法苑珠林 53.75

53.75

The Sūtra of One Hundred Parables says: Formerly, a husband and wife had three cakes. The husband and wife divided them, each eating one cake, with one cake remaining. They made an agreement together: 'Whoever speaks first must not be given the cake.' Having made this agreement, for the sake of the one cake neither dared to speak. In a short while, a thief entered the house, stole, and took their property; everything they possessed fell entirely into the thief's hands. Because of their prior agreement, the husband and wife looked on with their eyes and did not speak. Seeing that they did not speak, the thief violated his wife right in front of the husband. The husband saw it with his own eyes and still did not speak. The wife then cried out, 'Thief!' and said to her husband, 'Why, you fool, for the sake of one cake, do you see a thief and not call out?' Her husband clapped his hands and laughed, saying: 'Ha, wench! The cake in our house is mine; I will not give it to you!' When worldly people hear of this, none fail to mock and laugh. Ordinary people are also like this: for petty fame and gain they feign silence, and are plundered by the various evil thieves of artificial defilements, forfeiting their wholesome dharmas and consequently falling into the three destinies, not fearing at all to seek the supramundane path, but indulging in play and games among the five desires; though encountering great suffering, they do not consider it a calamity—no different from that fool.