Yuan Zheng Tang – Perfect Enlightenment (No: 4) 
Quarterly/October 1992, (page 21) 

CAUSE AND EFFECT OF ACTIONS

by Living Buddha Sheng-yen Lu

The Brahim teacher Kapila, the greatest of the Hindu debators at the time of Buddha, was sent out by his mother while the Buddhist monks were on their begging rounds. She wanted Kapila to debate with them because she felt he was such a great scholar that he would overcome them in debate. There were eighteen monks and to each of them he called out a bad name, "Hey, horse-head, Hey, ox-head, Hey, dog-head.." The monks thought he must be someone of no or very little virtue and, therefore, felt they should not debate with him. This made Kapila all the more proud, and he called them stupid and shouted that they knew nothing.

Soon after Kapila died and was reborn as a fish in the Ganges. He was so big that when some fishermen caught him in their net, his weight pulled them all into the water. Many others then gathered together to pull him in, and when they laid him on the bank, they saw that he was a sea monster with eighteen heads.

They asked Buddha to bless him, and in doing so Buddha empowered the fish to talk. The monster told them that he was formerly the Brahmin Kapila. Buddha asked him, "What action caused you to be born in this way?" The fish answered that it was because he had shouted foul names at eighteen monks.

This was the occasion when Buddha first taught repentance, the revealing of one's own non-virtue. It begins with an obeisance to the thirty-five Buddhas and includes a revelation to them of all misdeeds. The monks recited this formula with the fish monster who, with his strongest faith, was able to overcome the effect of his formal action. He died and was reborn in one of the abodes of Gods, the Heaven of the Thirty-Three.

Do not feel it is ever appropriate to call anyone a bad name. The person may seem ordinary, but you have nno way of knowing he is not a Bodhisattva. During the time of the Buddha Kashyapa, a monk called another one a bitch, and the effect of this was that he was born as a dog 500 times.

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