Revelation 9:6 Meaning In Those Days People Will Seek Death

Vibhava-taṇhā: Craving for non-existence Craving that reaches for annihilation. Under the sting of these locusts the old thirst turns inside out: the part that once wanted more days now wants the door shut on all of them, while the grasping underneath stays exactly what it was. Thirst cannot be quenched by getting what it asks for, which is why the wish to stop existing is left as unfed as every wish that came before it.

Kamma-vipāka: The ripening of action Deeds coming to fruit in their own time. Death offers itself as an emergency exit, and the door will not open, because fruit falls when it is ripe and not when the one standing under the tree decides they have waited long enough. The torment is given five months and ends when that is spent, so wanting out of it does not shorten it by a single day.

Niraya: Hell A state of ripening pain that holds a being until the cause of it burns out. Beings there are cut and scorched and still do not die, kept alive by the same force that is hurting them, which is the position of anyone stung by these locusts and unable to fall. Under the smoke rising out of the shaft, the ordinary mercy of dying has been withdrawn, and that withdrawal cuts deeper than the scorpion pain itself.

Punabbhava: Renewed becoming The taking up of another life after a body ends. Had death been found, it would have delivered far less than these seekers imagine, since the craving still burning in them lights the next life the way one candle lights another. Death flees from them now, and on the day it does arrive it opens onto more of the same rather than closing anything.

Nibbāna: The extinguishing of craving The fire of thirst going out, and the one thing the Buddha called deathless. Those hunting death are hunting the wrong exit, since the torment ends when the craving that made it unbearable cools, and that cooling is available to a person still breathing and still in pain. Death runs from whoever chases it; the deathless holds still and can be walked toward.