Wang Fengyi said:
(5)
Adversity that comes to you is virtue being bestowed upon you, but people need to recognize it as such. If you suffer a loss, do not complain about it; it must be because you owed that person something. If others feel indignant on your behalf, your life will be prolonged.
Even if you are beaten or insulted for no apparent reason, it is still because you have your own faults. Once you have endured it, it counts as repaying a debt, and you should even be grateful to the person. Without someone to beat or scold me, when would my karmic debts ever be exhausted?
I say that even petty people have their usefulness. They press and provoke others into becoming better; they help people from the opposite side. For example, **Yue Fei was brought to greatness through the actions of Qin Hui, and Guan Yu was brought to greatness through the help of Cao Cao. How could one fail to be grateful to them?
(6)
Blessings bestowed by Heaven come in the form of adversity, and so people are startled by them. Blessings bestowed by people come in the form of favorable circumstances, and everyone recognizes them.
I say that everyone in the world possesses blessings, but they do not know how to enjoy them. When virtue is sent to them, they become frightened and unwilling to accept it. They do not realize that the Way is accomplished amid adversity, while people often go bad amid favorable conditions. Therefore, it is said that good fortune is the beginning of decline, and misfortune is the beginning of improvement.
Look at this: meat has a pleasant aroma, but when it spoils, it smells terribly foul. Chinese cabbage has no fragrance, and when it spoils, it is not especially foul. Fruit on a tree does not spoil while it is green, but once it ripens, it is not far from decay. Human affairs are much the same.
In the Abhaya Sutta, the Buddha proposed several criteria for deciding whether something should be spoken:
* Truthful (sacca)
* Beneficial (attha)
* Timely (kāla)
* Pleasant or at least acceptable to the listener, spoken gently (saṇha)
Therefore, the saying,
“If what we are about to say does not help others change for the better, it is better left unsaid,”
is very much in accord with the spirit of the Buddha’s teaching.
Furthermore:
* If one deliberately propagates views of self and thereby causes others to increase in greed, hatred, and delusion, this constitutes unwholesome kamma (akusala kamma).
* If, out of ignorance, one speaks in a way that reinforces another person’s attachment to a self, one’s words may become a supporting condition for the growth of that person’s afflictions.
Expressed in the spirit of the Buddhist Middle Way:
If speech cannot benefit sentient beings, silence is preferable. If speech increases craving, self-attachment, and ignorance in others, it should be carefully avoided.
The Buddhist scriptures discussed the distinction between bodily suffering and mental suffering more than two thousand years ago.
Illness, aging, setbacks, and adversity are often beyond our control. These belong to bodily suffering, like being struck by a first arrow. Yet after experiencing bodily suffering, whether one continues to give rise to worry, resentment, complaint, sorrow, or mental turmoil belongs to mental suffering, like being struck by a second arrow.
The first arrow is often unavoidable, but the second arrow can be reduced through our own agency and choice.
The key is that when bodily suffering arises, we do not allow mental suffering to continue multiplying. We experience only the first arrow and do not shoot a second arrow at ourselves. In this way, we can gradually loosen the bonds of the Five Aggregates (pañcakkhandha), lessen afflictions, and move toward greater freedom and ease.
Volume 17 of the Saṃyukta Āgama states:
“When a well-instructed noble disciple experiences painful bodily feeling, even when afflicted by great suffering, even to the point of death, he does not give rise to sorrow, lamentation, resentment, crying and wailing, or mental confusion and madness. At that time, he experiences only one kind of feeling, namely bodily feeling, and does not experience mental feeling. It is like a man struck by a poisoned arrow who is not struck by a second poisoned arrow. At that time, he experiences only one kind of feeling, namely bodily feeling, and does not experience mental feeling.”
The Wang family of Tuanshanzi Village in Chaoyang County were relatives on my mother’s side. They had once operated a coal mine, but later their descendants all turned out badly and engaged in no proper occupation. When I went to their village to give talks on morality and virtue, one of them asked me:
“What wrong have I done? Why is it that all my children and grandchildren smoke opium, squander money, and refuse to engage in honest work?”
I replied:
“It is because you were harsh and exploitative toward the poor. That is why poor ghosts have been reborn into your family!”
