According to the Great Liberation Through Hearing

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According to the Great Liberation Through Hearing, there are six types of hell where one may be reborn following one’s time in the bardo between death and rebirth. One hell is a fiery world brimming with rivers of molten lava, the blood-red sky ablaze with sparks. Despite this hell’s capaciousness, its ability to accommodate an infinite number of beings, everywhere within its lands there is a feeling of claustrophobia, of being wedged in tight places, the body slowly turning into charcoal.

When considering this first hell, says the Abbot of Gandan Tegchenling, one should meditate on the story of the beggar who finds the leg of a tender young lamb lying by the side of the road. When the beggar asks his teacher if it is all right for him to partake of it, his teacher advises him to mark the meat with an x and to return for it later. The beggar does as he is told, using his rusty knife to carve an x in the meat, thus marking it as belonging to him, before hurrying away to prepare a fire. Later, in the dank shelter of his cave, the shadow of the flames dancing on the cave walls, the beggar feels an uneasiness come over him, a low throb beginning to spread on his chest. Slowly he lifts his tattered shirt. On the papery skin above his heart, there is a bloody x etched in his own hand. This is the parable of the fiery hell, says the Abbot. It is a hell of self-directed anger. A hell in which we spend our energy raging against our enemies, but at the end of the day we are only raging against ourselves.

The Abbot glances at my brother. After the prayer offering in the temple ends, the Abbot tracks us down in the courtyard and motions for us to follow him to this room. Even though he is my twin, when his days on earth run their course, I believe Mun is doomed to this hell of which the Abbot speaks. I have no doubts. You can see it in his eyes. An orange aura burning around each pupil as if the iris itself is smoldering. Some days I think this is the journey he is destined to make. It is out of his control. Endlessly circling through samsara, doomed to be born in an infinite cycle from human to beast to hungry ghost until he lives every existence possible. Other days I think he is simply a fool.

Then the Abbot of Gandan Tegchenling turns to me. There is barely enough room for the three of us crammed here in his small study, the space obviously ancient and built for private meditations. I sit facing him, Mun behind me in the corner by the door. And what of the second wintry hell, the Abbot asks.

Like most monasteries in Mongolia, Gandan Tegchenling is a teaching monastery. The head monk serves as the Abbot. Most of the monks at Gandan Tegchenling are novices in their early to mid-twenties who, like me, have yet to take their final vows. I can hear them outside the window, a sea of robes clapping and stamping the earth as they debate the nature of the universe. For us, debate is at the heart of a monk’s pedagogic training. Evenings filled with the sound of monks seemingly raging at one another.

I clear my throat, prepare my answer to what is essentially unanswerable.