Heaven And Hell Are Just A Thought Away

When I was a student at St. Joseph High School, I’d roll my eyes when the priests talked about hell. “That’s just a way to control people,” I said. Later, when I came to Buddhism and found it has a concept of hell too, I thought: here we go again.

But then, in my late twenties, I spent an afternoon on a long meditation retreat watching my mind totally unravel. It told me my girlfriend didn’t love me, that I should leave her first. It said my parents didn’t love me, that I should cut them off.

And when it was over, I thought: isn’t that a kind of hell? No devils with pitchforks, but just as much agony. And if I’d obeyed those thoughts, I might have been in hell a lot longer than one afternoon.

This is why the Buddha says: cakkhuṃ ādittaṃ, sotaṃ ādittaṃ — the eye is on fire, the ear is on fire. The untrained mind can see an Instagram post or hear a rumor and instantly descend into hellfire. But the mind can be trained to step back from the flame.

That’s why I dislike the news industry. On the one hand, it breeds in us a frozen despair to keep us watching. On the other hand, it breeds in us the entitlement that life should go well. But how do you know things won’t get much worse from here? How do you know that this day, with all its struggles, won’t be the best you get for the next 25 years?

If we really owned our catastrophizing, it would lead us not to self-pity but to gratitude. If the world is indeed falling apart, better count every blessing. Forgive others. Cherish the measure of health and wealth you've been given. Search for the good as someone dying of thirst searches for a drop of water.

There’s always a reason to feel bad about life. There’s always a reason to feel good about it too. Heaven and hell are just a thought away. When you see the arbitrariness of the storytelling mind, you become disenchanted with it.

Turn off the TV. Go into the garden. The springtime knows nothing of these stories.

William Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven & Hell" (1793)