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“‘Praised be the World Honored One. What did your World Honored One do in former lives that now you have such a merit, that you have 84,000 stupas and very high like that for you. Please can you tell us?’ ‘Ananda, I will tell you. A long, long, long time ago, there was a king of a very big country named Clear-Seer. He ruled over 84,000 small countries. At that time there was a Buddha who appeared in the world, named Bursa. But one day the king thought to himself, ‘The Buddha is merit-filled for Heaven and Earth. Anyone who sows good seeds will reap multifold good benefits. I think I should ask someone to paint the Buddha’s picture and then give it to all the countries, other countries, so they will make offerings to the Buddha’s picture. And they will have merit also.’ The King Clear-Seer took all these paintings and divided them to all different, every country, one. ‘Ananda, you should know, the King Clear-Seer at that time was one of my incarnations. At that time, because I paid for the painters to paint 84,000 pictures of the Buddha Bursa and gave it to all the different countries, therefore today, because of that merit many, many, many lifetimes, life after life, I can either be a king in Heaven or on Earth. And everywhere I was born, I was always born with a very beautiful body, so proper a body, and healthy. And have 32 auspicious marks and 80 beautiful signs. And now I became Buddha because that also contributed to my merit to become Buddha as well, one of the reasons, one of the merits. And even after I’m in Nirvana, I still would have 84,000 stupas built in my name.’” “‘I prostrate to World Honored One. Bhiksu Ưu Bà Tư already attained Arhat. Why is it that this insect, or this worm still can kill him like that? Could you please tell us?’ ‘Sariputra, you should know. This is the karma from long time past. One time there was a hunter passing by and he arranged all the traps, the terrible traps, terrible devices to catch the animals. The Pratyeka, this Pratyeka Buddha felt very compassionate for all the animals, so he used his ways and means to obstruct this. Therefore, the hunter could not catch any of the animals at all. So the hunter was very, very angry with him. He used a poisonous arrow to shoot the Pratyeka Buddha and (let him) die… Just shot him, but he didn’t die yet. He flew into the sky and he showed him 18 magical powers. And then after that the hunter was feeling very scared and sorry, sorry. Then he came in and apologized to the Pratyeka Buddha. But after he came back, one of the poisonous insects bit him, and he died. After he died, he went to hell. For 500 lives he had always been bitten by poisonous insects. And then today, even though he already became Arhat, the sin was still there. So that’s why the poisonous insect killed him. The hunter at that time is the Bhiksu, Ưu Bà Tư, the younger brother.’” …if you do something wrong, you have to repent. At least after hell you still can come back and be a saint. Maybe that’s why they say every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.
