The word “hell” can be defined “to dig the ground.” It is called “hell” because dead people are buried in the ground. In the same way, we can say that the wife, children, and relatives carrying the corpse to a crematory are jailors of hell; the grief-stricken cries of wife and children are the scolding voices of jailors; and the crematory flames are the flames of the Hell of Incessant Suffering. A two-and-a-half foot cane seems like a jailor’s iron stick; horses and cows look like horse-head demons and cow-head demons; the hole for burying the dead corresponds to the Hell of Incessant Suffering; eighty-four thousand desires are eighty-four thousand iron pots in Hell; to leave home is a journey of death; and the river by which filial children mourn equals the Styx, the river of death. It would be foolish for you to look for hell in places other than your own mind!
However, for those who uphold the Lotus Sutra, all this is reversed. Hell will be altered to the Pure Land of Eternally Tranquil Light; the flames in hell will be changed into the light of wisdom of the Buddha of the Reward-body; the dead will be changed into the Buddha of Dharma-body; the fiery hole of hell will be changed to the compassion of the Buddha of the Accommodative-body; the cane of the dead will become the cane of the true entity of all phenomena; the Styx will become the ocean of Nirvana; and the journey of death will become the doctrine of “earthly desires turned to enlightenment.”
Understand this, please. To understand this is “immediate attainment of Buddhahood with the present body” or “opening the treasury of Buddha-Wisdom.” This is exactly how Devadatta, the Evil changed the Hell of Incessant Suffering into the Pure Land of Tranquil Light, and a daughter of the Dragon King became a Buddha in an instant. According to the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, the evil can be turned to the just. This is solely attributable to the merit of one character “myō.”
Ueno-dono Goke-ama Go-henji, A Response to the Nun, Widow of Lord Ueno, Nyonin Gosho, Letters Addressed to Female Followers, Page 50-52