Yan Poluo, the Man Who Looked Like a Hungry Ghost

Any Buddhist practitioner—including every disciple of the Buddha—who fails to understand how good and evil deeds ripen into their results, and who goes on committing verbal wrongs while practicing the Dharma, becomes the most pitiful of sinners. Why? Because unwholesome speech is the root of suffering. As the Dharmapada says: "Within a man's mouth lies an axe; through evil words it slashes the body." A blade that cuts the flesh hurts for one life; the axe of the mouth cuts for countless ages. The story that follows is a clear proof of this.

When the Buddha was teaching at the many-storied lecture hall beside the Monkey River outside Vaishali, there lived in the city a householder named Zha Luo. While his wife was pregnant, her whole body gave off a stench so foul that no one could bear to come near her. The householder asked, "You were never like this before. What has caused this smell?" She replied, "It must be the karma of the child in my womb; that is why my whole body stinks." In time she gave birth to a boy whose skin clung to his bones—so thin and wasted that no one could bear to look at him or smell him. As he grew, he took to living among piles of filth and refused to come home. His parents and relatives could not stand the sight of him, so they drove him far away and would not let him return.

Still the boy wandered about, gathering excrement and filth to eat. Seeing that he fed on uncleanness and lived among waste, the people gave him a name: Yan Poluo the ghost.

One day, some ascetics of other paths met him on the road and called out, "Well done!" Pleased and leaping for joy, Yan Poluo said to them, "Please take pity on me and let me join your way." They took him in, taught him to go naked, to smear himself with ash, and to cultivate purity. Yet even within their order he still clung to filthy places. When they saw this, they scolded and beat him: "You are a human being—why do you delight in uncleanness?" Beaten and driven away again and again, he left and made his way to a ditch by a foul-smelling river, deciding it was the finest place he had ever known. Hundreds of hungry ghosts already lived there, but when they caught his stench, not one dared come near—even ghosts were afraid of him. Yet Yan Poluo praised his new home, and would say to the ghosts, "In the human world I was always being struck and shouted at. Now at last I am free of people's blows, and I enjoy myself alone." When the hungry ghosts saw and smelled his filth, they left one after another. He called after them, "I came here because of this foul body, hoping to stay near you, and have had a few days of ease. Now you mean to leave me—how am I to live?" With that he broke down, collapsed on the ground, and wept.

The Buddha, seeing with his Buddha-eye who among beings had the roots and conditions to be saved, had long been ready to help. Now he saw Yan Poluo, companionless and weeping on the ground, and went to the ditch to teach him the Dharma and lift his spirits.

When Yan Poluo saw the World-Honored One—so still and composed in every sense, radiant like a hundred thousand suns, perfect in every mark and feature—his heart filled with joy. He prostrated fully and asked, "World-Honored One, can a wretch like me be saved and ordained in this world?" The Buddha replied, "Yan Poluo, the Tathagata's Dharma knows no high or low. Anyone who can keep the precepts, I will allow to ordain and enter the Sangha." On hearing this, Yan Poluo pleaded, "World-Honored One, have pity on me and let me ordain and cultivate the path." The Buddha raised his golden right hand, stroked the top of Yan Poluo's head, and said, "Come, monk." His hair and beard fell away on their own, the robes settled on his body, and he was a monk. So composed and orderly was his bearing that he looked as though he had been ordained twelve years. He spoke this verse before the Buddha:

"Now, by the Buddha's grace, my heart's wish is fulfilled; the foul body is shed, and I have become a monk."

The Buddha told him, "Now that you have been ordained in my Dharma, you must practice with diligent mindfulness." Yan Poluo applied himself day and night, and before long he reached the great Arhat path, endowed with the threefold knowledge and the six supernatural powers, honored by gods and humans alike.

The monks who saw his attainment could not stop praising it, and asked the Buddha, "World-Honored One, what past offense brought this foul-smelling body as his karmic fruit? What wholesome causes let him meet you and be ordained? And how did he reach the Arhat path so soon after? Please explain out of compassion, and ease our doubts." The Buddha answered in verse:

"The good and evil deeds of former lives do not decay even after a hundred eons; through the causes of evil karma, one reaps such fruit in this life."

He went on, "In this fortunate aeon, when human life spanned forty thousand years—that is, three million, nine hundred and ninety thousand years ago—a Buddha named Krakucchanda, the first Buddha of the present aeon, appeared in the land of Benares. He and his monks came to the country of Ratnavati. The king, ministers, and others went out of the city to welcome the World-Honored One Krakucchanda, knelt reverently, and said, 'World-Honored One, take pity on us and accept our fourfold offering for three months.' The Buddha agreed.

The king had many dwellings built as places for the monks to practice, and asked one monk to serve as abbot and look after monastic affairs. One day, while the abbot was away, a wandering monk arrived. A lay supporter, seeing his dignified bearing, offered to anoint him with fragrant oil. When the abbot returned and saw this monk anointed with oil, he scolded him: 'Looks as if you've smeared yourself with filth.' The wandering monk was in fact an Arhat, a fully awakened being. Taking pity on the abbot for the verbal karma he had just created—and knowing the bitter fruit it would bear—he rose into the air by his spiritual powers and displayed eighteen transformations. Seeing this, the abbot was filled with shame, and confessed his fault and asked forgiveness. Still, the monk who had uttered the abuse was bound to undergo five hundred lifetimes of a foul-smelling body as his karmic fruit. That monk is the present Yan Poluo. Because he had once been ordained, and because he had repented to that Arhat, he was able in this life to meet a Buddha, ordain, and realize the path."

—[Recorded in the Sutra of a Hundred Causes, Volume 5]

A verse goes:

Verbal karma's toll falls on monk and layperson alike; Spreading blame and wrongdoing fills the very air with sin. Blindness, deafness, grave illness, and muteness are the fruits it bears— A single careless word brings endless suffering in its wake.

◎ Supplementary Note

Even an abbot who scolded a monk by saying he was smeared with filth, and who immediately repented and confessed, still had to bear five hundred lifetimes of a foul-smelling body as his karmic fruit. How much heavier, then, the burden for lay followers who commit verbal wrongs—insulting or slandering monks. Their evil karma grows deeper still.