佛說觀佛三昧海經 2.11

2.11

The Avīci hell is eighty thousand yojanas in length and breadth, perfectly square, with seven layers of iron walls and eighteen tiers below, and forests of swords on four sides in eighteen rows. To the east there are eighteen minor hells surrounding it; to the south there are eighteen tiers surrounding it; to the west there are eighteen tiers surrounding it; and to the north there are eighteen tiers surrounding it. Beneath the earth there are naturally roaring, fierce fires that burn the iron walls and iron nets until both blaze, with all the scorching flames swirling around and passing downward through the eighteen tiers. If there are sentient beings who commit the five heinous sins, their bodies fill it, enduring such suffering day and night without ceasing, with no gap or interval. When the kalpa is about to end, the four gates open naturally. The sinners see all the forests of swords outside the eastern gate looking like cool forests; rising from the lower tier to the second tier, and from the second tier to the third tier, and so forth upward, they run toward the eastern gate. The rākṣasa hell-wardens pierce their eyes in counter-thrusts with heated iron pitchforks; their eye-vitality, like molten copper, flows out upon the ground, and they immediately fall prostrate, filling the eighteen tiers, their minds faint and overwhelmed for a full minor kalpa. Only then do they rise again and head toward the southern gate. Thus it is for the four directions, no different from before, suffering agony day and night through an entire great kalpa. When the kalpa ends, they are reborn into the remaining minor hells. The shapes and sizes of those other hells, the lightness and heaviness of retribution, the handsome and ugly forms, and all the miscellaneous retributions, will be explained in detail in the [chapter on] the samādhi of loving-kindness.