Causes and Conditions from a Previous Life:
He Starved a Monkey
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.
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.
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!
