Source daitangkink.org
Department: La racine de foi VII
Number: 211: Volume 4: Extrait de l’exemple 73
A guilty official was sent into exile.
Over there, thanks to his merit, that land became prosperous.
People came to settle down there, and elected him to be their King.
But then his mandarins harassed the people, betraying him, overthrew and then executed him.
Before his death, he swore that he really wanted his people to live happily.
However due to his bad mandarins, he was unjust.
If he was unjustly killed, he vowed to become a Demon to revenge.
He was hung to death. Three days later, he really became a Demon.
He looked for all the betraying mandarins, and killed them all.
He even wanted to kill other people.
A good mandarin convinced him to stop killing, and elected him to be a King again.
He said, as a Demon, he needed to eat people.
The mandarins randomly selected a person for the Demon to eat, the first was a Buddhist boy preserving the five precepts.
The boy’s family cried towards Vulture Peak Mount mountain and bowed down to confess their past karmic sins.
The Buddha, with his supernatural eyes, saw all this suffering, told himself
“Thanks to this boy, I will save countless people.”
He immediately flew to the door of the palace of the King, illuminating the indoors with Buddha’s halo.
Seeing the halo, the Demon suspected that’s an extraordinary man, so he came out.
Seeing the Buddha, the Demon immediately intended to jump to Buddha to eat.
When Buddha’s light shined into Demon’s eyes, Demon power dissipated, he became weaker and eventually surrendered Buddha.
The Demon invited Buddha to sit down on the throne, and he knelt under and prostrated.
Buddha taught Dharma to the Demon, he listened carefully, understood, and believed, then committed to become a Buddhist preserving the five precepts.
At that time, an officer brought the boy to the Demon King to eat, followed by his whole family sadly crying.
Many other people were also very sad.
The officer gave the boy to the Demon King, the Demon King picked up the boy, then knelt down in front of Buddha and said :
“This kid was selected by my people to give me for eating. Now I preserve the five precepts, so I make the decision not to eat him anymore.
Instead I would like to give him to Buddha to use as a retainer. “
Buddha received the boy, then gave the blessing. The Demon was very happy and attained Sotapatti.
Buddha put the boy into his bowl, bringing him out of the Palace to his home. Buddha told his parents “Please bring him up. Don’t be sad anymore.”
Seeing Buddha, everybody was very surprised, and wondered which God this was, which luck rescued the boy from being eaten by the Demon.
Then Buddha, standing in the middle of the crowd, stated this poem :
Precepts is what one can rely on
Merit will follow us
Understanding Dharma thoroughly to promote to higher realms
Getting away from the three evil realms
Preserving the precepts keeps one free from suffering.
Attaining the three precious realms
Demons, Evil Spirits can never harm precept preservers
====== IMPORTANT NOTES ==============================
Demon harms people due to their bad karma
One prostrates Buddha and confesses his sins.
Buddha emits his light to transform
Triggering compassion from Demon, making him preserve the five precepts
The five precepts include not killing.
Because of that, nobody is killed
Therefore if one preserves the five precepts, not killing any beings anymore, often prostrates Buddha and confesses his sins.
He cannot be killed by Covid-19.