The Great Supreme (8)

1 Zi Yu and Zi Sang were close friends. Zi Yu was well-being while Zi Sang was a beggar, very destitute in his retired life.

2 Those days it kept drizzling and cloudy. The loathsome drizzle in spring had been continued for ten more days. Road was all muddy. This environment just restrained the common people’s walking but spoiled a beggar’s living. How could a beggar beg food or money on the muddy and rainy road?

3 Considering it, Zi Yu carried some food to call Zi Sang. When he reached the doorway of Zi Sang’s house, he heard Zi Sang singing and playing his broken instrument used for begging. Zi Sang sang gloomily, “Father, Mother! Heaven, Earth! Why do you treat me like this and torture me so much?”

4 The dismal song expressed his despair, which by the rule of practice was not allowed. Entering the house, he hand food to Zi Sang and said, “Why is your song so sad? Why do you express your complaint to the people, the Earth and the Heaven? As the men of practice, should we conform to Tao and be contented with our lot?”

5 Zi Sang factually hunger to death. He said very weakly, “I just wonder why I become destitute like so. My parents used to take much care of me and wish me to be a useful and great man, never thinking that I come down to the world like this.

6 The Heaven cares everything selflessly, as does the Earth. They would not treat me so unkindly. Why do I become so?

7 I think that my destiny is a bad one.

8 Zi Yu! Content with your lot is just a lip service. Nevertheless, I can’t accept happily the life if I have nothing to eat for ten days.

9 When I was an official, I was incorrupt and loved my people even my salary was petty and consequently, had little saving. Now I am retired. To be an official all my life, I become a man who can’t burden something and can’t make something for living, except begging, how do I arrange my aged life?

10 Could I blame it on the governmental system, or on myself, I might be corrupted, but I was scantily shameless and ruthless then.

11 Zi Yu! Do you say that it is destiny, don’t you? How can you blame me on my attitude to the practice? Content with my lot is difficult to me.＂

12 Looking at Zi Sang, Zi Yu whispered, “Eat something first. The destiny is complex, which you can’t make clear in a short time. Take the food when it is hot.”

13 When Zi Sang was eating, Zi Yu sat beside him. Zi Yu closed his eyes and pondered on the question of destiny.

14 First, life, death, aging and illness are dominated by the power of Impermanence. All creatures in this world experiences life, aging, illness and finally death, so they are irrelevant to the destiny. At most we call it foreordination, which are beyond our control.

15 Excepting it, the so-called destiny should be a causal phenomenon. A cause leads to its unique result. A seed has sowed in the earth and finally grows into its own fruit. Zi Sang was poor in his aged time because he neglected his finance when was young. He had no saved money, so he became a beggar.

16 It is right that Zi Sang as an official he should love his people and be incorrupt. It is also true that his salary from the government was too less to support his pension program. However, in the past decades why didn’t he ponder over his life after retirement which would come up inevitably?

17 Thirty or forty years are considerably long. The one with intent to prepare for the life after retirement should have enough time to do it.

18 Zi Sang in his days must had many opportunities to make an effort to improve his life but he neglected and deserted all.

19 Zi Sang! There is no destiny in this world. Only the seed of cause that you sow in alayavijnana-Consciousness germinates and grows when the time is due. The seed is made from you, sowed by you and buried by you.

20 What you said is right. Parents, the Earth and the Heaven are impertinent to it. Before we make clear the definition of destiny completely, we shouldn’t take the destiny as a cause to excuse the past misconducts.