經律異相 18.20

18.20

The Buddha was in the country of Śrāvastī. At that time, in the country of Kośala, King Prasenajit ordered the prison warden: 'All thieves whose crimes warrant the law shall be taken to the marketplace and executed.' At that time, there was a thief amidst the crowd who escaped secretly, falsely put on Dharma robes on the outside, and privately made himself a śramaṇa. Yet inwardly he did not contemplate, thinking that he had forever escaped the distress of peril and no longer feared harm. Remaining in a secluded place, he did not contemplate the path and virtue, nor did he study the scriptures and precepts, the rules of deportment, or the ways of meditation and recitation; and since he had not yet realized the fruit, he did not diligently seek to realize it. The Buddha told that man: 'You have only escaped the danger of the thieves and bandits of birth-and-death, yet remaining fears still linger. The body of the five grasping aggregates revolves in the five destinies without end; maimed and harmed by all the defilements, you will fall into the paths of hungry ghosts and animals.' At that time, the monk, in a secluded place, contemplated and deliberated, reproaching himself earnestly within, and understood that the myriad things are all impermanent, born not to abide long, and entirely return to extinction. Changes of rise and fall have come about for a long time. Thereupon, before the Buddha, he repented and blamed himself, and attained the path of an arhat. (From the Sūtra on Secretly Becoming a Śramaṇa)