A Parable

Chapter 3

 

Sutra:

The Buddha, wishing to restate his meaning, spoke verses, saying:

Suppose there was an Elder,

Outline:

I2. Verse section.
J1. Verse setting up parable.
Kl. Verse about general parable.
L1. Verse about Elder.

Commentary:

The Buddha, having finished speaking the prose sections, and wishing to restate his meaning, spoke verses. Because he was filled with compassion, and afraid that living beings still had not understood his principles, he was not afraid to take the trouble to repeat himself. He spoke verses, saying...Some verses are four characters long, others five, six, or seven. The length of the lines varies, but they elaborate upon the principles set forth in the previous prose passages. Sometimes, they may speak them in a capsule form. The point is that they repeat them so that people who missed them the first time can pick up on them.

Suppose there was an Elder. Suppose, for example, there was an Elder. An Elder has ten kinds of virtuous practices which were mentioned before and which you, no doubt, remember very clearly. If you don’t remember clearly, check back to that passage.

Sutra:

Who had a large house,
Which was very old,
And so was collapsing.
The halls were high and precarious,
The pillars rotting at their bases,
The beams and ridgepoles aslant,
The foundations and stairways crumbling.

The walls and partitions were cracked and ruined,
The plaster flaking and falling off.
The thatch was falling every which way,
And the rafters and eavepoles were coming loose,
The partitions on all sides were bent and misshapen;
It was filled with all kinds of filth.

Outline:

L2. Verse about the house.

Commentary:

Who had a large house, the large house is the Three Realms, the desire realm, the form realm and the formless realm. Which was very old. It is said,

There’s no peace in the three realms;
It is like a burning house.

And so was collapsing. It was just about to fall apart. We can also use the old house as an analogy for the human body. There is a poem which goes:

Our bodies are like a house.
The eyes are the windows, the mouth a door.
Our four limbs are like the pillars,
and our hair is like the thatch on the top.
Always keep it in good repair.
Don’t wait until it falls apart and then panic.

“Our bodies are like a house. The eyes are the windows, the mouth a door.” The mouth is like a door and the two eyes are like windows. Windows let light in the room, and our eyes allow us to see things. “Our hair is like the thatch on the top.” They do not have such houses in America, but in China some of the houses have grass thatch on the top and it looks like the hair growing on our heads. “Always keep it in good repair.” Keep up with the repairs as necessary. “Don’t wait until it falls apart and then panic.”

When you are young, your house is in “good repair.” Once you are old, then the “house” is about ready to fall over. When you are old and about to die, you will realize that you cannot live in that “house” anymore. You will have to move. You may think to repair your house then but it will be too late. The machine will have been overworked. That is how people’s bodies work, too. They have to be kept in good repair when one is young. “Good repair” means to cultivate the Way. You should sit in Dhyana meditation, bow to the Buddha and to the Sutras or recite mantras. Today I taught you your first Chinese lesson and it was a good foundation for all of you:

“I got up today at four o’clock.” The early morning is the best time to get up. It is said:

The plans for one’s life are made when one is young and strong.
The plans for the year are made in the Spring.
The plans for the day are made in the morning.

During one’s life one must be vigorous. The most important time of the year is the Springtime, when the ten thousand things are blooming. As for the day, the most important time is early in the morning. It is best to get up early and take a walk in the garden, breathe some fresh air. That will give you energy. So, you get up at four and then wash your face, brush your teeth. Then, since there’s nothing much to do, you can sit in meditation….Ahh….At this time there is nothing moving at all. It is the very best time, the most precious time, to work hard. While you are sitting it is easy to get a response with the Way.

Then, after a while when your legs start to hurt, or even if you have gotten past the pain, you may wish to get up and do some exercise. How? Bow to the Buddha. Bow and rise, and your circulation improves throughout your entire body. It is even better than doing yoga! When you have finished bowing to the Buddha and you feel wide awake then you can recite sutras to regulate your breath and then secretly recite mantras. When you recite the mantras, you do not need to recite them out loud.

