Christians: What kind of heaven do you believe in?

[Angrboda]

We know that Jesus said: "Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed."

So basically, Heaven is "light". And "unimaginable", according to Jesus and the scripture.

....and Hell? I'd say "dark". Very dark! No sight... like here on earth.

Everything old is new again...

The Blessed One said this:

"Punna, there are four kinds of karma proclaimed by me after realization myself with direct knowledge. What are the four? There is dark karma with dark ripening, there is bright karma with bright ripening, there is dark-and-bright karma with dark-and-bright ripening, and there is karma that is not dark and not bright with neither-dark-nor-bright ripening that conduces to the exhaustion of karma."

— Kukkuravatika Sutta

This was the first knowledge I attained in the first watch of the night. Ignorance was destroyed; knowledge arose; darkness was destroyed; light arose — as happens in one who is heedful, ardent, & resolute.

When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilement, pliant, malleable, steady, & attained to imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of the passing away & reappearance of beings. I saw — by means of the divine eye, purified & surpassing the human — beings passing away & re-appearing, and I discerned how they are inferior & superior, beautiful & ugly, fortunate & unfortunate in accordance with their karma: 'These beings — who were endowed with bad conduct of body, speech & mind, who reviled the Noble Ones, held wrong views and undertook actions under the influence of wrong views — with the break-up of the body, after death, have re-appeared in the plane of deprivation, the bad destination, the lower realms, in hell. But these beings — who were endowed with good conduct of body, speech, & mind, who did not revile the Noble Ones, who held right views and undertook actions under the influence of right views — with the break-up of the body, after death, have re-appeared in the good destinations, in the heavenly world.' Thus — by means of the divine eye, purified & surpassing the human — I saw beings passing away & re-appearing, and I discerned how they are inferior & superior, beautiful & ugly, fortunate & unfortunate in accordance with their karma.

— Dvedhavitakka Sutta

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Buddhist hell:



"Can't be a law without a lawgiver..."

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You know, the scuttlebutt is that Jesus spent time in India, where he was known as 'St. Issa.'

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"No matter where you prepare your last bed,
No matter where the sword of death falls,
The terrifying messengers of death descend,
Horrid and giant; and glare with thirsty eyes.

Friends and family, weeping, surround you.
Eyeing your wealth and possessions,
They offer prayers and enshroud you.
Unprepared, you pass away;
Helpless and alone."

From 'Songs of spiritual change' by His Holiness the 7th Dalai Lama (transl. Glenn Mullin)