[5] For a historical discussion of hell, accumulated affliction and repentance in particular medieval Chinese Buddhist texts, see Wendi L. Adamek, ‘Addressing the Mind: Developments in the Culture of Confession in Sui-Tang China,’ Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies 28 (2015): 117–152, especially pp. 132–135. [Source 1](https://chinesebuddhiststudies.org/wp-content/uploads/jcbs2804_Adamek117-152.pdf)
Repentance and a Different Future
A wish to escape punishment can exist before a person understands why their conduct was wrong. Repentance, as Yinlü Wuqing describes it, reaches the conduct itself. The person acknowledges the wrong and resolves to abandon it. Relief from pain may give them a chance to listen and reflect; what follows depends on whether they can accept correction and carry it into the life ahead.
The book makes this acknowledgment specific. Someone who has lied can tell the Buddha when it happened and what prompted it. If the details have been forgotten, sincere repentance is still possible: the person can resolve to change and never repeat the conduct. Prayer for the Buddha's help and remembrance of the Buddha accompany the effort to live differently. Forgetting an incident does not prevent a person from addressing the habit they now recognise.
The resolve also calls for action. Someone who has spread a false accusation may need to correct it; someone who has taken what belongs to another may need to return it. Such ordinary acts of repair give practical meaning to the decision to stop. The book warns expressly against relying on repentance as a way to offend again and confess again afterwards. A practice intended to end wrongdoing cannot fulfil that purpose while the wrongdoing is deliberately renewed. [1]
Dizang, the bodhisattva Kshitigarbha, helps beings in hell to make this change. In the Hall Where the Netherworld's Light First Turns, prisoners hear his teaching with punishment suspended. The judge says that even a moment of repentance can open this opportunity. Dizang is teaching the Five Precepts when Ayu describes the hall. The accounts that follow show what can happen when a prisoner begins to respond, and what may still remain after that beginning. [2]
One prisoner had formerly been a generous practitioner who neglected the precepts. He became a ghost that stole the vital energy of living people, then fell into hell. As he hears Dizang teach, he weeps, acknowledges his wrongdoing and vows to practise and protect the true Dharma through successive lives. His light changes from dark grey to a paler shade. Dizang accepts his repentance, and the officers take him to the judgment hall, where arrangements are made for his return to human life.
After the judgment, he is taken to drink Mengpo's soup before rebirth. The judge reads the future recorded for him: a wealthy family without a sound understanding of the Dharma, recurring minor illnesses but no major disease, repeated deception by others, and no child to attend him at death. His former generosity accounts for the wealth. Stealing vital energy accounts for his poor health and the obstacles he will meet in practice. Leaving hell gives him another life in which these different consequences must still be faced.
He will begin practising at thirty and, in that life, meet a manifestation of Dizang. The bodhisattva's further help responds to his vow to protect the Dharma. Yet even in comfortable circumstances, impulses to steal will return. The judge asks him to keep the precepts, bear illness without complaint, resist revenge when cheated, remain steady through obstacles and repent as soon as the wish to steal arises. If he does so, he can continue to improve. If he resumes harmful conduct, he may return to hell; the judge says he has seen such returns often. [3]
Another account concerns a man who had once been a monk. Dizang describes his earlier discipline in mixed terms. He calls it imperfect, yet also says that the man had observed the bhikshu precepts, the commitments of a fully ordained monk, purely. The merit of that observance brought seven lives in wealthy households with dutiful children. In the seventh life, sexual misconduct and slander led him into hell. Envious of a respected lay Buddhist teacher, he falsely accused the teacher of breaking the precepts. Followers withdrew, and their opportunities to practise were harmed as well.