[silence]

Say {rabtu tsawa} [repeat], {rabtu tsa-wa} [repeat].                  {Rab} means
"extremely" {rabtu} means "extremely", like {rirab} is the highest mountain, Mt.
Meru, that's the Sumeru, it's the "su" in Sumeru... "extremely." Lets see there's a
better word, it just means "supremely", okay. "Supremely {tsa-wa}", {tsa-wa}
means hot. I've heard it explained two ways, the one that I think is correct
is...that there are like two rooms, like you're shoved into a chamber that has two
rooms and it's hotter, it hurts more, and you run from one room to the other
because you think there might be some way...it might help somehow or
something, so you, you're just running back and forth, the whole hut that you're
enclosed in is steel, there's no way to get out and you're running...it's hot, it's red-
hot, and you're running back and forth, trying to do something and you can't
even touch the walls 'cause your, your arms will burn and, and you're just
running and your feet are slo...your feet and your legs are being burned up as
you run and, and then regenerate and you get up and you run again.
[student, Ven. Puntsok-la: How many people stay in this room?]

Ha. I, I said it the other day and it, and it's...I mean, no, one person per room, it
s...it sounds to me from the book, from the scriptures, but in general how many
beings in the hells is uh...to be a human is like one in a million, okay? To be a
human is, is, is one in a million, there are many more beings in the hells and then
among humans to ever hear of Dharma is again one in a million and then among
people who hear about Dharma to try to practice it is one in a million and then
people who try to practice and keeps there vows pure and really keep their lives
pure, also, again, extremely rare, it's in the [b: Vinaya], it talks about it.

[silence]

Say {nar me} [repeat], {nar me} [repeat]. {Nar} means "agony"..."torment," {me}
means "none," so it's sort of a misnomer, "no torment," but what it means is the
torment there, the suffering there, it has this quality that it never gets less, it's,
it's, it is the greatest suffering that a being can experience, it is said to be...to be in
{Nar me} is more painful than all the other pain going on in the other parts of the
three realms at that moment. You know, all the other pain that all other beings
are experiencing throughout the three realms at that moment is not equal to the
pain that you feel and that never gets less, you never have like ninety-nine
percent of that or ninety-eight percent of that or something like that. The...the
degree of pain is, is always constant and it's never less than that. You never have
a break, you never have a moment where the pain dips a bit, it's constant at that
level. And they say that there's...you're born there and then a fire, like a jet of
fire, comes at you from the...one direction, like from the east, and it hits you and
it starts to burn you and then they say that you become incandescent, that you
are...you're body starts to become like a filament in a bulb and, and all they can
see...if you went there all you could see would be this indistinguishable, looks a
little bit human, this incandescent figure and they say if you...if it weren't for
the...they, they make some kind of whimpering scream or something, they can't
quite express themselves in a scream so some kind of whining sound and they
are just in fire, they're just fi...totally in fire, and otherwise you wouldn't be
re...able to recognize that they were human, that they were a sentient being, it
would just seem to be like a column of flame or something and it's only from the
sounds coming out that you know it's a living thing. And then, then jets of fire
come from the other directions and it, and it ma...it, it maintains that. And it's
constant and it's the longest life that you can live is there in {nar me} and in
Sanskrit it's called {Avici}.
[silence]

Next is {drang nyel gye}. Say {drang nyel} [repeat], {gye} [repeat], {drang nyel}
[repeat], {gye} [repeat]. Mmm, {drang} means "cold," {drang nyel gye} means
"the eight cold hells." It's another set of eight hells. It's supposed to be...I...as I
understand it from reading the text it's parallel to the hot hells, it's in a different
direction under {tisay} on this...under maybe the Himalayan range or something
like that. Shaped the same...

[student: unclear]

I think one of them was {Tsa-wa} and {Tsa-wa chenpo} maybe you missed it...the
jump between {Tsa-wa} and {Tsa-wa chenpo}. You can check the reading. Okay.

