by Pema Chodron on Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 6:35pm
"There's another story that you may have read that has to do with what we call heaven and hell, life and death, good and bad. It's a story about how those things don't really exist except as a creation of our own minds. It goes like this:
A big burly samurai comes to the wise man and says, "Tell me the nature of heaven and hell." And the roshi looks him in the face and says: "why should I tell a scruffy disgusting, miserable slob like you?" The samurai starts to get purple in the face, his hair starts to stand up, but he roshi won't stop, he keeps saying, "A miserable worm like you, do you think I should tell you anything?" Consumed by rage, the samurai draws his sword, and he's just about to cut off the head of the roshi. Then the roshi says "That's hell." The samurai, who is in fact a sensitive person, instantly gets it, that he just created his own hell; he was deep in hell. It was black and hot, filled with hatred, self-protection, anger and resentment, so much so that he was going to kill this man. Tears fill his eyes and he starts to cry and he puts his palms together and the roshi says "That's heaven."
There isn't any hell or heaven except for how we relate to our world. Hell is just resistance to life. When you want to say no to the situation you are in, it's fine to say no, but when you build up a big case to point where you're so convinced that you would draw your sword and cut off someone's head, that kind of resistance to life is hell."
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