法苑珠林 83.30

83.30

Furthermore, the Dharmapada-avadāna-sūtra says: In the past, there was a monk who went daily outside the city to a charnel ground in the wilderness. The road passed through another person's field before he could arrive. When the owner saw him, he became angry, saying, "What kind of man of the Way is this, coming and going here every day without cultivating the Way and virtue?" He then asked the man of the Way, "What mendicant are you, crossing back and forth in my field, creating a trodden path?" The man of the Way replied, "I have a lawsuit and have come looking for witnesses, which is why I walk through your field." The field owner, possessing connected past karmic conditions that warranted deliverance, followed the man of the Way secretly. In the wilderness charnel ground, he saw corpses strewn about in disarray, swollen, stinking, and putrid, devoured by birds and beasts, scattered in different places; some were completely eaten, some half-eaten; some had the color of gray pigeons; maggots and worms sucked and gnawed at them, foul and repulsive to approach. The monk raised his hand and said to the man, "These birds and beasts are my witnesses." The man asked, "How are these birds and beasts your witnesses? With whom are you, monk, disputing?" The monk replied, "The mind's affliction has many outflows and troubles. I contemplate these skeletons to distinguish foul impurities, and then return to my room to contemplate my own body from head to foot, which is no different from them. Yet this mind runs astray in myriad directions, pursuing the illusory and false phenomena of forms, sounds, scents, tastes, and fine touches. I now wish to admonish the source of the mind: 'You, mind, should know! When giving rise to such thoughts, do not lead me into the hells and hungry ghosts!' I am currently an ordinary mortal not yet free from the fetters, yet this mind-thief does not obey commands. For this reason, I go daily to the wilderness to preach the notion of foul impurities to it, and speak to the mind again: 'The mind is impetuous, chaotic, and unsettled. Mind, you must now reform and create no evil conditions.'" When the field owner heard the instruction of the man of the Way, he wiped away tears with his hands, choked with emotion, and could hardly speak. Now, that field owner had cultivated the contemplation of impurity for ten thousand years under the Buddha Kāśyapa; he immediately distinguished the thirty-six foul and impure substances. At that time, the monk and the field owner attained the path of a stream-enterer (srotaāpanna) right there in that terrifying charnel ground in the wilderness. Thus we know that the former and later sages all admonished with earnest diligence: one must not be careless or indolent, harming one's future retribution. Relatives do not last long; they come together briefly through conditions. Good and evil return in mutual retribution; how can close and distant relations be fixed? One must not cling stubbornly with greed and attachment to family and home. Even if one attains glory and high status, it is temporary and does not last. Recently we see the foolish worldly people who do not understand impermanence: they lavishly build houses and acquire fields, cherish and dote on wives and children, and greedily seek fame and wealth without satiety; during their lifetime they do not know how to cultivate merit, and upon dying, everything belongs to others.