We recite mantras here out loud but that is for the public ceremonies. In real cultivation you recite them in your mind. This is called vajra mantra recitation. After that, you can go to work. When you get off work at five o’clock you come to the Buddhist Lecture Hall to study Chinese and hear the Sutra lectures. You even skip dinner! The last sentence of the Chinese lesson says, “Are you hungry?” We will have to wait until tomorrow to answer that question.

The halls were high and precarious. The Elder is the Buddha. His great house is the Three Realms in which all living beings live. The Three Realms are so old, we say they had no beginning. The house was just about ready to fall apart. It was already useless. This is speaking externally. If you use your own body as an analogy, you see that the house of the body eventually falls apart, too.

The halls represent the desire realm and the form realm. These halls are said to be high and precarious because it is very easy to fall and lose this human body. Sometimes one falls from the heavens, they are so high. A high place is very dangerous because when you fall, you lose your life. This means that in the desire and form realms, one does not know if one will fall into the hells, become an animal or turn into a hungry ghost. One does not know what path one will fall into and so it is extremely dangerous.

The pillars rotting at their bases. You could say our legs are like the pillars. Our feet are the bases. They are rotting! This is talking about the sufferings of birth, old age, sickness and death. From birth one grows to adulthood, grows old, gets sick and then dies.

The beams and ridgepoles aslant. Beams and ridgepoles are like our backs. They are crumbling and useless.

The foundations and stairways crumbling Foundations refer to, in the analogy of the body, the place where we “sit down.” It also represents our karmic obstacles.

The walls and partitions were cracked and ruined. The walls represent the skin and flesh of our bodies. When we get old, our skin gets cracked and wrinkled.

The plaster flaking and falling off. The plaster here refers to our complexions. The thatch was falling every which way, and the rafters and eavepoles were coming loose, the partitions on all sides were bent and misshapen; it was filled with all kinds of filth. It was twisted out of shape. The thatch falling off is like our hair falling out. The rafters and eavepoles mean our four limbs all falling apart. “Filth” refers to the things in our digestive systems, the urine and excrement inside us. We are entirely filled with these unclean things.

Each one of us has a “house”. It is our own body. The body has “walls.” They are the four elements and the four applications of mindfulness. When the walls fall apart, that is like when the four elements disperse. Earth, water, fire, and air--they all return to their origin. They disperse and the body dies.

As to the problem of human life, everyone should see it clearly. Do not let the mind become the body’s slave, busy serving it all day long with no time of waking up.

From of old few have lived to be seventy.
When you take off years for youth and age,
There’s not much time in between.
And what’s more, half of that is spent asleep!

There have never been very many people who have lived to age seventy. Most people die in their fifties or sixties. Some die in their twenties, some even younger. Few folks live to be seventy, but let’s pretend that someone did. The first ten years of his live is pretty meaningless, because he does not understand what is going on around him. The last ten years he cannot do anything either. That takes ten years off each end, leaving fifty years. Half of that is spent in sleep. That leaves just twenty-five years. There is also time to be taken off for eating, changing your clothes and going to the toilet, drinking tea and chatting about this and that. How much time is left? You have to take off at the very least another five years for that, leaving twenty years. Is that really so long? So what great meaning does human life have?

Yesterday, in Chinese class, I asked you, “Are you hungry.” Today, in your lessons you learned, “I do not feel hungry.”

I asked you, “Why don’t you feel hungry?”

You answered, “Because I get to listen to the Buddhadharma, and understand the true principles of human life.” What I have just talked about here are the true principles of human life. If you understand them, you can be genuinely happy. When you are genuinely happy, you forget about being hungry. Do you see how wonderful this is? It may just look like a Chinese lesson, but it has a great deal of principle, if you look into it deeply. Your study of the Buddhadharma has brought you true peace of mind and real happiness, so you forget all about eating. Do not forget your Chinese lessons. People who study Buddhism should pay special attention to them. You are learning Chinese and the principles of the Buddhadharma at the same time. That is really great!! That is why I told our guest today that I charge a thousand dollars an hour for my Chinese lessons. That is not too much. If you get to end birth and death, that is simple priceless.

