TEACHING IN ANCIENT FABLES

Fable 10

Once upon a time a man was travelling alone. He came to a vacant house toward the evening and decided to spend the night there. About midnight, a demon brought in a corpse and left it on the floor. Shortly, another demon appeared and claimed the corpse as his and they quarrelled over it.

Then the first demon said it was useless to argue about it further and proposed that they refer it to a judge to decide the possessor. The mother demon agreed to this and, seeing the man cowering in the corner, asked him to decide the ownership. The men was terribly frightened, for he well knew that whatever decision he might make would anger the demon that lost and that the losing demon would seek revenge and kill him, but he decided to tell truthfully just what he had witnessed.

As he expected, this angered the second demon who grabbed one of the man’s arms and tore it off, but the first demon replaced the arm with one taken from the corpse. The angry demon tore away the man’s other arm, but the first demon immediately replaced that with the other arm of the corpse. And so it went on until both arms, legs, the head and the body had been successively torn away and replaced with the corresponding parts of the corpse. Then the two demons, seeing the parts of the man scattered about on the floor, picked them up and devoured them and went away chuckling.

The poor man who had taken refuge in the deserted house was very much upset by his misfortunes. The parts of his body which the demons had eaten where the parts his parents had given him, and the parts that he now had belonged to the corpse. Who was he, anyway? Realizing all the facts, he was unable to figure it out and, becoming crazy, he wandered out of the house. Coming to a temple, he went in and told his troubles to the monks. People could see the true meaning of selflessness in his story.

The above TEACHING IN ANCIENT FABLES is taken from THE TEACHING OF BUDDHA. May all who reads this article gain in wisdom and be well and happy. Sadhu! Sadhu! Sadhu!

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