Parable: Eating Half a Cake
Hundred Parables Sutra
Parable: Eating Half a Cake
Once there was a man who was so hungry, he ate seven pancakes. By the time he had finished eating six and half pancakes, he was full. Remorseful and upset, he slapped his own hand and said, ”Half a pancake filled me up. The other six were wasted. If I had known that this half a pancake could fill me up, I would have eaten it first.”
Worldly people are like this, too. They have never experienced bliss, and yet they convince themselves with their stupid delusion that there is such a thing as bliss, just like that foolish man who was convinced he got full by eating half a pancake. Worldly ignorant people think that wealth and honor are bliss. And yet the pursuit of wealth and honor entails much suffering. To guard them after having obtained them is also suffering. And, having lost them, pining and fretting over them is even more suffering. Throughout those three periods of time, one is never blissful.
This is also like people who delude themselves into thinking that food and clothing are pleasure. Therefore, the Buddhas says, “The three realms have no peace. They are all suffering.” But because they are upside down, ordinary people cling on to their mistaken notions of bliss.
