Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Hell -Part7

 
 Many of Genshin’s sinners are served with poetic justice. Certain sections  of Genshin’s hell even seem somewhat self-serving (the Iron-Plane-Fox-Eating  Place, for example, is set aside for “those who have burned the bedroom  furniture of priests”). But one never feels in reading the Ojoyoshu that  Genshin's own personal animosities had anything to do with the place in  which sinners were assigned. In his deeply personal narrative Dante peoples  the otherworld with people he calls by name, both fictional and historical,  even assigning to the lower hells men of high authority in the church. With  the exception of well known Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, Genshin does not give  a single name. For Genshin, when human beings rise to the stages of  existence above the human stage, or when they fall into hell, they cease to  be human. In Paradise they are Bodhisattvas and Buddhas, in the Realm of  Beasts they are beasts, and in hell they must be demons. 

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