Um, cold hells. They have...I'm not gonna go through them name by name.
They're in your reading and we don't have much time but basically the entire
surface of the hell is ice, and again it, it's a huge expanse of ice and there's
nowhere to go, there's no protection. You are naked, you are standing out no a
huge surface of ice, the winds are blowing against your body and there is
nothing to do, you can't protect yourself, there's...so people, I mean if you walk
through the cold hells it's just like little shapes of people bent down trying to
huddle and protect themselves. The...in the lower...in the easier, lighter hells
your body is, is starting to blister and then as you go down in the deeper
hole...hells, the, the blisters are opening and they have names like "Lotus" and
"Utpala Lotus," different kinds of flowers to describe the color of these massive
blisters on your body. As the cold gets worse they start to open up, to split,
your body starts to split open like a flower and all, all over your body these
start...the flesh starts to split open and then the different kinds of screams or the
moans that people make in those hells, like they have different kinds of moaning
in the different hells and that's...as you go down that's what distinguishes the
beings in the cold hells. Mmm...

[silence]

Say {nye korway nyelwa} [repeat], {nyelwa} [repeat], {nye korway nyelwa}
[repeat], {nyelwa} [repeat]. {Nye korwa} means...like the hot hells are here...and
then there are these other hells around it, around the...they circle the hot hells.
So like if you could go to the edge of the hot hell to this wall...of steel and if you
could break through the wall you would enter one of these {nye korway}. {Nye
korway} means "adjacent"..."Adjacent Hells" and there are four doors at, at
the...at the four quarters of each hell. And...if you could...if your karma to stay in
that hell starts to diminish you're able to get out through the door so it's like, it's
a change in your own karma, you're karma is changing and it allows you...it's
slightly less...you've worn off the bad karma...slightly...and then you're able to
escape through one of these doors and, and get out of the hot hells, but then you
find yourself in another problem [laughs] and there are like four different zones
in, in the adjacent hells...you go through four different zones and it's like some
kind of a...it's some kind of a...progression that you always go through. So in the
first, in the first zone you find yourself...it's like a big trench filled with embers,
filled with burning embers and then you, you have a choice, you can back onto
the steel...burning steel or you can jump into the trench there's only two choices,
you know, you have to do one or the other. So the beings figure, you know,
they, they, they, they figure there is nothing to lose, they jump into the trench
and then it comes up to your knees and...and it starts to burn your flesh off...it
burns off the flesh and, and you're running across the trench and trying to get
across...the trench and every time you raise up your foot it regenerates the skin.
So when your foot goes down it starts to get burned away and then when your
foot comes up into the air it grows back, so each day you get the same pain of
your feet burning off.

Then there are other sufferings that you can that you can read. The next one is,
you're up to your neck in...it's called "the Swamp of Corpses" and it's like rotten
corpses and excrement and you're up to your neck in it, you're trying to get
across it. And then there are these kinds of creatures that live inside the...the
swamp that are, that are biting at you and like piranhas or something but
they're, they're ripping away at your skin. When you try to run out of that you
run to the next zone which is called "The Razor Road" and, and there's just
razors, laid out, face up, you know, blade up and there's no where to go. You
can either go back to the...those piranhas or you can keep running and...it's just
razors facing up and you're just running across razors, running across the blades
or razors. And again, every time your foot comes up it regenerates. And then
when you get to the end there's...you see some trees, you're running across
these razors, you see some trees, you have some hope, you run over to the trees
and they have these huge leaves that are shapes like knives and when you reach
under there and then the leaves start to fall down and they start to cut you, they
turn out to be steel...so...and then there are these dogs...these, huge...wild
animals...dogs...chasing you and you, you try to climb up the tree, and the tree
has a skin made of these long...daggers and when you try to climb up they turn
down and so you're trying to climb over these daggers and you're just...you
have a choice of going back to these dogs that have these fangs like steel or you
can try to climb the tree. If you get to the top of the tree you think you're safe
and you're standing there and then these crows come that have like steel beaks
and then they start to pluck at your eyeballs...plucking out your eyeballs and
your face and then you decide maybe it's better if you get down and then the
thorns turn around the other way and they start to face you again. So you're
climbing down these knives, you're...you're holding on to knives to get away
from them...to get away from the crows. Those are the basically the Adjacent
Hells. I'll do really briefly then...there's one more kind of hell.

[silence]

Say {nyitseway} [repeat], {nyelwa} [repeat], {nyitseway} [repeat], {nyelwa}
[repeat]. {Nyitseway} means "partial" but in the sense of only a tiny part.
{Nyitse way}...so you could call them The Partial Hells.

