法苑珠林 76.29

76.29

Now birth, old age, sickness, and death offer no time of self-extrication; bodhi and nirvāṇa possess a path of cultivation and entry. That all the Buddhas attain the Way is due to practicing the four means of embracing [sentient beings], so that ordinary people and sages take refuge in them. That bodhisattvas become sages is due to practicing the six pāramitās, so that monastics and laypeople revere them. Today one observes worldly fellows who focus exclusively on fabricating private slander, maliciously carrying talk back and forth, causing others' kin to separate and friends to estrange, taking pleasure in sowing the karma of disharmony and incurring the suffering of being parted while alive. Even if one separates someone from an evil person with a good intention, this too is a disruption, but it brings benefit and incurs no sin. Therefore the Tattvasiddhi-śāstra says: If one instructs and transforms with a good intention, though it causes separation, one incurs no sin; if with an evil intention one causes others to quarrel and fall into chaos, then this is malicious speech and incurs the gravest sin, meaning falling into the hells, animal realm, or hungry ghosts; if born among humans, one is slandered by others and obtains only wicked and fractured kin. It should be known that in the previous discussion of the faults of false speech, it was for the sake of estranging both sides; yet false speech, in terms of this meaning, is precisely malicious speech. If one speaks of the suffering incurred across the three periods of time by this sin, as it has already been stated above, it need not be repeated.