Before you became the owner of the mine, the workers were given a meal of noodles every night. You thought this was too expensive and changed it to two pieces of tofu per person. Even buying tofu seemed unprofitable to you, so you made it yourself. Others could make one hundred pieces of tofu from half a dou of soybeans, but you used only two and a half sheng of beans and still insisted on making one hundred and twenty pieces. Wasn’t that squeezing the poor?
At every festival and holiday, all branches of your family slaughtered pigs and sold the meat to the workers. The market price was twenty cents per jin, but your family charged twenty-five cents and counted only twelve ounces as a full jin. The workers had no choice but to buy it. You did the same thing when selling tobacco and starch powder.
“Because you feared becoming poor and exploited the poor, poor ghosts have all been reborn into your family! You brought this upon yourself—who else is there to ask?”
After hearing what I said, he burst into tears and walked away.
— From Sayings of Wang Fengyi: Karma and Retribution.
This story concerns a coal-mining family in Tuanshanzi Village, Chaoyang County, in northeastern China. Wang Fengyi explained the dissipation of the family’s wealth, their descendants’ opium addiction, and their refusal to pursue honest livelihoods as the karmic consequence of their former mistreatment of workers and exploitation of poor people.
The longest night in the natural world is the darkness surrounding the winter solstice.
Yet according to the Buddha’s teachings, the truly longest night is the endless cycle of birth and death through which sentient beings wander, driven by ignorance, afflictions, and karma, without knowing the way to liberation.
Overcome anger by non-anger; overcome unwholesomeness by goodness; overcome stinginess by generosity; overcome falsehood by truthful speech.— The Dhammapada
The Buddha asked his disciples,
“How long does a human life last?”
One disciple replied,
“For a matter of days.”
The Buddha said,
“You have not yet truly understood life.”
Another disciple replied,
“For the duration of a meal.”
The Buddha again said,
“You have not yet truly understood life.”
Finally, a disciple replied,
“Human life lasts but the time of a single breath.”
The Buddha praised him, saying,
“Excellent! You have truly understood.”
— The Sutra in Forty-Two Sections Spoken by the Buddha (《佛说四十二章经》)
Why Victor Hugo chose to name the bishop in Les Misérables “Myriel” has never been clearly explained. Some scholars, however, have suggested that the name may be connected to myrrh, one of the three gifts presented to Jesus in the Bible. Myrrh symbolizes suffering, sacrifice, holiness, and redemption, and Bishop Myriel embodies precisely these qualities in the novel. He willingly gives up his own possessions and, through unconditional compassion, saves Jean Valjean’s soul. Although he appears only at the beginning of the novel, he is arguably the foremost spiritual figure throughout the entire work.
Years later, when Jean Valjean, under the name Monsieur Madeleine, had become mayor, he learned from a newspaper that the bishop had died. Deeply moved, he deliberately wore mourning clothes for a period of time in memory of the man who had transformed his life. At the very end of his own life, when someone asked whether a priest should be summoned, Jean Valjean replied, “I already have one.” He was referring to Bishop Myriel. Thus, although the bishop had long since passed away, he continued to live in Jean Valjean’s heart, accompanying and guiding him throughout his entire life.
Perhaps the most admirable aspect of Bishop Myriel lies not merely in his compassion, but in his ability, through compassion and trust, to transform a man whom society regarded as evil into a person devoted to doing good and helping others. Many evil people, had they never encountered someone like Bishop Myriel, might have remained trapped in evil for the rest of their lives. In this sense, the bishop’s greatest achievement is that he accomplished a transformation from evil to goodness.
From a Buddhist perspective, this spirit of guiding beings away from evil and toward goodness through great compassion bears a striking resemblance to the conduct of many Bodhisattvas. For example, Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva vows to rescue beings suffering in hell, among hungry ghosts, and in the animal realm, leading them ultimately to liberation and Buddhahood, while postponing his own enlightenment until all beings have been saved. As his famous vow states: “Until hell is emptied, I shall not become a Buddha; only when all beings are liberated shall I attain Bodhi.” Although Bishop Myriel and Kṣitigarbha belong to different religious traditions, there is nevertheless a deeply moving similarity between them in their shared commitment to transforming lives through compassion and helping others find their way toward the light.