諸經要集 18.18

18.18

Seventh is the Great Searing Heat Hell. It also has sixteen minor hells surrounding it (their sizes are as before). Why is it called the Great Searing Heat Hell? It means that the sinners are taken and placed inside an iron city. That city burns with fire, glowing red both inside and out, searing the sinners so that their skin and flesh are scorched and rotten. Ten thousand agonies arrive all at once. There is a great fire pit with raging flames. On both banks of the pit there are great fiery mountains. Those sinners are seized and impaled upon iron forks, standing upright in the fire, smoked and intensely seared so that their skin and flesh are scorched and rotten. Because their remaining transgressions are not yet exhausted, it makes them not die. After enduring suffering for a long time, they exit the Great Searing Heat [Hell] and proceed all the way to the Freezing Ice [Hell], and only then does their life come to an end. It is due to abandoning good karma and performing a multitude of evil deeds that they fall into the Great Searing Heat Hell.