The hunter was Cao E, a villager in Maple Bay Village. He hunted the pheasant and brought it home. He was about to boil water and scald the feathers. Suddenly, Yu Chongyang, a man from the neighboring village, invited him to treat him and said that his wife had given birth to a baby for him. In the Nine Dynasties, Cao E and his wife were asked to attend a banquet. At this moment, Cao E tied the stiff pheasant with a rope and hung it on an iron nail on the wall. He went out with his wife, planning to go home after a visit.
But it was already very late for the couple to go home, and it was so dark that they couldn't see their fingers. After they had had enough wine and food, they walked a mountain road from that village to this village. They were a little tired. Cao Ela turned on the light and looked at the hangings on the wall. The pheasant asked his wife to get it out. My wife said we would do it tomorrow, but if we do it now, it will break easily.
At noon the next day, my wife boiled water and blanched the pheasant, but the meat was purple-black and a little black. She said, the pheasant is broken, should you get rid of it? Cao E disagreed and said that if you don't want to eat, I will. Cao'e used a knife to cut open the skin of the pheasant, cut it into pieces, took out the contents and threw them away, revealing the bright red meat. Then he said to his wife, "Don't you look better now?" He chopped the pheasant meat into pieces, threw it into the pot and simmered it with the vermicelli. When he put it in a sea bowl and served it to the table, his wife thought of its purple skin and was still suspicious and refused to eat it. Cao E felt that it didn't matter if he ate it, so he added a plate of peanuts and drank two taels of baigan. He finished the pot full of pheasant meat in one meal and there was not much left.
That night, Cao's body began to itch, especially his lower body. He scratched desperately in the house alone, until his skin turned red, and lumps appeared after scratching again. He guessed that it must be because he had eaten pheasant meat, and he couldn't hide it from his wife.
My wife said you didn't listen to me and were fooled. The pheasant was not processed last night and it went bad today. You shouldn't eat it. As the wife talked, she poured out the leftover pheasant chicken soup, took the empty bowl back to the kitchen and washed it vigorously. She was afraid that the toxins would not be washed away, so she put it in the pot and boiled it for a while before she felt relieved. Cao E also regretted it and said if he had known this, wouldn't it be fine if I didn't eat it?
In the evening, he went to the village clinic to see a doctor, but the doctor was off duty, so he had to wait until the next day. The erythema on his body had spread from his lower body to his upper body. The doctor looked at the symptoms, asked about the situation, and said that it was necessary to treat both the symptoms and the root causes. On the one hand, he prescribed medicine for Cao to take internally and for anti-inflammatory injections, and on the other hand, he prescribed topical medicine for Cao to apply on his forehead. Cao E struggled for a week and spent a lot of money with almost no effect. He was so itchy that when he took off his coat he looked like a red and purple lobster.
The wife said worriedly that it would be better for you to go to the county town to see a doctor, but she is afraid that you will not have enough money to spend. If you don't feel itchy, go hunting in the mountains and you can sell the prey for money. Cao E said, are you in a hurry? There will be a way to reach the mountain. He changed into loose clothes so that the tight clothes wouldn't scratch him. When his wife saw him going to another room to get a shotgun, she asked: You are sick and you still want to hunt? He said, of course I have to hunt, otherwise, if I can't get the prey to sell, I will lose all the money for medical treatment.
Cao E was very stubborn and insisted on going up the mountain with a shotgun. On the back side of the mountain, there were deep valleys and dense forests, and there were relatively many wild animals. But there is a monastery there, and monks often come out to stop the hunting of wild animals. But now he urgently needed to go hunting to get money to cure his itching, and he couldn't care less. While scratching his body, he climbed to the back of the mountain. He crouched in the depths of the jungle, expecting badgers, pigs, muntjacs, firefoxes and other high-priced prey to hit the muzzle of his gun. He looked around keenly and found a monk in cassocks handing a leaflet to a tree. Mounted on a camphor tree, the body covered most of the leaflet. When it stepped aside, the words on it appeared: Killing is prohibited here. Please show mercy to all donors and bless the Bodhisattva!
