Parable: A Maid Servant and Five Masters
Hundred Parables Sutra
Parable: A Maid Servant and Five Masters
Once there were five men who together bought one maid. One of them said to her, “Wash my clothes for me.” Another told her to do the same thing. The maid said, “I will wash for whoever gave the the clothes first.”
The second man broke out in anger and said, “I bought you with the others. Why should you wash only for the first person?” thereupon he whipped her with ten strokes. The rest of her five masters did the same, each whipping her ten strokes.
The five skandhas are this way, too. They are the causes and conditions of afflictions and combine to make up this body. And yet the five skandhas constantly whip living beings with the limitless suffering of birth, old age, sickness, and death.
