The Irony Of Samsara

Anecdotes

oi-Staff

By Staff

Monday, May 4, 2009, 12:07

A lay man sits in front of his house with his little son on his lap as he feeds on a fish from the pond behind his house. A dog eats the bones of the fish and the man kicks dog. Though it is an ordinary scene, Master Shariputra had something different to say.

"He eats his father's flesh and kicks his mother away,

The enemy he killed he dandles on his lap,

The wife is gnawing at her husband's bones,

Samsara can be such a farce."

The above lines of the master states the irony of the birth and death circle. In the previous birth of the man, the fish was his father who was then reborn in his pond whom the man fried and gulped down. The dog was his mother in the previous birth and due to her attachment, she was reborn as a dog whom the man now kicked. The man's wife was raped by his enemy whom he killed and was reborn as his son due to his attachment to her whom he held lovingly on his lap.

Inexplicable are the ways of Samsara, the revolving wheel.