[silence]

And the...it's a very interesting karma, it's very personal, it's not a...it's not a
public karma where you collect it with other people it's like a karma that only
one or two people share and then they are born in to a specific small area where
there's some kind of very painful hell going on and they say that it could even be
located in certain locations on earth, on the face of this planet, that in
extraord...like, if you...if you're plane crashed in the middle of the Gobi Desert
and there was no hope of getting any help and you just sat there while the sun
baked you and killed you then it would be something like a {nyitseway nyelwa}
and that's a very restricted little hell and it's restricted to your own experience
and no one knows your there, your plane crashed there and there's no hope and
you're just sitting there burning up...dying. And...there ar...they say there are
places like that on the earth and also down near the hot hells.

[student, John Stilwell: Is this as a human or it as a hell being...?]

You're a hell being. So it's not like you're a human...I, I...that's like an example
but you actually...you're in a location where you're having a birth like that.

[silence]

I'm supposed to be teaching a Dharma class, you know...it started out as a
language class about fifteen years ago and then it developed into a Dharma class
so, I mean I don't...I see partly I'm supposed to teach you all these facts and
you're supposed to regurgitate them on your homework and...and then you're
supposed to learn a language but really the point of having this class is...I mean,
if nothing else, my responsibility now is to...is to convince you that these could
exist and to keep you out of them, you know, to try to...to try to describe some
way that everyone in this room could stay out of those places. I mean that's a
life or death thing. It looks like a nice Saturday morning class, I just had some
nice cappuccino over at this place over there and...it's a nice day and the sun is
nice and we're all going to go out in ten minutes and go to New Jersey
and...and...but it's my responsibility to...to first of all make you feel that it really
exists and that...and how you could get there. So...so, what is it? We talked
about it the other night...I know...it was Friday night class or something...but
how do you get to hell? Somebody says "Go to hell," how are you going to get
there? [laughter] You know, how do you get to hell? How long does it take,
first of all.

[student: 3 thoughts]

Huh? It could be as short as three thoughts from now. It could be as short as, as,
as thirty seconds from now. I mean at any point in your life, you could be as
short as a half a minute away, or one minute away. So first of all time-frame,
you know, it could be as close as a minute away for any one of us. I mean, that's
the first thing. Now how do you get there?

[student: [unclear]]

I mean, there's a very, very...Shantideva and there's a very powerful thing in...I
think it's in the [b: Gyatsurupay Sutra]...they say "Who made the hells?" You
know, Shantideva says, you know, what, did they send a construction crew
down to [laughter]...under the ground, like the Lincoln Tunnel, and they worked
all day and they constructed these hells, I mean, who makes...where do the hells
come from?

[student: Your projections.]

It is your own projections, okay. It is your own projections. That's the first
thing. You know, if it's empty...which is to say "if it exists..." okay? If it's empty,
it doesn't have a quality of it's own, it does not have any quality of its own, it's
just a empty place, there's nobody there, it's some kind of cavity under the earth
and...there's nobody there, there's nothing going on there.
[student: If you're projection creation creates the hells then your projection
creates the karma to make the hells.]

Absolutely. And the text says that in the same verse, in the same poem. It says,
"Who makes hell, who makes heaven" you know, who makes paradise, it's the
same...it's all...it's all your projections. It's a shift in your projections. The
projections shift from human projection, New York City projection, to bardo
projection and then what? Hell projection. I mean, it's just three projections. It
could be three {tse-ma}s in a row. How long does it take to do three {tse-mas}s?
Sixty four just now [laughs]. So I mean, you can go to hell about twenty times in
that much time. I mean, that's how long it takes to get to hell. That's how close
we are to hell. You know, you feel like some kind of comfort that you're still
breathing, you're still fairly young, you're healthy...you know...to get to hell
you'd have to get old, then you'd have to die, they'd have to put you in a box,
you'd have to have a funeral, there'd be a delay, you know, all this time
[laughter] and then...and they would put the box under the ground and then
eventually, maybe, you would end up in hell somehow. It's not like that. All it
takes it three shifts in your own mind to get to hell. That's all it takes. Yeah.

