法苑珠林 55.29

55.29

The Sūtra of One Hundred Parables also says: In a past age, there was a mountain Qiang who stole items from the royal treasury and fled far away. At that time, the king sent men out in all four directions to search for and capture him, and he was brought before the king. The king immediately interrogated him about where he had obtained the clothes. The mountain Qiang replied, 'These clothes belonged to my grandfather.' The king ordered him to put the clothes on. Since they were not truly the mountain Qiang's original possessions, he did not know how to wear them: what belonged on the hands he wore on his feet, and what belonged at the waist he put on his head. Seeing the thief, the king gathered his ministers to deliberate on this matter together, and said to him: 'If these were clothes possessed by your grandfather down to yourself, you should know how to wear them. Why are you topsy-turvy, using what is above for below, and what is below for above? Because you do not understand, I know for certain that your clothes were stolen and are not your old possessions.' This is borrowed as a parable: The king is like the Buddha; the treasure house is like the Dharma; the foolish Qiang is like the non-Buddhists who steal the Buddha's words and put them into their own teachings, taking them to be their own. Yet because they do not understand, they arrange the Buddha's teachings in a muddle, confusing top and bottom without knowing the characteristics of dharmas. It is just like that mountain Qiang who obtained the king's precious robes, did not know the proper order, and wore them topsy-turvy.