Causes and Conditions from a Previous Life:
He Starved a Monkey
前生因緣 餓死狝猴
Emperor Wu originally had deep faith in the Buddhadharma. During his time, Buddhism flourished in China. Using his power as an emperor, he built temples everywhere and promoted Buddhism. Consequently, many people came to believe in the Buddhadharma.
梁武帝本來非常相信佛法,在他那個時代,中國的佛教是很興盛的,他到處造廟,以他皇帝的力量來提倡佛法,所以當時的人民都信佛。
However, he had also created very heavy karma in a past life. What kind of a person had Emperor Wu been in the past
He had been a Bhikshu, a Buddhist monk. While that monk cultivated up in the mountains, a monkey would come every day to steal the things he planted for food and to steal the fruit from the nearby trees, such as peaches, apples, and the like. The monkey stole and ate all the fruit and most of the vegetables the monk planted.
可是,他在過去生中造的業也很重。在過去世,梁武帝是一個出家的比丘。這個比丘在山上修行,有一只猴子就天天偷他所種的東西吃,像桃子、蘋果之類,樹上所有的水果,它都來偷吃。
Finally one day the monk managed to trap the monkey in a cave and blocked the entrance of the cave with rocks. Basically he planned to keep the monkey in there for a couple of days and then let it out, in order to teach the monkey a lesson so that it wouldn”t steal his food anymore. Who would have guessed that after blocking up the cave he would forget about it, thus causing that monkey to die of hunger!
他種的東西被這猴子給吃得沒剩多少,于是就把猴子圈到一個山洞裏,用石頭把洞門擋上了。本來他預備擋幾天,就把它放出來,不准它再偷東西吃,孰不知他把猴子堵到洞裏,卻忘了,結果把它餓死在洞裏頭。