(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be of benefit!)

Doesn’t every good story start with “Once upon a time……..”

Well then, once upon a time, Sariputra, a highly-realized student of Sakyamuni Buddha’s, is travelling with some of his (Sariputra’s) students when they come across a family who has just sat down to supper on the lawn. The supper table sits between a pond and the house.

The fish that had been swimming in the pond has just been caught by the father and is now being eaten by the family for supper. The father, sitting at the head of the table, has his baby son on his knee. As soon as the father finishes eating the fish, the family dog runs up to the table, grabs the fish bones and begins to eat them.

The father is very angry. He beats the dog.

Sariputra laughs. His students ask him “What’s so funny? What do you see that we don’t see?”

Sariputra explains.

In a past life the father thought that is wife was cheating with on him with the neighbour. So he killed the neighbour.

The father’s parents — the grandparents of the father’s children — are deceased. But while alive, the grandmother was a real homebody, very attached to her home, her children, and everything connected with her home. The grandfather loved fishing.

In this present lifetime, the grandfather is now the fish who has just
been caught and eaten by his son.

The grandmother has now been reborn as the family dog!

So the grandmother (now a dog) is now eating the grandfather (the fish) and she is also being beaten by her son in this lifetime.

This story expresses the reality of suffering. It demonstrates how the attachments of a previous life are now expressed in the circumstances of the present lifetime.

Source: material based on weekend seminar on karma by teacher Jay Lippman.

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