[student, Leon: Does it take a human to get to hell?]

No, no [laughs]. The normal route from the {hla} realms...form and formless
realms, ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent go to the hells directly, because
they are wearing out good karma.

[student, Leon: What are they doing...what are they doing there to create bad
karma?]

They're not doing any bad karma at all.

[student, Leon: I know, they're only burning good but, why does that...?]

Because when you burn off the good all that's left is the bad, you know. They
have completely, totally....

[student, Leon: So nothing they did in that life.]

Nothing, no. They totally, purely, completely exhaust every good karma they
have. There's nothing else..So all it takes is...is a change in your projections. Can
you choose to have different projections? Can you, can you select projections?
Can you decide now...now having heard that these things might exist, I won't go
there, I'll just decide, since it's only a projection I will choose not to have those
projections. They are forced on you...as much as this one right now is being
forced on. You'd like to see me as a tantric deity, you can't. Neither can I, you
know. I just don't have the karma. I could! I mean, if I had the right karma, if I
kept my vows absolutely purely, sincerely, knowing all these things, I wouldn't
have to be here, I wouldn't have to be seeing these things like this...because they
are empty. I mean that gives you the clue to how to stay out of the hells. You
just, you just keep your vows and i..it becomes...You know, you and I, we think
our vows light, we think of them in the morning before we go to work, we go to
work, we come home, we eat, we go to Dharma class or we go see our friends
and then late at night we think about our vows again because we're doing our,
our practice at the end of the day. It's not enough. You know it's...even just time-
wise it's not going to work...it won't work, you know. You have be {tundruk} I
mean you have to examining your vows six times a say...I mean you have to go
in the bathroom six times a day. I mean the Muslims are not crazy. I mean they
stop a certain time...and, and...and other religions, where they just stop...at noon,
they stop at nine o'clock, they stop at three o'clock and they review their mental
continuum because you could stop breathing the next ten minutes, you know.
Is...you have to...you have to really examine your vows and keep them carefully.
It doesn't take a big bad deed to get to the hells, it's...it's not difficult to, to...to
cause that. Why is that? Mmm. Wh...why is a small bad deed have t...why do
you have to go through that?

[student: Because it multiplies.]

I mean, why...why would a small bad deed get you to millions of years of
suffering? Why?

[student, John Stilwell: It expands.]

It expands. I mean karma expands exponentially. If you don't clean it out of
your mindstream, if you...if you neglect it and leave it in your mindstream, it will
create a result like that. And it's not out near Pluto as a boomerang, you know,
it's in your own mindstream. And how is it ripening? In your own perceptions.
In your own perceptions. Your karma is ripening now by the jillions, you know.
To maintain this room with all these people in it and this guy standing up there,
these are karmas ripening...in your own mind. I am ripening in your own mind,
my words are ripening in your own mind, you know. That's...and it's ripening as
much more powerful than what you did to, to, to...when you planted that
perception. So it's quite possible to go to hell. It's not problem. Philosophically,
logically, psychologically, no problem. If you understand perceptual theory at
all, if you understand the mind at all, it's no problem at all. There's no, there's no
reason why these can't exist. It's just a...an exaggeration of a state of mind that
you had long before that's ripening a...as a, as a great exaggeration. You had a
perception when you hurt someone, it stays in your mindstream getting larger
and larger and then it ripens as an experience in hell. It doesn't...if you explain it
like that there's no problem, you don't have to think of hell as "out there," hell is
not "out there." Hell isn't somewhere where you go. Hell is a perception that
you start to have. And it takes about three seconds to go to hell and that's how
you go to hell. You don't have to get on a...you know, on a train and go
some...down underground. You...it is the process of three thoughts occurring in
your mind and you can go there this afternoon. It makes sense, you can. So you
really have to do...you really have to do what you can to avoid it. And taking
refuge is a big one. I mean that's, that's supposed to be, when you take refuge,
like if you're gonna take refuge this afternoon, yo...it's supposed to be the
motivation behind it. You're supposed to be thinking, I need to learn to stay out
of these places. How do you do it? You take vows. Does taking vows get you
out of the hells?

