I tend to think that if we were to have a natural home, it would be the horizon: that infinitely thin line where heaven and earth meet in the distance. Like the horizon, we are ourselves precariously perched in a spiritual “in between” pulled and swayed on the one hand by the desires, habits, and problems of animals and on the other hand pulled towards the heavens, where the devas live in higher and purer forms and mentalities. But something also tells us that neither of these places is really the place we want to be. Humans do not want to give up the one side for the other. And so, we go on straddling the two with a wavering indecision. At times we prefer to be more like the animals and at other times we aspire more to join the ranks of the devas.

When I think about the way Samsara and the sentient beings who exist within it are depicted in Buddhism, I tend to see it not as simply a dry description of low, medium, and high states of karmic existence. For we have to bring into the picture as well the fact that the Buddha ultimately was rejecting the entire picture of Samsara, from the deepest of the Hells to the highest of the Formless Heavens. He was teaching the way to escape this massive trap of karmic existence. And so, I tend to see the picture of Samsara not so much as a stairway leading from Hell up to Earth and then up to Heaven. Rather I see it as a whirling pattern, with three arms, like those spinning off the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. One arm is the existences cause by evil deeds. One arm is the existences caused by good deeds. And one arm is the existences caused by mixed deeds. But at the center of the picture is the human existence. It is the human existence which is the pivot point of Samsara. In the human being is a being whose mind can be demonic or deva-ic or animalistic. Or human.

And that is the thing that is a little mysterious. What is “human”? Most human beings seem really to be beings who are passing through this pivot point on to another type of existence. That they are indeed in human bodies, but actually are just doing this human thing for a little while before moving on. We meet them all the time. Some of quite susceptible to addictions and all-consuming desires. Others cannot control violent tempers and impulses. And still others seem far “too” virtuous, really. They are beings whose karma is too strong for them to maintain the point at the center — the human point at the center of Samsara. They have a trajectory that is going to take them off to another place … whether it is hell or animals or heavens, sometimes it is obvious, sometimes not. But they do not have the balance to come to rest and stabilize at the center where humans reside.

But, again, what is unique to humans as opposed to demons or animals, and so forth? I believe it is the desire to become something more than simply evil or good. To transcend and understand the nature of this “place” called existence or life or Samsara. What is there besides birth and death, desire and aversion, compassion and hate, and so forth. What lies behind all of that? It is the people among us humans who have achieved balance who end up in pursuit of these questions, rather than the pursuit of random desires and hatreds.

That is what I have come to think. The spiritual quest that is the foundation of all of the religions of the world, in all their multitudes and forms, is what truly makes us human. There is an intuition that there is something more than we can achieve, that we should be aspiring to attain, and the resolve to set out on that path. That is what makes humans different from animals and devas. And it is why Buddhas are humans and not devas.

Dante awakens to find himself within the first ring of Hell, Limbo:

Indeed I found myself upon the brink
of the valley of the sorrowful abyss
thundering with the roar of endless woe.

So dark it was and deep and bleared with mist,
that though I fixed my gaze upon the bottom
I still could not discern a single thing.

Limbo however is not a place of punishment. Rather, it is an internment for all the souls that lived unaware of Christ and also all the infants that died before they were baptized. The sound of the place is not of pain, but just of sorrowful sighs. While these souls ostensibly did not commit any sin to warrant punishment, we can see by the fact that are now in Hell that it is sin enough to a Christian to not have taken Christ on as a savior, even if it had been historically impossible for them to do so. Dante must place even his guide Virgil in with this lot. Belonging to the religion and swearing spiritual fealty to the Lord God in heaven through the proper prophet — Christ — is the first requirement to entry into Heaven in Christian thinking. Virtue, wisdom, and spiritual purity all come after this requisite.

And so it is here that I and Christianity parted ways many years ago. It is simply ludicrous to assume that a God who created the whole world would limit entrance into his Heaven to some people. It not a matter of whether they choose to take up his righteous path or not. If you were born in any other part of the world until only recently, you were automatically doomed to going to Hell simply because you 1) were born before Christ became the latest prophet of this God or 2) were born in a place where no one knew of his existence afterwards.

It is also begs the question of whether virtue or purity are even necessary, since all of your sins will be forgiven anyway. And, indeed, this is precisely what the upshot turned out to be in the Christian world. So long as you paid fealty to the right Prophet of the right God, you could behave and treat others however you liked. Especially if the people you were treated were not Christians themselves. Even Popes fell to this crooked conclusion, alas. These evil people ended up in Hell as well as anyone else would by dint of their sins, which were amplified by the representation that they were righteous when they were not. Thinking they would escape by being apart of correct religion did not turn out to be enough, as Dante so thoroughly documents for us. And for this I find great satisfaction in reading Dante, as it is good to see a Christian who did not bend the rules for anyone just because they flew the right flag.

