Parable: The Wife Plays Dead
Hundred Parables Sutra
Parable: The Wife Plays Dead
Once there was a stupid man who was very much in love with his beautiful wife. She was unfaithful to him; however, and took a lover. Burning with deviant passion, she instructed an old woman, saying, “After I leave, put a dead woman’s corpse in my room and tell my husband I am dead.” The old woman waited until the husband was not at home and then placed a woman’s corpse inside the house. When he returned, she told him his wife was dead.
The husband saw the corpse and believed it to be his wife. He grieved and wept and prepared much firewood and oil for the cremation. He gathered the remains in a bag and carried them with him day and night.
The wife, meanwhile, grew tired of her lover and returned home, saying to her husband, “I am your wife.”
The husband replied, “My wife died long ago. Why do you falsely claim to be my wife?” He refused to believe her even after her repeated explanations.
This is like those of externalist ways who learn deviant teachings and whose minds give rise to delusion and attachment. They claim that the teachings are true and they refuse to change. Afterwards even when they hear the orthodox teaching, they do not believe, accept, or uphold it.
