法苑珠林 82.93

82.93

Furthermore, the Rāhula-kṣānti-sūtra says: At that time, Rāhula went to the house of an unbelieving brahmin to beg for food. The brahmin was stingy and would not give him any; Rāhula was beaten until his head was broken and bleeding, and the brahmin also grabbed sand and threw it into his bowl. Rāhula endured it patiently, with no mind to retaliate. He then carried his bowl to the river, washed his head and bowl, and said to himself: "I was merely practicing alms-begging, yet he unprovokedly and arbitrarily harmed me. My pain lasts only for a short moment; how can it compare to his long-term suffering? It is like a sharp sword cutting a foul corpse: the foul corpse feels no pain, but that is not because the sword is not sharp. It is also like feeding heavenly nectar to a pig in a cesspool: the pig leaves it and runs away, but that is not because the nectar is not delicious. I used the true words of the Buddha to instruct the cruel and foolish of the world; that the cruel and foolish do not contemplate them, is that not indeed the same?" Having returned, he reported this to the Buddha. The Buddha said: "When an evil mind arises, it is one's own ruin. That frivolous and evil person, when his life ends in the middle of the night, will enter the Avīci Hell. The hell demons will inflict pain, and every kind of torment will reach him. Only after eighty-four thousand years will his lifespan end. His consciousness will then take on the body of a venomous python; the poison will turn back to harm himself, and when that body ends, he will begin again, continuing to receive the form of a viper, constantly eating sand and earth, ending only after ten thousand years. Because he directed a wrathful mind toward a keeper of the precepts, he receives a poisonous body; because he threw sand and earth into the bowl, he will eat sand and earth and die life after life. When his offenses are exhausted and he becomes a human, when his mother is pregnant with him, she will suffer from severe illness, and his household will diminish day by day. When the child is born, he will be dull and obstinate, having neither hands nor feet. His relatives will be shocked and bewildered, all saying, 'What demon has brought this ill omen?' They will immediately take him and abandon him at a crossroads. No passerby will fail to be astounded; they will vie with one another to strike his head with tiles, stones, knives, and sticks, caving in his skull, and in utter misery he will die after ten days. After death, his spirit will again be reborn, consistently without hands or feet, as dull and obstinate as before. Only after five hundred lifetimes will this heavy offense be exhausted. Later, when born as a human, he will always suffer from headaches. When a person living in the world cannot be patient, the place where he is born will not meet an era with a Buddha; he will transgress the Dharma and stay far from the Saṃgha, remaining constantly in the three wretched realms. If, through remaining merit, he manages to be born as a human, his disposition will be constantly foolish, cruelty and tyranny will follow him of themselves, he will be ugly and detested by the multitude, he will always be born into poverty, and worthies and sages will not protect him."