But back to the Canto. The travelers continue and discover a marvelous place, bright and green and a seven-walled castle. This was the place where the non-Christians of great virtue and luminaries of pagan philosophy resided. The great poets of the Greek tradition — Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan — come out to greet Virgil’s return. Dante’s strong moral sense and keen intelligence forces him to create a pleasant place in Hell for the luminaries of the pre-Christian world. He sees that virtue on its own merit has its power to create one’s destiny, regardless of faith. And so he makes this little oasis for them. But, still, the logic fails because he cannot be allowed into Heaven. Though oddly enough, the Biblical greats such as Abraham and Moses, we are told, were taken up into Heaven by Christ when he was resurrected. One wonders if God had kept the gates of Heaven closed to anyone and everyone, then, until Christ died. It is all very strange reasoning to me.

Dante counts out a who’s who of a Greco-Roman classical education: Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Cicero, Livy, Ceasar and the rest. It must have been quite a vision for him, to personally be among them all, the great writers and thinkers who shaped his education in art, philosophy, and history. The Renaissance was beginning during Dante’s lifetime and the study of all of these subjects had been revived after the Dark Ages. Medieval Italy had rediscovered the ancient civilization that had fallen and seemed to be bounding forward in knowledge again — if not spiritually. And this was Dante’s great frustration and sorrow: That the Christian ideals simply had not taken root in the Christian world and the political world was still in a state of continual warfare and strife in Italy at the time.

Dante and Virgil, however, must press on and so he must bid farewell to all the famed Greeks and Romans there. Press on into the realm of the damned.

I AM THE WAY INTO THE CITY OF WOE,
I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL PAIN,
I AM THE WAY TO GO AMONG THE LOST.

JUSTICE CAUSED MY HIGH ARCHITECT TO MOVE;
DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE CREATED ME,
THE HIGHEST WISDOM, AND THE PRIMAL LOVE.

BEFORE ME THERE WERE NO CREATED THINGS
BUT THOSE THAT LAST FOREVER — AS DO I.
ABANDON ALL HOPE YOU WHO ENTER HERE.

So begins Canto 3, with the inscription that confronts Dante over the Gates to Hell. Virgil tells him to steel himself for what is to come.

But before they even enter Hell, and encounter any of the devils and damned that await them there, Dante is first assaulted by the pitiful, angry, and pained wails of souls who suffer a different destiny. He describes the sounds as being like the grains of sand in a sandstorm that whip and blast at a person incessantly. Who are these souls who suffer so, not even in Hell? Virgil explains:

… “This state of misery
is clutched by those sad souls whose works in life
merited neither praise nor infamy.
Here they’re thrown in among that petty choir
of angels who were for themselves alone,
not rebels, and not faithful to the Lord.
Heaven drives them out — its beauty would be marred;
nor will the deep abyss receive their souls,
lest they bring glory to the wicked there.”

When Dante finally sees them, they are led about running behind a banner. He recognizes their leaders immediately. (We are not told who it is by name, but scholars apparently think it is likely to be Celestine V, a virtuous monk who had been made Pope but then convinced that he was unsuited to such a worldly post and abdicated it. Dante had considered his successor, Boniface VIII, to have been a evil man. And so Celestine was figured a coward in Dante’s mind for abandoning the Papacy to him and returning to being a hermit.) The number of them was so great that Dante did not think so many had ever been taking by death. They ran to and fro, constantly stung by flies and wasps about their faces, so much so that blood ran down their faces and mixed with their tears. Rejected by Heaven for turning away from it and by Hell for their virtues, they have no place and the world had forgotten them.

We can see, here, what little Dante thought of people who lived safe lives of virtue but who shied away from confronting evil in the world.

Dante then notices in the distance souls gathered on the shore of the river Acheron, where they are to be ferried over by Charon. When the two arrive there, Charon has also arrived for another boatload and is hurling verbal abuse on the souls who await him. Charon notices Dante and tells him to go back to where living souls enter Purgatory. Virgil makes it known they are there on the bidding of heavenly powers and Charon falls silent. They board Charon’s skiff and Dante falls unconscious on the way to the far shore.

We already can see the dark imagery of suffering, terror, and resignation Dante’s journey through Hell is going to entail, as he is already describing experiences that are quite horrifying and we have not even entered into the Pit yet. The entire journey is one of ever increasing images of punishment as they descend lower and lower to the very bottom of the place, which is where the secret entrance into Purgatory is found — right at Lucifer’s feet. The image I see as a metaphor is that of an Autumn nightfall, when first the light of day dims and goes out, to be replaced by slim replacements — the moon or stars, and perhaps nothing at all if it is a cloudy night. And then after the light is gone, the night cools, getting colder and colder until just before daybreak, when it is the darkest and coldest. But this moment, which to someone who had no idea what might happen next would think the very least hopeful, is the sign that the night is about to end and the new day to begin. The entire book, Inferno, is like this. The next book, Purgatory, is like the other side of the next morning.

[T1611.813b27-813c06; translated by C. Patton]