Buddhist Hell in Luang Prabang

Posted on by thedislocatedhippies

The very notion that the Buddhist philosophy includes a Hell of eternal suffering, hideous torments and gruelling damnation surprises many of we Westerners, who tend to have a sort of fluffy bunny chocolate box idea of the religion.

Well, bake your bunny in a pie and throw the chocolate box in the fire folks because here it is, outlined pictographically on the walls of a magnificent Wat near the river in Luang Prabang.

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9 thoughts on “Buddhist Hell in Luang Prabang”

  2. Hi Karen, we think they’re about 500 years old. The Thais completely destroyed everything in Vientiane a couple of hundred years ago but didn’t get this far north. The Burmese conquered this part of the country about then but don’t seem to have been quite as terrible.

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    1. Perhaps a dead heat ? Both roughly circa 500 years ago. Bizarre you should mention it, yes, very Boschisn and we met a Dutch woman near there, Tilleke , who comes from HB’s hometown, the name of which I forget but somewhere in South Holland quite close to Belgium.

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  5. Well, I can think of a lot of Americans with a firm belief in Hell. However, I was reading a book of Buddhist scripture and ran into a verse about how if you go to Buddhist hell you will be squashed with a giant hammer for every insect you swatted.

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    1. Yeah ! Scary stuff alright ! And the thing is of course that , like some sort of fleshy hellish accordion you’d keep springing back up just in time to be hammered down again. We’ve got some other hell pictures from Luang Prabang were putting up soon, not for the faint of heart.

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Published by thedislocatedhippies

Kristen and Billy sprang from the loins of 4 heroic ancestors. They roamed the Earth separately for an Age, playing the zither, predicting earthquakes, calling bingo games, eating sponge cakes, and watching old movies on tv. They were schooled by the Dominicans and the Christian Bros, what taught them their letters and scribbling skills. So, rudely equipped, and with a missal full of hymns in their hearts they stepped forth into the world. Kristen and Billy tried to keep the hippy flame alive as they strove and stumbled through work, like Kane from Kung-Fu crossed with Pollyanna, finding both good and evil in the hearts of men, ( but mainly good). They filled out time sheets and instead of villains punched the clock over and over again. Finally, the dark clouds parted, the sun shone through, they met each other, stopped punching and started living. Now they are two wide eyed, clickety hipped, post career dislocated hippies looking to get lost in a big wide world.