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Thursday, October 10, 2013

Who are those who can destroy the teachings?

"What do these passages from the sutras mean? In the past, the Buddha Kashyapa described to King Kriki the Latter Day of the Law of the Thus Come One Shakyamuni and revealed what sort of people would destroy Shakyamuni’s teachings. Evil men might appear such as King Mihirakula, who burned all the Buddhist halls and monasteries of India and murdered all the monks and nuns of its sixteen major states, or Emperor Wu-tsung of China, who destroyed more than 2,600 temples and pagodas in the nine regions of China and forced 260,500 priests and nuns to return to lay life. But such men could not destroy the teachings preached by Shakyamuni Buddha. It is the priests themselves, who wrap their bodies in the three robes permitted to them, hang a single begging bowl about their necks, store up in their minds the eighty thousand teachings, and with their mouths recite the twelve divisions of the scriptures— they are the ones who will destroy the Buddha’s teachings." -- The Selection of the Time

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