眾經撰雜譬喻 1.8

1.8

In the past, there was a man who was sent on an errand far away and lodged alone in an empty house. In the middle of the night, a ghost carrying a corpse came and placed it before him. Afterward, another ghost chased after it, shouting angrily and reviling the former ghost: "This corpse is mine! Why did you carry it here?" The two ghosts each seized an arm and quarreled over it. The former ghost said: "There is a man here who can be asked: who carried this corpse here?" The man thought: "These two ghosts have great strength. If I speak the truth, I will die; if I lie, I will also die. In neither case can I escape, so why should I lie?" He said: "The former ghost carried it here." The latter ghost was enraged, seized the man's arm, pulled it out, and threw it to the ground. The former ghost took an arm from the corpse and attached it to him, and it adhered immediately. In this way both legs, head, and ribs were all pulled out, and the body of the corpse was attached to him as before. Thereupon the two ghosts together ate the man's substituted body, wiped their mouths, and departed. The man thought: "My body was born of my parents, and I watched with my own eyes as the two ghosts ate it all. Now this body of mine consists entirely of the flesh of another's body. Do I truly have a body now, or do I have no body? If I have one, it is entirely another's body; if I have none, presently a body appears like this." Having thought this, his mind was perplexed and bewildered, like an insane person. The next morning, following the road he went on to the next country, where he saw a stupa of the Buddha and the saṃgha. He could not ask about anything else, but only asked whether his own body existed or did not exist. The bhikṣus asked: "What kind of person are you?" He replied: "I do not know myself whether I am a human or not a human." He then related the above matter in detail to the saṃgha. The bhikṣus said: "This person knows anātman for himself; he can easily be liberated." They said to him: "Your body from the beginning has always been anātman; it is not just now! It is merely because these caturmahābhūta combine that one conceives it to be one's own body." They then ordained him into the Way; cutting off all kleśas, he attained the fruit of arhatship. This shows that being able to regard oneself as empty and anātman, one is not far from attaining the Way.