The King Who Chose Hell

The deathless sage Markandeya told the Pandavas the tale of King Vipashchit, who, offered the bliss of heaven, chose instead to remain in hell so long as his presence could ease the suffering of the damned - a tale that the Pandavas would one day find written, in a fashion, into the very end of their own story.

Vipashchit was a king of perfect righteousness, who had ruled with justice and truth, performed his sacrifices, protected his people, and lived all his life in the keeping of dharma. He was, by any reckoning, one of the most virtuous of kings, a man whose place after death should surely have been in the highest heaven. And when at last he died and his soul left his body, the messengers of Yama, the Lord of Death, came to conduct him to his appointed place beyond.

But the messengers, whether by some small fault of the king's now being expiated, or by some confusion in the great accounting of deeds, led the soul of Vipashchit not upward to heaven but downward, along the dark road that leads to the regions of hell, the realms of Naraka where the souls of the wicked suffer the consequences of their evil deeds. The righteous king, who had expected the bright worlds, found himself instead being conducted into the place of torment.

Vipashchit was led into hell - into that dreadful region where countless souls writhed and groaned in their many torments, suffering the fruits of their sins in darkness and pain. It was a place of horror, full of the cries and the agonies of the damned. And the righteous king walked among them, brought, it seemed, by some error or some last small debt, into the very heart of suffering.

But a wonder happened when the righteous king entered hell. For Vipashchit was so full of accumulated merit, his whole being so saturated with the virtue of a lifetime of righteousness, that his very presence carried a power of relief. As he walked among the suffering souls, a cool and gentle breeze seemed to go out from him - the fragrance and the coolness of his goodness - and wherever it touched the tormented souls, their agonies were eased. The fires that burned them cooled; their pains grew gentle; the suffering of the damned was lightened, for the first time, simply by the nearness of so virtuous a soul among them.

The tormented souls, who had known nothing but unrelieved agony, suddenly felt their pains ease, and a wave of relief and comfort passed through that dark place. Bewildered and grateful, they looked about to find the source of this unexpected mercy, and saw the righteous king standing among them, the breeze of his virtue spreading coolness and ease through all the region of torment.

The suffering souls, feeling relief for the first time since they had entered that place, turned to the king and begged him not to leave. 'O great soul,' they cried, 'whoever you are, stay with us! Since you came among us, our torments have eased, the fires have cooled, our agonies have grown bearable. Your very presence is our only relief in this place of endless pain. Do not go and leave us to our sufferings again. Stay here with us, we beg you, that we may have respite from our torment.'

Vipashchit was moved with deep compassion at their plea, and at the sight of their suffering. He asked the keepers of that place who these souls were and by what deeds they had come to such torment - and he resolved that he would do what he could for them. And just then, the messengers of Yama came to him with the news that his being brought to hell had been only a brief thing - the working-off of some small debt - and that now he was to be conducted to his true and rightful place: the highest heaven, which his righteousness had earned. They bid him come away at once, up out of hell, to enjoy the bliss he deserved.

But Vipashchit would not go. To the astonishment of Yama's messengers, the righteous king refused to leave hell for heaven. He stood among the suffering souls and declared that he would not depart.

'I will not go to enjoy the bliss of heaven,' the king said, 'while my presence here is easing the agony of all these suffering souls. Look - because I stand among them, their torments are relieved; if I leave, their sufferings will return in full. How can I go away to my own happiness, to taste the pleasures of heaven alone, while so many here suffer, when my staying can give them relief? What kind of bliss would it be, won at the cost of abandoning these wretched souls to their renewed agony? I would find no joy in a heaven gained by turning my back on so much suffering that I had the power to ease. No - I will stay here, in this place of torment, so long as my presence brings these souls relief. Their ease is dearer to me than my own bliss. Let me remain in hell, and let my virtue go to comfort the damned.'

The messengers of Yama were amazed, and then came Yama himself, and even Indra, to reason with the king and to persuade him to take up the heaven he had earned. They told him that he had more than fulfilled his duty, that these souls were suffering the just consequences of their own evil deeds, that the order of justice required they bear their punishment, and that the king had every right - indeed was meant - to go to his own well-earned bliss.

But Vipashchit answered them with the reasoning of a compassion higher than mere justice. 'I do not question the justice of their punishment,' he said. 'But mercy is higher than justice, and the relief of suffering is a greater good than my own reward. A king is the protector of all who are in his reach, and these suffering souls are now within my reach and within my power to comfort; shall I abandon them because they have sinned? It is precisely the suffering who most need compassion. I do not desire a heaven that I must enter alone, leaving so many in agony behind me when I could have eased them. If my virtue has power to relieve their pain, then let my virtue be spent on them; that is a better use of it than my own enjoyment. I ask not for heaven, but that these souls be released from their torment - and if that cannot be, then let me stay and ease it.'

The gods were overcome by the king's supreme and selfless compassion - that he would forgo his own hard-earned heaven, and choose to remain in hell itself, rather than abandon suffering souls he had the power to comfort. Such a choice, preferring the relief of others' suffering to one's own bliss, was a virtue higher even than all the righteousness that had earned him heaven in the first place, and it could not go unrewarded.

And so the gods granted, by the very merit of the king's compassionate choice, the thing he had asked: that the suffering souls in that region of hell were released from their torment. By the power of Vipashchit's selflessness - his willingness to give up his own heaven for their sake - the merit overflowed and lifted them up, so that the souls whose agony he had refused to abandon were freed from hell and raised, together with the king, up out of the darkness toward the higher worlds. The king who had chosen hell-with-others over heaven-alone won, by that very choice, not only his own heaven but the deliverance of all the suffering souls he had stayed to comfort. His compassion had emptied a hell.

Markandeya drew the lessons of the tale for the Pandavas - and the Pandavas, hearing it, could not yet know how closely it prefigured the end of their own story.

"See the highest reach of compassion, son of Pandu: a king who, offered the bliss of heaven he had earned by a lifetime of righteousness, chose instead to remain in hell itself, so long as his presence could ease the suffering of the damned. He preferred the relief of others' agony to his own happiness; he would not enter a heaven won by abandoning the suffering. And this compassion - higher even than justice, higher than his own great righteousness - was rewarded not only with his own salvation but with the deliverance of all the souls he stayed to comfort. The compassion that will not save itself alone, that chooses the good of the suffering over its own bliss, is the very summit of dharma, and it has power to empty a hell.

"Remember this, when your own time comes to choose: that the truest greatness of soul is not to grasp the heaven you have earned, but to refuse it for the sake of others still in darkness; and that such selflessness, in the end, lifts up not only you but all those you would not abandon."

And the Pandavas took the tale to heart - little knowing that Yudhishthira himself, at the very end of all their story, would be brought to hell and offered heaven, and would refuse to enter it while his brothers and even a faithful dog remained in suffering below; and that his choice, like Vipashchit's, would prove the last and highest test of his dharma, and would lift up all whom he loved.