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.

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.