Guru's Talk

There was a person who loved to eat “floodgate crabs.” When autumn arrived, it would be the peak harvest season for the big floodgate crabs at Hong Ze Lake. Every day, at every meal, he would eat the reddish crab eggs and the golden yellow fat tissue. He took great pleasure in the delicious taste of the floodgate crab, and even the thought of the taste would make him drool. The big floodgate crabs were his all-time favorite.

In his sleep one night, he had a dream. (Actually, his heart had become so clogged that he had died.) This person felt himself floating around unconsciously, leaving his home and entering a translucent world. He was going down a road and saw a group of men and women hauling a carriage by the river shore.

The men and women were twisting and dancing wildly and the carriage was spinning up and down and around endlessly. It seemed that it was coming for him.

The carriage door suddenly opened. The men and women wanted him to get in and be seated.

Then he suddenly remembered a book he had read, written by Living Buddha Lian Sheng, Sheng-Yen Lu, called the “Ocean of Life and Death” —

The carriage — it was the floodgate crab.

The men and women — they were fishes and shrimp.

The translucent world — it was the river and lake.

He felt great shock! He shouted loudly, “Amitabha!” The carriage disappeared, the men and women disappeared, and the translucent world disappeared.

A Bodhisattva spoke to him and said, “You are a person who is rooted in kindness. You recite sutras and prostrate to the Buddhas regularly. But you have indulged in eating floodgate crabs and now your heart is clogged. Today, I have come down particularly to save you. You must quit eating the big floodgate crabs and quit killing lives. What about it?”

Of course, he nodded his head in agreement.

The Bodhisattva said nothing, then used something like acupuncture to open the clogged arteries. The man let out a shout then woke up suddenly. He found that half of his body was stiff and that he could move only very slowly. His whole body was sweating like a rainfall. He could feel his breathing slowly coming back.

He knew that he had died once. Touching his heart, with the uncertainty of a half-asleep, half-awake memory, he could feel the subtle pain from the acupuncture.

Since that dream in which he had come back to life after dying, he took refuge in the True Buddha School and took the Bodhisattva vow.

Never again did he kill living creatures. Never again did he eat the floodgate crabs.

He had become a vegetarian ever since.

His friends from his past knew that he had a passion for eating the big floodgate crabs and they deliberately bought them for him. But he would simply free them and chant the “Rebirth Mantra.”

He told his friends, “If I eat them today, then in the future people will eat me because I will be reincarnated as a floodgate crab, and it would be very horrible!”

(The End)

《本文出自師尊第173冊文集「一夢一世界」文章「大閘蟹」》
　

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