Parable: Plastering the Walls
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Hundred Parables Sutra
Parable: Plastering the Walls
Once there was a man who visited another man whose house had just had its walls plastered so they were made even and looked nice and neat. The man asked his host, “With what did you plaster the walls so that they look so nice?”
The host replied, “I used a mixture of rice bran, water, and clay to achieve such a fine result.”
The foolish man thought to himself, “It would be better if he had used rice grain instead of rice bran. The walls would be even more smooth, white, and clean.”
Thereupon he mixed rice grain together with clay and plastered the walls of his own house, hoping for a smooth and tidy effect. But the walls became cracked and uneven. He had wasted the rice grain to no avail. He would have done better if he had used the grain to practice giving and thereby accrued some merit and virtue.
Common people are this way, too. They hear the sages preach Dharma, which says that if people cultivate good acts, after they die they will be born in the heavens and attain liberation. Then these people kill themselves, thinking they can be reborn in the heavens or attain liberation this way. They merely lost their lives and obtain nothing. They are like the stupid man with the plaster.