Children's hell, according to Japanese Buddhism

While Christians might condemn dead babies to limbo, hell, or paradise, and atheists like me condemn everyone to utter nothing, there is a children-only hell in Japanese Buddhism, invented around the eleventh century.

This post is based on chapter 8 of Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins (1997).

Japanese Buddhism has included the idea of an underworld where all dead people go to after they die. This underworld is usually temporary, as people would simply go through a bureaucratic process which assigns them to a suitable rebirth. However, some people can be stuck in the underworld.

On the edge of the underworld is 三途川, Sanzu no kawa, meaning "the river with three passes". In order to reach the other side of Sanzu, a dead person must walk through one of the three passes. The eviler the person is, the harder the pass is.



However, some people are so unfortunate as to be unable to cross the river at all. They are stuck on 賽の河原 Sai no kawara, meaning "riverbank of Sanzu".

In fact, all children who died before their parents did would go to the riverbanks, which is a special little hell made just for them.

It is said that a dead child caused its mother much pain and suffering while in the womb and yet died without returning any of the kindness it had received, and that it caused its parents to grieve by dying.

In short, it's immoral for children to die before their parents, for they break the moral order of family: parents ought to die before their children.

Interlude: karma vs kegare

I think there is a certain oddness here. Buddhists all agree that the type of rebirth you get is determined by amount of karma you have at the moment of death. However, karma is actions driven by intention, and it's quite certain that most children who die before their parents did so due to illnesses and accidents, not suicide. So where's the negative karma?

I have two possible conjectures.

One is that Japanese Buddhism incorporated something extra from its native Shintoism: kegare ("religious pollution"). Kegare is like negative karma, but without the whole thing about intention. Perhaps the best translation is "evil vibes".

For example, by merely touching a dead body with no bad intention, one receives kegare. I suspect that due to the influence of kegare, some Japanese Buddhists decided that some karma can be created even unintentionally.

My other conjecture is that, in fact, karma is not fully about one's intentions. There's a strong tendency for people to personify karma as a person, almost like the Christian God. Karma is treated like a judge who would hand out punishments and rewards. But that's inaccurate. Instead of a judge, karma is a kind of cold, hard, physical fact of the universe. Doing certain bad things make you lose karma, even if it's unintentional.

This is easier to accept when one considers the gods in Buddhism. The gods live in the heavens, but because they live in great pleasures, their karma keep decreasing, since enjoying good things is the opposite of suffering bad things, and if suffering can wash away negative karma, so can enjoying wash away positive karma.

Consider an innocent god, who lives simply like an innocent human, living by habits without thinking too much. Just by living in a pleasurable world, necessarily lose karma, even if they never chose to live in such a karma-wasteful way. They were given the god-lifestyle, and they accepted it as the most natural thing for them. Simply by this mundane acceptance, they would eventually suffer a rebirth in a lower level (likely as a human).

In short, karma is very harsh, but not a bitch, since it's not thinking.

Interlude ends

With karma being so harsh and uncaring, it's no wonder that children who did bad things could go to hell, even if they do not intend so. There, these dead children suffer a Sisyphean cruel game:

... build stone mounds without cease. Children of three or four, separated from their parents, are tormented by the guards of hell and forced to pile up small stones to make mounds. As soon as these mounds are almost finished, they are knocked down, and the children have to begin piling up stones all over again. 

Those mounds are supposed to resemble stupas, which are certain Buddhist-style buildings. Here's a real-life pebble stupa:

 

A famous Japanese poem, 賽の河原和讃 (Buddhist hymn of Sai no kawara) describes this in sorrowful details:

Young children... younger than ten, are separated from their mother's breasts, gathered together on the riverbank of Sahi, where for all the hours of the day they carry big stones and pile them into mounds. 

For all the hours of the night they pick up small stones and pile them into stupas. They pile the first layer for Father, the second for Mother. On the third they face the west and place their tiny hands together, for their brothers and sisters and themselves. 

Oh, how pitiful, young children crying as they carry stones. Their hands and feet are lacerated by the stones, blood streams from their fingers, staining their bodies red. 

"I miss you, Father! I miss you, Mother!" Crying for their parents they fall down, crying as though they were in pain. 

The fearsome guards of hell, with their eyes like mirrors reflecting the sun, glare at the young ones. "The stupa mounds you have built are crooked and displeasing to the sight. They will bring you no merit as they are. Build them again, praying for your buddhahood." 

Thus howling at the children, they flail their iron scourges and break down the stupa mounds. The poor little children throw themselves down and weep...

A stream runs between the banks. The thought of the grieving parents reaches there, and their shadows are reflected on the stream. 

Wishing to relieve their hunger, the children crawl and approach, longing for the mother's breast. At that moment her shade immediately disappears, and the stream water burns as bright as a flame, scorching the children's bodies...

 It's Sisyphus and Tantalus combined into one! On children. Total hardcore.

But wait, there's more!

if the parents mourn their children, their voices sound like the cries of demons to the children; the hot tears of the fathers become boiling water raining down on them, and the mothers' tears become ice imprisoning them.

The children are only able to escape when Kṣitigarbha pays a visit to the Sai no kawara. Although it seems to me that they could also escape after they've gained enough karma from suffering.

Bonus song

Just like there's gothic rock (heavily influenced by dark Christian), there is Buddhist rock in Japan.