Menstruation taboo in Rome, Judaism, and China

Ancient Rome

Menstruation taboo is popularly held throughout history. Here's a selection of quotes.

Pliny the Elder, the most famous naturalist of ancient Rome, stated that:

Contact with [menstrual blood] turns new wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, seed in gardens are dried up, the fruit of trees fall off, the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory are dulled, hives of bees die, even bronze and iron are at once seized by rust, and a horrible smell fills the air; to taste it drives dogs mad and infects their bites with an incurable poison.

-- Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book 7, Chapter 13

Basically, menstruation blood causes rabies in dogs. Not to worry though, later in Book 28, Chapter 28, Pliny stated that a strip of cloth dipped in menstrual blood can cure rabies in humans... because homeopathy! In the same chapter, he also quoted (without agreeing) other magical beliefs about menstruation:

hailstorms, they say, whirlwinds, and lightning even, will be scared away by a woman uncovering her body while her monthly courses are upon her. The same, too, with all other kinds of tempestuous weather; and out at sea, a storm may be lulled by a woman uncovering her body merely, even though not menstruating at the time... If the menstrual discharge coincides with an eclipse of the moon or sun, the evils resulting from it are irremediable... if a woman strips herself naked while she is menstruating, and walks round a field of wheat, the caterpillars, worms, beetles, and other vermin, will fall from off the ears of corn... this is not done at sun-rise, for if so, the crop will wither and dry up. Young vines, too, it is said, are injured irremediably by the touch of a woman in this state; and both rue and ivy, plants possessed of highly medicinal virtues, will die instantly upon being touched by her.

Buddhism and all its major versions

The core version

Souls exist (but if you look deeper, not really), and they reincarnate repeatedly into many different forms of creatures, such as gods, humans, non-human animals, plants (maybe), hungry ghosts, and hell-beings. This cycle of rebirth is the samsara.

The world is extremely big, time is cyclic, and there are many universes. (These ideas are taken from Hinduism.)

Reincarnation is determined by a balance of karma. Karma is added by good actions and suffering bad events, and vice versa. This is why living in comfort loses karma, and having a bad life (such as those in hell) gains karma.

Life (except the gods') is full of suffering. There are four great life events, and every one creates great suffering: birth, old age, sickness, and death. Further, the suffering doesn't stop at just one life, because souls are reincarnated endlessly. Even the gods are not immune because gods eventually die too and they can get reincarnated to a suffering life.

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.

Dark side of Buddhism

Overview of Buddhism

Let's analyze Buddhism, in the style of Stephen Prothero in his God is not One (2011)! According to Prothero, every religion has a problem, a solution, a list of techniques for solution, and a list of role models.

1. Problem: life is full of suffering (dukkha). There are four great life events, and every one creates great suffering: birth, old age, sickness, and death. Further, the suffering doesn't stop at just one life, because souls are reincarnated endlessly.
2. Solution: achieve nirvana, which is freedom from life, time, and the cycle of rebirth, by becoming absolutely nonexistent. The word "nirvana" literally means "blown out", and a person achieving nirvana is like an oil lamp blown out. They aren't gone to a heaven, but completely nonexistent. No thought, no nature, no self, absolutely nothing.
3. Techniques: varied, but the most famous ones are in the The Noble Eightfold Path, a list of eight practices that allows one to see through the illusion of existence, realize that everything is fundamentally empty, and achieve nirvana.
4. Role models: all the famous Buddhists and their stories. One example is, of course, Gautama Buddha himself. Another is a certain god called the Medicine King, which would be a role model for many Buddhist self-immolators, as discussed later.

If Buddhism is a video game, there would be many, many levels. Every time you die, you are respawn at a certain location with a certain level. Where and how you get respawn depends on your karma-meter, and you gain or lose karma depending on your actions and experiences. You gain karma by doing moral things or suffering. You lose karma by doing immoral things or enjoying nice things.

You can play six kinds of character, each having a different play-area.

1. Gods: the world of gods is full of pleasures and powers.
2. Humans: the world we know, full of pleasures and pain.
3. Titans: titans are kind of like gods, but they are angrier and often fight with gods. They are too occupied with war-making to think about nirvana. This level is controversial and many Buddhists think they don't exist.
4. Animals: the world we know, but as a non-human animal!
5. Hungry ghosts: they live in our world, but we can't see them. They are constantly hungry and thirsty.
6. Hell-beings: hell, basically. There are many sub-levels of hell, too [click for a post all about them]! From painful to extremely painful.

The Poetry of Suffering in Buddhist Stories of Hells

Buddhist cosmology is fascinating. Its description of hell, for example, is extremely precise in its time-duration. Today we will measure the length, size, and the pain of hell.

Naraka is the hell in Buddhist cosmology. It differs from the hell of Christianity in two respects: firstly, beings are not sent to Naraka as the result of a divine judgment or punishment, but merely as a result of the evils (bad karmas) accumulated from previous lives; and secondly, the length of a being's stay in a Naraka is not eternal. After a creature's karma is used up, they will be reborn in one of the higher worlds.

Physically, Narakas are thought of as a series of cavernous layers which extend below Jambudvīpa (the ordinary human world) into the earth.

There are 8 hot narakas and 8 cold narakas.