佛說觀佛三昧海經 5.23

5.23

The Buddha said to Ānanda: "What is meant by the eighteen caldron hells? As for the caldron hells, there are eighteen caldrons, each caldron being exactly forty yojanas in length and breadth. Filled with boiling [liquids], each caldron is enclosed by sevenfold iron nets. Five hundred rākṣasas stoke great coal fires to heat the copper caldrons. This rock fire blazes flame upon flame, unbroken and impossible to extinguish for sixty days—equal to fully one hundred and twenty thousand years of days in Jambudvīpa. Thus the caldrons boil over, shooting upward like stars, turning into fiery wheels that fall back into the caldrons. There are sentient beings who transgress the Buddha's prohibitive precepts, who kill living beings for sacrificial offerings, or who, for the sake of eating meat, burn mountains and fields, harming living beings, or scald living beings alive and burn them with fire. When such sinners are about to die, they become agitated and vexed in body and mind, losing control of their bladder and bowels; they feel now hot as boiling water, now cold as ice, and at once have this thought: 'If only I could get warm water to bathe in, would that not be joyful?' The rākṣasa hell-wardens transform themselves into young servants holding bathing basins, and go to the sinner's place. The sinner is delighted and covets the basin; with breath cut off, life ends, and he is born into the boiling caldron. He quickly melts and rots away, leaving only bones. Iron forks dredge him out; iron dogs devour him, vomit him onto the ground, and thereupon he revives. The hell-wardens drive and press him to re-enter the caldron; terrified of the caldron's heat, he climbs the sword-trees, where his flesh and bones are cut to pieces and fall back into the boiling caldron. Because of the sin of killing living beings, in a single day and night he dies as many times as the sands of the Ganges, and is born as many times as the sands of the Ganges. When his sins are ended, he is born among animals, in the short-lived forms of swine, sheep, fowl, and dogs, passing through every one. Having received such forms for eighty million years, when his life ends, he is reborn among humans, receiving two kinds of retribution: first, frequent illness; second, a short lifespan. A short lifespan and frequent illness will be his constant companions. After countless kalpas, he encounters a kalyāṇamitra, receives and upholds the five precepts, and practices the six pāramitās."