Sutra:

There were five hundred people
Dwelling within it.

Outline:

L3. Verse about the five hundred people.

Commentary:

There were five hundred people dwelling within it. There were five hundred people in this big house. Five hundred stands for the living beings in the five destinies--gods, humans, hell-beings, hungry ghosts and animals. It is the same as the six destinies with the omission of the destiny of the asuras because asuras can be found in all of the other five destinies. Five hundred people, then, were living in the burning house of the Three Realms.

Sutra:

There were kites, owls, hawks, and vultures,
Crows, magpies, pigeons, and doves,
Black snakes, vipers and scorpions,
Centipedes and millipedes.

There were geckoes and myriapods,
Weasels, badgers, and mice--
All sorts of evil creatures,
Running back and forth.

There were places stinking of excrement and urine,
Oozing with filth,
With dung beetles
Clustered upon them.

There were foxes, wolves, and Yeh Kan,
Who nibbled at, trampled on,
And devoured corpses,
Scattering the bones and flesh.

Then packs of dogs
Came running to grab them,
Hungry, weak and terrified,
Seeking food everywhere,
Fighting and shoving,
Snarling, howling and barking.

The terrors in that house,
And the sights were such as these.
Li Mei and Wang Liang
Were everywhere.

Yakshas and evil ghosts
Were eating human flesh.
There were poisonous creatures of all kinds,
And evil birds and beasts,
Hatching their young,
Each protecting its own.

Yakshas raced to the spot
Fighting one another to eat them.
Having eaten their fill,
Their evil thoughts grew more inflamed.

The sound of their quarreling,
Was dreadful to the extreme.
Kumbhanda ghosts
Were squatting on high ground,
Sometimes leaving the ground
A foot or two,
As they wandered to and fro
Amusing themselves as they wished,
Grabbing dogs by two legs,
And striking them so they lost their bark,
Twisting their legs around their necks,
Frightening the dogs for their own pleasure.

Further there were ghosts,
Their bodies very tall and large,
Naked, black and thin,
Always dwelling therein,
Emitting loud and evil sounds,
Howling in search of food.

Further there were ghosts
With throats like needles.
Again there were ghosts
With heads like oxen,
Now eating human flesh,
And then devouring dogs.

Their hair was disheveled
They were harmful, cruel and dangerous,
Oppressed by hunger and thirst,
They ran about shouting and crying out.

There were yakshas, hungry ghosts,
And all sorts of evil birds and beasts,
Frantic with hunger, facing the four directions,
Peeking out the windows,
Such were the troubles
And terrors beyond measure there.

Outline:

L4. Verse about the fire starting.
M1. Events above ground likened to the desire realm.
N1. The beings burnt.

Commentary:

There were kites, owls. In The Book of Songs it says,

The owl, the owl--
The unfilial bird…

The owl is said to be unfilial because as soon as it is born, it eats its mother. The owl is hatched out of a lump of dirt that the mother sits on. As soon as it is born, the first thing it does it eat its mother. The mother just sits there and waits to be eaten. She is being very compassionate indeed, giving her life to her child, but you could also call it a kind of retribution. In past lives, the mother bird was unfilial and so in this life she is a bird who ends up being eaten by her child. The head of an owl looks like a cat. They eat mice. In China, these birds are considered very unlucky. Whoever sees an owl is in for some hard times, some inauspicious events. Nothing is going to go right for them. In china there is a saying,

“When the owl shows up in your house,
Hard times is a-comin’.”

If an owl flies into your house, someone is going to die, or else there is going to be a fire, or perhaps thieves will come and rob you--a lot of unlucky things are coming your way. So no one wants to set eyes on this bird.

