Oh Hell, I’m in Heaven －ちくしょう、天国にいるんだ－

“Lucifer protests he was never to blame for [making] anyone sin, and that he’s never had an interest in owning souls: They die and they come [to Hell]... and expect us to fulfil their desire for pain...  I don’t make them come here.  I need no souls.”

From Neil Gaiman’s comic series, “Sandman” 

“We are each our own devil, and we make this world a hell.”
Oscar Wilde

“An intelligent Hell would be better than a stupid Paradise.”
Victor Hugo

I recently featured an extract from the short story, “The spider’s thread”, written by Ryunosuke Akutagawa.  The story revolves around the notorious criminal Kandata.  He is in Hell, but the Buddha takes pity on him because he remembers Kandata performing one small good deed.  The Buddha lowers a spider’s thread for Kandata to use to climb out of Hell.  All seems to be going well as Kandata climbs half-way out.  But then he looks back and sees thousands of others climbing out behind him.  Worried that the weight of these others will cause the thread to snap, he shouts at them to get off.  Then, presumably because of this further selfish act, the thread snaps and Kandata falls back into Hell.

There the story ends.  But I recently read a great article in Japanese which asks what could happen next.  Would the Buddha take pity on Kandata for a second time, and again try to help him out of Hell?  What if Kandata climbs all the way to Heaven, either alone or with the thousands of other damned souls behind him?

The writer of the article speculates that Heaven is a peaceful place of poetry, philosophy, lotus ponds, and a Buddhist atmosphere of abstinence and calm.

He further speculates that Hell, as the opposite of Heaven, must be a place of wild desires and materialism.  In Hell, the damned souls collect gold.  The demons try to put them to work, but can be bribed to allow clever and ambitious souls amongst the damned to shirk their work, drink smuggled alcohol and to carouse with members of the opposite sex.

You can imagine then that if Kandata and his party ever reached Paradise, they might be disappointed.  They would get bored in Heaven, and pester the Buddha to provide bars, gambling dens and other entertainments.

The moral of this article is that Heaven and Hell are in the mind.  You can look at your circumstances and judge yourself to be in Heaven.  Or another person could look at the same circumstances and judge themselves to be in Hell.  It’s a matter of perspective and attitude.

It may well be that this world that we live on is Hell.  Perhaps we’ve all tried Heaven once and found that we didn’t like it.  There are demons on the Earth, tasked with making our lives miserable.  Are they the lawyers?  The politicians?  Middle managers?  I’m not sure.  But there’s no point in wishing for Paradise.  The best we can do is to shirk our work whenever possible and take our pleasures where we can.  At least Hell has better music than the other place.

 

Vocabulary:

Lucifer – In Christianity, another name for the Devil

to revolve – to go around; if a story revolves around A, then A is the centre of the story

abstinence – denial of something pleasurable, such as alcohol or fine food

to bribe – to pay money in return for a favour; to make a corrupt payment

to shirk – to avoid something one is responsible for, such as work or a duty

smuggled – secretly imported or brought in

to carouse – to drink alcohol and enjoy oneself with others in a noisy and lively way

to pester – to annoy, especially in a persistent way