Buddhist cosmology describes a huge variety of hells with excruciating details about the suffering of the occupants. These hells differ from the Abrahamic concept of Hell in a couple of ways. The occupants of Buddhist hells are not condemned by divine judgement, rather by the effects of their own life’s actions. Their damnation is not eternal, although it could last for extraordinary long periods - millions of aeons, in some cases.
Among the many hells described in the sutras is one particularly obscure. Perhaps fittingly, even most Buddhists have not heard of the lokāntarikā - the in-between-spaces-hells. Lokāntarikā (लोकान्तरिका) refers to the “intermediate spaces between two worlds”, according to the 2nd century C.E. teacher Nagarjuna. They are described like this: “in the intermediate spaces between worlds (lokāntarikā) where there is no sun, beings live and die entirely in shadows. These are the intermediate spaces between the universes of four continents. Grouped into three, these universes, circular in form, touch one another by their outer walls (cakravāla), like three coins brought together. Thus between them they demarcate a surface in the form of a triangle with three arched sides. These lokāntarikās, infinite in number like the universes that demarcate them, are forever plunged in deep darkness to the point that their inhabitants cannot even distinguish their own limbs.”
The cosmology posits that universes are circular, or spherical. At the points where universes meet, spaces are formed in-between. Spaces of total darkness and total isolation. Inhabitants of those spaces are in such darkness they can not even see their own limbs; they are so isolated as to not even be aware of anyone outside their individual in-between hell. Neither the light of the sun nor the moon can reach them. They are utterly alone. Utterly forgotten.
In the seventh chapter of the Lotus Sutra something happens: “The dark and secluded places within those lands, where the light of the sun and the moon is never able to penetrate, were all brightly illuminated and the living beings were all able to see one another, and they all exclaimed, saying, ‘How is it that living beings have suddenly come into existence in this place?’”
The inhabitants of the lokāntarikā can see themselves for the first time and they can see others. They are no longer alone. They know themselves.
Even the mention in the Lotus Sutra is brief, without the usual verses of praise and repetition and elaboration. It is possible that once illuminated, these beings must now find their own way to liberation.
It is not hard to see parallels with people in our time, in our societies of lokāntarikā. People are wrapped in the solitude and darkness of alienation and addiction. Many can no longer even see themselves; their identities - sexual, familial, cultural, ontological - have been stripped. Some exist only in the in-between cracks and fissures of our societies, trapped in misery and loneliness, unaware, even of their own plight and how it is shared by others. They can not see their own sublime dignity. They can not see that others share their fate.
Will the illumination of the Lotus Sutra shine into these forgotten corners and reveal the majesty of their lives and community? Will they, as the suffering have always done, find the inner strength and community to liberate themselves?
In The Opening of the Eyes, Nichiren wrote about strange Bodhisattvas who voluntarily enter hell to save the condemned: “they will deliberately create the appropriate karma in hopes that they too may fall into hell and share in and take their suffering upon themselves. Thus suffering is a joy to them. It is the same with me.” Ikeda-Sensei often says, one who lights a path for others, illuminates their own way.
What can we do to reach out to others, and simultaneously reduce our own isolation? What small flickering lights can we bring into the many in-between-spaces of our worlds?
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