Cao'e thought that the monk was meddling in other people's business, so he stood up suddenly and said, "I don't take lives. Can a Bodhisattva really protect me?" The monk turned around and saw Cao's forehead. He put his palms together and said, "Amitabha, the donor need not doubt."
Cao's forehead was itchy and he still stretched out his hands to scratch it. At this time, the monk had walked up to him and was about to say something. His forehead was whitening. Now I feel uncomfortable with itching. Can the Bodhisattva protect me from itching? The monk looked at the shotgun slung on his body and said, as long as you give up the idea of killing, the Bodhisattva can protect you.
Cao E said, "Monk, do you dare to make a bet with me?" If I stop killing animals and the scrapie on my body cannot be cured, I will come to you. The monk said, "Your karma is too heavy. What's the use of me trying to hook up with you?" You have created your own karma, and you can only eliminate it yourself, and no one can replace it.
Cao E stomped his feet in abandonment, then took off the shotgun from his body, took it in his hand and said, "In this case, I still don't believe it. I want to kill some prey and sell it to buy medicine for treatment."
The monk said, Amitabha, the more you kill, the greater your karma will be, and the more serious your illness will be. Even if you have money for medical treatment, you can't cure it. The donor may wish to wait and see. The monk turned around and was about to leave. Cao E quickly walked around to the monk, took off his pants, and showed him the large lupus erythematosus on his lower body. Ask him, if I give up the idea of killing, will the scrapie on my body really be cured?
The monk exclaimed, "Of course I can't guarantee it, but I can guarantee that from now on, if you persist in cherishing life and releasing life, your condition will be alleviated or even cured." Cao E immediately unloaded the bullets from the gun chamber and stopped hunting wild animals. With this thought, he actually felt that his body was no longer itchy.
Seeing that Cao E hesitated for a while, the monk threw the bullet in his hand into the bushes. With a smile on his face, he said that the donor was giving up the karma of killing by throwing away the bullet. This was as extraordinary as the butcher who put down the butcher knife and became a Buddha immediately. Amitabha, congratulations to the donor for giving birth to a child. consciousness.
Cao E then said in a respectful tone, "Thank you to the eminent monk for your advice. I almost spent all my family's savings to cure my scrapie. Now I plan to buy live animals and release them, but what should I do if I don't have money?"
The monk said, as long as you have this kind intention. Cao E suddenly came up with a good idea. He raised his shotgun and said excitedly that he would pawn it and use the money from the pawn to buy turtles and other living animals to release.
The monk stopped him from doing this, saying that if you sell the shotgun, it is still indirect killing, no, no, it is still a sin. Cao E has considered that if he sells the shotgun, although he does not kill directly, the buyer will still use the shotgun to kill, and he will still be jointly and severally guilty of killing. The only way is to scrap the shotgun.
After Cao E returned home, he scratched his itch while using a hacksaw to cut the shotgun into several sections, and then sold the scrap iron to a scrap collection station. After getting more than 10 yuan, he planned to go to the county market to buy a turtle and release it, but the turtle there was not as big as a copper coin. Turtles were sold for 25 yuan. He didn't have enough money to buy them, so he bought eels worth more than 10 yuan a pound and put them in the Huancheng River. After a while, the scrapie on his body still didn't improve, so he doubted what the monk said. Are you lying, so you walked over the mountain and walked into the monastery to find the monk, and then exposed the lupus erythematosus on your body. The monk looked at it and said disapprovingly that even if you take medicine and scrub, it will take several courses of treatment to see the effect. , not to mention that this is a karmic disease that cannot be cured by giving medicine and stones, and the same is true for good deeds such as releasing lives and protecting living beings. How is it possible to do a good deed occasionally and just want to get good rewards? It's like if you sow grain today, it won't grow tomorrow. Even the buds and leaves won't grow. If you don't believe me, try it. Everything in the world has a process of good and bad changes. If you have too many conditional utilitarian thoughts, even if you occasionally do good deeds, you will be doing good deeds in a false way instead of doing good deeds truly. There is no benefit in doing good deeds in a false way. Amitabha Buddha, may the benefactor refrain from doing any evil, practice good deeds, and turn misfortune into good fortune in everything he does!
