Judgement Day

[CH1961]

Today at a Wat on darkside of Pattaya ... the illustrated Buddhist Judgement Day ...

[camerata]

Pretty standard stuff in Thailand. The ruler of the underworld is Lord Yama, originally a Hindu god, but also mentioned in the Pali Canon.

 

The people stuck on poles looks more like a European torture to me. At least, I don't recall seeing it in Thailand.

[Rancid]

Hmm, I thought judgement day was a sectarian Christian idea invented as a control system? Seems I am wrong, but I thought the idea of Buddhism was the attempt to reach perfection via the principles laid out in multiple incarnations with the hope of reaching Nirvana? As there is no God or Devil as such, how can there be judgement? Karma of course isn't judgement but merely an impersonal law of balance.

[godblessemall]

Perhaps 'Judgement Day' is your own interpretation of the scene. I seem to recall that a being sitting in judgement only happens to those who are consigned to the hells, and then only to see what actions have caused one to arrive at such a dire place and thus assign the punishments or rather allocate one to the correct hell sub-realm. As it isn't actually anyone judging us, but rather our own karma (cause) and subsequent effect which causes rebirth in the various realms, all done by natural laws I am told.

The labels you can see in the pictures meaning Birth, sickness, ageing and death are what follows every being still stuck in the round of rebirths often called Samsara.

A monk once tried to tell me about all this but most of it went over my head.

[rockyysdt]

On 03/11/2017 at 2:24 PM, Rancid said:

Hmm, I thought judgement day was a sectarian Christian idea invented as a control system? Seems I am wrong, but I thought the idea of Buddhism was the attempt to reach perfection via the principles laid out in multiple incarnations with the hope of reaching Nirvana? As there is no God or Devil as such, how can there be judgement? Karma of course isn't judgement but merely an impersonal law of balance.

Hi Rancid.

 

This is what Ajahn Maha boowa (Bua) said on the subject:

 

Later, as I turned my attention to investigating my past lives, it was terrifying to think how many times I had been born and how many times I had died; how many times I was reborn in hell; and how many times in the heavens and the Brahma realms, only to fall back into hell again. It appeared as though the citta was climbing up and down a flight of stairs. 

 

But the citta itself never dies. Do you understand this? The citta never dies. Kamma is buried there in the citta. Good kamma leads the citta upward to the heavens and the Brahma realms. Then, when the good kamma is exhausted, the bad kamma that has lain buried pulls the citta down into the realms of hell. It is as if the citta were climbing up and down a flight of stairs.

 

So I turned my attention to investigating my own past births. My goodness! If the corpses of this one individual were scattered across the length and breadth of Thailand, there would not be an empty space left. Just this one individual! Imagine the amount of time it took to be born and to die that many times! It would be impossible to count all the births and deaths. There were far, far too many to even try. My thoughts also spread to all the innumerable corpses of each person in the world. Each and every citta of each and every living being has exactly the same history of repeated births and deaths. Everyone is equal in this respect. Stretching back indefinitely, everyone’s past is crowded with countless corpses. It was an unbearable sight.  

 

Basically to live in the state of Samsara is to suffer.

 

Your levels of Vipaka (fruits of Kharma) will vary and depend on the state of your un exhausted Kamma.

 

That which is impermanent and conditioned will die.

Each death is a judgement day.

Each life is filled with judgement days.

Fear, anguish, bitterness, hatred, jealousy, rejection, pain, loss, anxiety, emptiness.

Every life is filled with these.

Add Re Birth and these are countless.

 

Edited December 2, 2017 by rockyysdt