Buddhism and Hell
So I was spared a childhood of threats or fears of damnation. This made me confident,but lazy. There was no spur to self-improvement.
Now I am at least two-thirds of the way through the mortal journey, or maybe more. We do not know, really, despite insurance companies and actuarial tables, how long we have. The only constant is change and an obvious truth is impermanence. Through study of religions, particularly Buddhism, my complacency is shaken.
Despite such a positive philosophy to comfort me in my early days, there was the nagging awareness of evil and negativity in the world. If I was not particularly suffering, others were. War, disease, child abuse...what was the solution ? Why did a benevolent God allow this?
Then, later on, I experienced suffering in my own life and this, as with so many other people, turned me toward religion for comfort and answers. I found out my suffering--moods, insecurities, broken relationships--was created by what Chugdud Tulku calls "the whims of ordinary mind" and I turned to Dharma to relieve reliance on the mind that had proven so fallible, and to find something more reliable.
From Gates to Buddhist Practice by Chugdud Tulku Rinpoche:
We don't understand that we're experiencing results that we ourselves have brought into being and that our reactions produce more causes, more results--ceaselessly. ...Some people think the remedy for suffering lies with God or with Buddha, somewhere external to them. But that's not the case. The Buddha himself said to his disciples, "I have shown you the path to freedom. Following that path depends on you."
To this point, Tsongkapa quotes "The words of the omniscient (there's that word!) Buton:
You are not long in this life--
Death comes quick;
You step ever nearer to it
With every moment that passes,
Moving like an animal
Dragged to the slaughterhouse.Your plans for today
Your plans for tomorrow
Will never all be filled;
Let go all your thousand plans,
Devote yourself to one.You will be summoned into
The awesome presence of Lord Death;
The end is lying on your bed,
The breathing stops, the life is gone.And on this day,
My Rinchen Drup,
Nothing but the Dharma
Is any help to you.
Many other sages make this point.
Of course one could become a fatalist, dissolve into depression, and conclude that any effort is futile. Similarly, one could take the hedonist view that life is too fleeting to allow for anything except self-gratification. Why not?
Why not, according to Tsongkapa's teachings, is because either fatalism or hedonism would mire us
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