How did it get to be an owl? When it was a person it was not filial to its parents and was extremely arrogant. “See me? I am bigger than my mom and dad.” At home they acted like the Emperor and outside they acted like the President. Since they thought they were so incredibly fine, they forgot to be filial to their parents and they turned into owls.

Hawks are huge birds and vultures: Vultures and hawks like to eat dead things, human or animal corpses. Why? When these birds were people they liken to look down on everyone and make big plans for themselves. They liked being high, always thinking they were number one. They always schemed about how well-off they were going to be, but they never did anything. They had a lot of fancy plans, all right, but they did things very clumsily. They forgot their plans before they put them into action. They had fine ambitions, but they accomplished nothing. At night they had a thousand schemes going through their brains but during the day they just took a lot of naps. False thinking all night and sleeping all day, they did not benefit the world at all. They were of no use to themselves or to anyone else, but their minds created a lot of offenses. Because of all their wild plans, they turned into high-flying birds. People who like to “fly high” can turn into these high-flying, far-ranging birds.

The birds mentioned here represent arrogance, one of the Five Dull Servants: greed, hate, stupidity, arrogance and doubt. There are eight kinds of birds which represent eight kinds of arrogance. Birds, when they were people, liked to “fly high,” and they were very arrogant and conceited and looked down on other people. They did not think anyone else measured up to them, and they pushed people around. If they had money, they looked down on the poor. If they had some talent, they look down on those less gifted. If they had a tiny bit of wisdom, they felt superior.

In general, they looked on others as very low and upon themselves as very high. Birds swoop down from on high and feel that they are above it all. Yesterday we talked about the kites and owls. Hawks are very large birds and fly very high. They eat small animals, even deer and rabbits. They can swoop down, pick up a deer by the legs and fly up into the sky with it. vultures like to eat rotting flesh, unclean things, like dead mice or dead cats, animals long dead and crawling with worms, terribly smelly.

Crows are the opposite of owls. Crows are very filial birds. Why are they said to be filial? By the time the little crows are hatched out of their eggs and have learned to fly, the mother crow cannot fly anymore. So the little crows go out and get food and drink and bring it back to the old mother crow. Although they are filial, they are still very arrogant. They are conceited.

Crows are black. Magpies are about the same size as crows. Chinese people consider them lucky. If they hear a magpie chattering in the morning, they are happy and think, “Today something lucky is going to happen. Perhaps an important guest will come. Something nice is going to happen.” Everyone likes this bird.

Pigeons: most birds eat bugs, but pigeons just eat grains. They do not eat bugs. Doves think they are very beautiful. Those are eight kinds of birds which represent the –

Eight kinds of Arrogance

1. Kites represent arrogance over one’s prosperity.

2. Owls represent arrogance over one’s name. When they were people they thought that they had the most noble family name.

3. Hawks represent arrogance over one’s wealth. When they were people they took pride in being wealthier than everyone else. You could say that people who are very snobbish because of their wealth are just acting like hawks.

4. Vultures represent arrogance over one’s freedom. They feel totally free and unfettered. They can eat whenever they feel like it, because they just eat rotten stuff anyway; they like it and considered it a practice which gives them a lot of freedom. Actually it is just an unbeneficial bitter practice.

5. Crows represent arrogance over longevity. They feel that they can live for a very long time. Even if they do not they still think that they do because they are conceited about their longevity.

6. Magpies represent arrogance over intelligence. Many people have this type of arrogance. They feel that they are the smartest of all.

7. Pigeons represent arrogance over good works. They say, “See? You are all carnivores and I am not!” and they are arrogant over their good deeds.

8. Doves represent arrogance over beauty. They are always flying around and showing off in front of people. “See how lovely I am?” they say. They do not start flying until you get real close to them because they are waiting for you to get close enough to see how lovely they are when they fly around.

So the eight types of birds stand for eight kinds of arrogance, arrogance being the forth of the Five Dull Servants. Arrogant people feel that when they are at home they are the Emperor and when they step outside, they are the President. They are always better than the next person.