[students: No]



[laughs] No. You have to keep them [laughs] okay? Can you keep them if you
don't know them? You can't, you know. I mean we're...most of us are like,
"What are your vows?" and they'll say "I have bodhisattva vows" and they'll say
"Oh, did you keep number thirteen yesterday?" they'll say "I don't remember
what's thirteen" you know. But you better be able to go like... I mean all the
texts say one, two, three, four, five, six, seven...I, I'm keeping number thirteen
today. It should be like that. This is life and death. You know, you should be
able to rattle off your bodhi...I was in a...I won't name the city and I won't name
the Dharma center...no one could tell me the ten non-virtues last weekend, you
know.

[laughter]

You know...or very few people. Almost nobody. I mean, that...that's...then how
are you going to keep them? You know, you have to know them. You have to
learn them. Tantric vows especially. You have to know them. You have to study
them because you have to keep them. If you keep them you stay out of...the
word, you know what the word Dharma means. {Dhir} it comes from the root
{dhir}, {dhir} meaning "to hold back," from what? Mostly from the hot hells,
okay [laughing]. The very word Dharma means to restrain someone from
throwing themselves down into the hells. I mean the p...if you don't get
anything out of this class at least be good. You have to be good, you know.
Don't become one of these Dharma monsters that knows everything about
Dharma and is still a bad person. You know, that's just really, really...a huge...it's
a very potential for us because we're learning so much and we know so many
Dharma facts and then if you say to somebody, "Did you meet anybody from
that class on Sixth Street" and they say "Yeah, they're really obnoxious" you
know, that means you didn't learn anything, you know. You have to apply it to
your own mind and to your own life. You have to keep yourselves out of the
hells. Yeah.

[Student, John Stillwell: So it seems to me that to keep yourself out of the hells it's
a question of when you, when you're dying or at the moment of death to try to
somehow bring all of your virtuous karmic seeds to ripen at that point, to flower
at that point.]

It's one method, you know, it's one thing but much more efficient is just be good
and achieve Nirvana in this life. If you reach a certain stage in the five paths you
cannot take a lower birth anymore. Impossible. If you see emptiness directly
you can never have anything less than extraordinary births for the next seven
lives, and then that's over. You know, if you reach a certain understanding of
emptiness intellectually, you can't ever take rebirth there again anyway. You
just can't do it. If you reach a certain point in the second path you cannot take
birth there...anymore. Two quick questions then we have to...she's been waiting.
Yeah.

[Student: not clear]

It could be minimum. Minimum. I mean, one thought at the last moment of this
life, one instant in the bardo and then one instant in the hells. You could be to
the hell in three or four breaths, you know. You could go to...it doesn't take that
long. We're not that far away. I mean we are...it's as if hell is some invisible door
and we're always standing at the...in front of it and it just takes one step. We're
that close. Don't think of yourself as a thousand miles from hell. It could happen
in the next five minutes. At anytime. We are always in that position. And it's
really true and I'm a Dharma teacher and I'm supposed to be teaching you and I
would feel really bad if somebody went to hell [laughing] you know. It's serious.
It's very serious. I don't know how to...I don't know what to do to...it's just real.
It's really there and you have to keep your vows. Anyway it's fun to keep your
vows, it makes you happy. Even if you're not going to go to hell, even if there is
no hell it's still the best way to live so you might as well keep the...it makes you
quite happy, so, keep them. Yeah, what.

[Student: What are the beings that are hell guards?]

Oh, he asked about hell guards. There's big debates about it. On the highest
level they are again projections of yours but some scriptures say they are
actually beings and the karma of being a hell guard makes them born in the hell
immediately after that. So, no fun to be a hell guard either. Did you have a
q...no. Okay, we'll stop 'cause we have to...people who are going to New Jersey
should really move it and get down there on time 'cause it's really bad to be late
to Rinpoche's things. And then we'll do the quizzes next time. There's
homework...there's homework here which I'll pass out and there's readings up
here. You can just take 'em, okay? The Tibetan track, you'll get your sixth class
after the seventh class, okay? Alright? [not clear] class? We'll have class six next.

[Student: This is seven?]

This is seven.

[prayer: short mandala]

[prayer: dedication]

[silence]
The Asian Classics Institute

Geshe Michael Roach
Course VIII Death and the Realms of Existence.