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Hell (Buddhism)

Naraka
Chinese name
Chinese 那落迦
Diyu
Traditional Chinese 地獄
Simplified Chinese 地狱
Tibetan name
Tibetan དམྱལ་བ་
Thai name
Thai นรก
RTGS Nárók
Korean name
Hangul 지옥
Hanja 地獄
Japanese name
Kanji 地獄 / 奈落
Malay name
Malay Neraka
Khmer name
Khmer នរក ("Nɔrʊək")
Sanskrit name
Sanskrit नरक (in Devanagari)
Naraka (Romanised)
Pāli name
Pāli निरय (in Devanagari)
Niraya (Romanised)
Sinhalese name
Sinhalese [නිරය
niraya] error: {{lang}}: unrecognized language tag: Sinhala (help)

Naraka (Sanskrit: नरक; Pali: निरय Niraya) is a term in Buddhist cosmology usually referred to in English as "hell" (or "hell realm") or "purgatory". The Narakas of Buddhism are closely related to diyu, the hell in Chinese mythology. A Naraka 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; and secondly, the length of a being's stay in a Naraka is not eternal, though it is usually incomprehensibly long, from hundreds of millions to quintillions (1018) of years.

A being is born into a Naraka as a direct result of his or her accumulated actions (karma) and resides there for a finite period of time until that karma has achieved its full result. After his or her karma is used up, he or she will be reborn in one of the higher worlds as the result of karma that had not yet ripened.

In the Devaduta Sutta, the 130th discourse of Majjhima Nikaya, the Buddha teaches about hell in vivid detail.

Physically, Narakas are thought of as a series of cavernous layers which extend below Jambudvīpa (the ordinary human world) into the earth. There are several schemes for enumerating these Narakas and describing their torments. The Abhidharma-kosa (Treasure House of Higher Knowledge) is the root text that describes the most common scheme, as the Eight Cold Narakas and Eight Hot Narakas.

Each lifetime in these Narakas is twenty times the length of the one before it.

Some sources describe five hundred or even hundreds of thousands of different Narakas.

The sufferings of the dwellers in Naraka often resemble those of the Pretas, and the two types of being are easily confused. The simplest distinction is that beings in Naraka are confined to their subterranean world, while the Pretas are free to move about.


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