X

Video-1102 Buddhist Stories: "The Lay Disciple Atulah"
Video-1102 Buddhist Stories: "The Lay Disciple Atulah"
No. 1102
Category / Between Master and Disciples
Event date / 2015.09.21
Place / (France)
Language / English
Time (mins) / 37,38,33,41
Published date / 2015.10
Updated date / 2019.11
Download
If you have any questions regarding downloading or website use of EdenRules, please contact us.
Loading the player...
You are welcome to download audio and video files for free of charge
  • Summary

Always be considerate, otherwise you’ll go nowhere. You’ll never go up anywhere. If you improve yourself in real life, then it’s good for you, and good for the people around you. It’s not good just to be enlightened inside. Who cares if you become Buddha or not, if you don’t help anyone, if you don’t extend your love or expand your consciousness or your wisdom to help someone else in every small thing? Small things, that’s important. Big things, Heaven takes care. I was very happy that people really went out of their way to help others in need. Despite that they’re different religions, different background, different languages.

I read you one of these stories. Atulah was a lay disciple. He lived in Sravasti. And he had a retinue of five hundred other lay disciples. One day he took those lay disciples with him to a monastery to hear the Dharma. Now this elder Revata was a solitary recluse. Delighting in solitude even as a lion delights in solitude, and thus he had nothing to say to Atulah and his following. He felt agitated. So he arose from his seat, went to the elder Sariputra. And forthwith the elder Sariputra expounded the Abhidharma at great length. Provoked, he took his retinue with him again, and went to the elder Ananda. Thereupon the elder Ananda expounded the Dharma to them very briefly, making it very easy for them to understand. But they were provoked at the Reverend Ananda also. And then going to the Buddha.

Then the Buddha replied, "Atulah, from days of old until now it has been the invariable practice of man to blame him who said nothing, him who said much, and him who said little. There is no one who deserves unqualified blame and no one who deserves unqualified praise. Even kings are blamed by some and praised by others. Even the great Earth, even the Sun and the Moon. Even the Supremely Enlightened Buddha, sitting and speaking in the midst of the fourfold assembly, some blame and others praise." If some blame you or praise you, it makes no importance at all. They don’t have any intelligence to even praise you or to blame you. They have nothing to say. So it doesn’t matter what they said. Whoever is blamed by a sound judging person, the good person, intelligent person, then he is truly blamed.

And God will be present on Earth, but invisibly. Maybe visible to some few, OK? And that race also would be invisible. They don’t need a physical body. Maybe sometimes they take on a physical body to go around the world for some purpose. Blessing or something. But we will not be able to see that. "Can You tell me…I have some more questions. What is the reason behind cancer, apart from…" Maybe some loophole in your system. That it can sneak in. But mostly it’s from DNA. Some groups of people are more prone to cancers than other groups. But it could be even contaminated by others. Too much nearness to some patients, your patients. Somebody you took too much at heart. And that triggered a kind of so-called sympathetic response, so you share.