Every saint has a past, and every sinner should also have a future.
Buddha Shakyamuni once talked about an event from a long time ago: when the Dīpankara Buddha was in this world, five hundred merchants went into the sea to collect treasures. There is a wicked in the ship, who is proficient in the art of war and has been a robber for a long time, wants to kill five hundred merchants and obtain their treasures alone. And these five hundred businessmen are all Arinivarta-niya bodhisattvas. If they are killed, the killer will suffer immeasurable sins and will surely fall into hell forever. At that time, among the five hundred people, there was a teacher named Great Compassion. He foresaw the intentions of the wicked, so he thought to himself:" If I kill this wicked person, I shall fall into the evil way. If this wicked person is not killed, the five hundred good people will be killed by the wicked, and that wicked person will surely fall into hell for every life. If I tell everyone about this, I am afraid that 500 people will have evil thoughts, and they will all be suffer. " So compassion arose in teacher Great Compassion's heart, and he preferred to suffer the sin by himself and kill the wicked. Buddha Shakyamuni said: "The teacher at that time was me now. The five hundred merchants, that is, the five hundred bodhisattvas in this Bhadrakalpa (Auspicious aeon)"
This is "the Upaya of Killing" in the "Notes on Bodhisattva Vinaya and Morals". However, you must first have the heart to take the sin karma by yourself, before you can do this expedient and upaya. Otherwise, if you want to take credit for your work, but you also want to pass the blame on others, this kind of idea is no longer justified, how can there be any blessing? Excerpted from An Shiquan Book "Lord Superior Wen Chang's Tract of the Quiet Way" Generalized Excerpt: The Upaya of Killing
In my hometown there was a man named Gu Xichou, he was a minister of rites, and he was killed by the deputy general He Junyao in Wenzhou, Zhejiang. Soon, Gu's soul fell to Zhang Tiaoding’s family, who is Gu's former servant. Gu's soul said: “I killed a snake by mistake in my previous life, and this snake was reincarnated as the current He Junyao. On June 16, he killed me in the river. This cause and effect is what I should do. I can bear it. You can tell my two sons about this and ask them not to take revenge." At this time, Zhang Tiaoding had not heard the news of Gu Gong's death and hurriedly sent someone to Wenzhou to investigate. At that time, Wu Guojie of Taicang County hosted a banquet for Gu Gong at Jiangxin Temple in Wenzhou, and received news of Gu Gong's murder the next morning. So many fishing boats were sent to search for the dead bodies, but none were found. At night, Wu dreamt that Gu Gong was standing in the water and said to Wu Guojie: "I was a monk from Tiantai Mountain in my previous life. He killed a snake. Now I repay its life. Thanks to your kindness, because you were my disciple in the previous life. Just go to a certain water bay If you look for it, you can see my corpse.” So Wu Guojie sent someone to search for the place indicated in the dream. He found it and transported Gu Gong’s coffin back to Kunshan for burial. Gu was a monk from Tiantai Mountain in his previous life, and he was reincarnated as a minister of ritual, and his articles and ethics and conduct are all outstanding and can be passed down to the future generation. However, it is still inevitable to repay the life of the snake. What about people whose backgrounds are far worse than Gu? People who kill snakes in this world, don't use Sun Shuao's killing of snakes as an excuse! Excerpted from An Shiquan Book "Lord Superior Wen Chang's Tract of the Quiet Way" Generalized Excerpt: : Repay Snake's life for killing (From "Record of cause and effect")
My body and I are not real in the first place, where can hatred and craving be formed?
Buddha Shakyamuni said in the "Thoughts Sutra" that people should always have two thoughts:
One, calm thought: Those who take harmlessness as their joy, rejoice in harmlessness, and often think: I will not harm those who are fearful and those who are not fearful (timid beings and vicious beings).
Second, quiet thought: Those who take quiet as joy, are happy in quiet, and often think: I have abandoned all unkind karma (never be evil).
A person who can persist in these two kinds of thinking means that a person with power will no longer have any missing and he will be able to transcend the suffering of reincarnation, and he will extinguish all thirst, obtain the last body( he will not reincarnat, so his body in this life will be the last body), abandon all demons, and reach the other side of river which is Nirvana.
If you want to know the cause of the past life, the recipient of this life is. If you want to predict what will happen in the future, then what you do in this life is the cause of the future. It means that if you want to know the cause and effect of the past life, just look at the experience you have endured in this life. If you want to know the results of the future life, you can predict by what you have done in this life. There is a couplet: "Husband and wife are fateful coincidence, good fate or bad fate, if there's no fateful coincidence, they will not get together; you and your children are fateful coincidence, they come to collect debts from you, or to pay their debts to you, and if there's no debt, they won't come into your life. " Why does the child come into your life to reincarnate? Buddhism talks about the four relationships that includes repaying gratitude, grievance, debt collection, and debt repayment. Children come into your life and reincarnate. According to the Buddhist scriptures, there are four kinds of predestined conditions. Without predestined conditions, they will not come into your life.
When the Buddha is talking about the Dharma, he will say what is not the Dharma. In the "Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment”, the Buddha talked about perfect enlightenment, focusing on four types of "cultivation" that are not perfect enlightenment: First, if someone says, "I do all kinds of activities from the heart to seek perfect enlightenment", this is a wrong behaviour; The second is that if someone says "I continue to live and die, I live by my luck, and live by whatever the destiny will be", this is wrong behaviour ; the third is if someone says "I perpetually rest my thoughts to gain purity", this is wrong behaviour; Fourth, if someone says, "I will forever cut off all worries from today, and my body and mind are empty after all", this is wrong behaviour.
Therefore, the "Perfect Enlightenment Sutra" says that awakening is not achieved, awakening is not arbitrarily done, awakening is not in resting your thoughts and awakening is not a world-weary. If you leave these four wrong behaviours, you will know what purity is, and you will be able to understand that perfect enlightenment is not the above four "cultivation" concepts, but the correct concepts.