Black snakes, vipers and scorpions, centipedes and millipedes. These are poisonous creature. Black snakes are extremely poisonous, the most venomous of all snakes. Vipers are also a kind of snake. They are about three inches wide and extremely poisonous. Scorpions also sting people. Centipedes have red heads. The ones without red heads are millipedes. They, too, are very poisonous.

On the first day of the fifth lunar month of each year, in Manchuria we go to the mountains to gather mugwort, a medicinal herb. Then we put a tiny bit in our ears. This prevents the millipedes from crawling into our ears. After a long, long time they can turn into strange, weird people. They are afraid of the medicinal properties of the mugwort plant, however. If someone gets one of these bugs in their ear they will die because it will poison their brain. The poisonous bugs represent hatred, which is the second of the Five Dull Servants. Whoever is hateful can easily turn into one of these creatures. So take care not to be hateful or get angry.

There were geckoes and myriapods, weasels, badgers, and mice--all sorts of evil creatures, running back and forth. Geckoes live in the walls of houses. In Chinese their name means, literally, “protectors of the palace.” This is because the old Emperors had many concubines. They would take the blood of the gecko and smear it on each concubine’s arm. If the concubines had not engaged in sexual relations, the blood would stay on their arms even if they tried to wash it off. If they had had sexual relations, then the blood would disappear. The women in the place got smeared with this blood and their arms were checked everyday to see if they had been true to the Emperor. This is what the legend says, but there is no way to know for sure now whether it actually worked this way. Myriapods are creatures with a lot of legs. They are black and about three inches long.

As I said, the fifth month of the lunar year is the month for gathering medicinal herbs. From the first of the fifth month to the fifth of the fifth month, any grass or plant or herb you pick is medicinal. The mugwort gathered on that day is said to be especially potent. That is a legend in China.

In Manchuria, there are two kinds of weasels. One is called “huang-xian” and one is called “hu-xian.” The “huang-xian” is about three feet long, but not very tall, about as tall as a cat. It has a big tail, half as long as its body. They can let off a stink to discourage dogs from chasing them. It is sort of like the mace cans the police use. They set off their “stink bombs” to protect themselves from attack. It stinks worse than anything. Some are yellow, some are black and white. After a thousand years they turn black. After ten thousand years they turn white. After a hundred years they have a certain amount of spiritual penetrations. They are very talented, sort of like foxes.

Badgers eat chickens, cats and ducks; little animals. Mice: These mice are very strange. They are called “sweet mouth mice,” because they can bite you and drink your blood, but you feel no pain.

The geckoes and myriapods represent the third of the Five Dull Servants, stupidity. This is because they have no wisdom. They also represent one of the two kinds of ignorance, “solitary head ignorance.” The weasels, badgers and mice represent the other kind of ignorance, “responsive ignorance,” because they help each other out.

All sorts of evil creatures, those creatures discussed above, representing the two kinds of ignorance, were running back and forth. They ran from north to south, from east to west as the house caught fire. This is talking about the mark of karma in the three realms. The mark of karma cuts in a criss-cross through our lives without any end. It arises very fast, “running” as it were, throughout our lives.

There were places stinking of excrement and urine, oozing with filth, with dung beetles clustered upon them. Excrement and urine are found inside our bodies. No matter how well washed we are on the outside, we are still just as dirty on the inside, just as smelly. You can drink perfume if you want, but you will still smell inside. Why love such an unclean thing as if it were a treasure? That is just being too stupid, really. They represent the stupidity of being attached to states. States are all impermanent, without a self, suffering and impure. In what is impure, we become attached to purity. We greedily attach to this impurity and do not realize it stinks as much as it does.

Dung beetles live in excrement. People think that excrement is unclean, but the dung beetles like it a lot, yes they do. They think, “This is really a fine place I have got here!” Hah! See how they are? Sometimes they offer a piece of excrement to the Buddha. They eat it, I mean, so they think it’s good to offer to the Buddha. Now, does the Buddha get upset over this? No. Even though it is unclean, still they are offering it with respect so the Buddha does not blame them. After all, they do not have anything else. That is as far as their valuable things to offer the Buddha go. Since they made sincere offerings to the Buddha, they can eventually drop their dung-beetle bodies and in their next lives become people. But they are usually poor people, lowly people, or deaf, dumb or blind people because their karmic obstructions from past lives are too heavy.

Anyway, the dung-beetles were all clustered on the excrement and urine in the dirty places in the house. You might try to improve their lot, saying to them “Hey, dung-beetles, it is too dirty there. Come on, I am going to relocate you somewhere else.” So you put them in a bottle of perfume thinking you are being very good to them and what happens? They die in less than an hour. They do not have the blessings to withstand it. They can only live in the excrement and urine. Move them and they die. Last year there were some people from another cultivating group who came here and I explained this principle to them. I said, “Wherever you have affinities, that is where you will go. If you like to study what is false, you will go somewhere where it is false. If you want to study what is true, you will find a true place. If you move the bugs in the toilet to a bottle of perfume, they will not be able to live there, they will feel very uncomfortable.

Hearing this principle, we students of the Buddhadharma should think it over. Do not choose a place that stinks. At the least, burn a bit of incense before the Buddhas everyday. Study the real Buddhadharma. Do not study improper Buddhadharma. Do not run into the pile of shit to stay. If you stay there, it is of no great advantage to you.

There were foxes, wolves, and Yeh Kan, who nibbled at, trampled on, and devoured corpses, scattering the bones and flesh. This section of text represents the last two of the five Dull Servants, greed and doubt. In china, everyone knows about fax spirits. They specialize in confusing people. How do they do this? They confuse people to the point that they do not know anything at all. In China they have an analogy comparing “bad” women to foxes. They say, “She is a foxy lady…” about improper women. Also, foxes have a lot of doubts. When they walk across the ice, no matter how thick it is, they still walk a step and then cock their heads and listen to see if the ice creaks. If it does not they keep walking, take another step and then stop and listen again.

Wolves are sort of like dogs. They are terribly cruel. No matter what kind of small animal it is they kill it; it does not matter whether they are going to eat it or not. They can drag off a hundred year old pig and eat it! They are the most violent of animals. When I was in Nanking I was living in Kung-ch’ing Mountain. I went to Lung-t’an and on the way back the sky suddenly grew dark and a whole pack of wolves descended. They have their own language and when one wolf howls all the wolves gather together and they eat whoever is on the road. They rip them apart and split up the meat. That night I met a lot of wolves. It was about eight or nine o’clock at night, and they were all around in the trees right next to the road. As I walked along they followed me, protecting me. I thought they were protecting me. Of course, they thought they were getting ready to eat me. I thought they were guarding me. We walked along together for five or six miles, but they did not eat me. They were my good friends. In fact I gave them the Three Refuges. You see, I have wolves for disciples. After I accepted them in the Three Refuges, they did not think about biting people anymore. There were over twenty of them.

Yeh kan belong to the fox family. They are not actually foxes, but they are even smarter than foxes, foxes being pretty smart in their own right. They live way out in the wilds where no one at all lives. They live in very dangerous places, places where no human could reach. Even hawks cannot get there. They live high up in caves or atop very tall trees. They do not come out during the day, but roam at night in packs of four or five. They howl with a very strange sound to make all the other animals afraid. There are very weird animals, they yeh kan.

The yeh kan ate the corpses slowly, bit by bit. When there were a lot of corpses, they tramped on them. They ran all over them, wasting them. When there were a lot, they just wasted them, they trampled on them. They devoured the corpses, ripping into the blood and bones with their lips and teeth. Then they scattered the bones and flesh everywhere, leaving everything in a shambles.

previous    next    Introduction    Contents

Chapter 3 pages:  1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    10    11    12    13    14    15    

16    17    18    19    20    21    22    23    24    25

return to top