"“What, bhikkhus, is the way of undertaking things that is pleasant now
and ripens in the future as pain? Bhikkhus, there are certain recluses
and brahmins whose doctrine and view is this: ‘There is no harm in
sensual pleasures.’ They take to gulping down sensual pleasures and
divert themselves with women wanderers who wear their hair bound in a
topknot. They say thus: ‘What future fear do these good recluses and
brahmins see in sensual pleasures when they speak of abandoning sensual
pleasures and describe the full understanding of sensual pleasures?
Pleasant is the touch of this woman wanderer’s tender soft downy arm!’
Thus they take to gulping down sensual pleasures, and having done so, on
the dissolution of the body, after death, they reappear in a state of
deprivation, in an unhappy destination, in perdition, even in hell.
There they feel painful, racking, piercing feelings. They say thus:
‘This is the future fear those good recluses and brahmins saw in sensual
pleasures when they spoke of abandoning sensual pleasures and described
the full understanding of sensual pleasures. For it is by reason of
sensual pleasures, owing to sensual pleasures, that we are now
feeling painful, racking, piercing feelings.’
“Bhikkhus, suppose that
in the last month of the hot season a māluva-creeper pod burst open and
a māluva-creeper seed fell at the foot of a sāla tree. Then a deity
living in that tree became fearful, perturbed, and frightened; but the
deity’s friends and companions, kinsmen and relatives—garden deities,
park deities, tree deities, and deities inhabiting medicinal herbs,
grass, and forest-monarch trees—gathered together and reassured that
deity thus: ‘Have no fear, sir, have no fear. Perhaps a peacock will
swallow the māluva-creeper seed or a wild animal will eat it or a forest
fire will burn it or woodsmen will carry it off or white ants will
devour it or it may not even be fertile.’ But no peacock swallowed that
seed, no wild animal ate it, no forest fire burned it, no woodsmen
carried it off, no white ants devoured it, and it was in fact fertile.
Then, being moistened by rain from a rain-bearing cloud, the seed in due
course sprouted and the māluva creeper’s tender soft downy tendril
wound itself around that sāla tree. Then the deity living in the sāla
tree thought: ‘What future fear did my friends and companions, kinsmen
and relatives…see in that māluva-creeper seed when they gathered
together and reassured me as they did? Pleasant is the touch of this
māluva creeper’s tender soft downy tendril!’ Then the creeper enfolded
the sāla tree, made a canopy over it, draped a curtain all around it,
and split the main branches of the tree. The deity who lived in the tree
then realised: ‘This is the future fear they saw in that māluva-creeper
seed. Because of that māluva-creeper seed I am now feeling
painful, racking, piercing feelings.’ “So too, bhikkhus, there are
certain recluses and brahmins whose doctrine and view is this: ‘There is
no harm in sensual pleasures. ’…They say thus: ‘This is the future fear
those good recluses and brahmins saw in sensual pleasures…that we are
now feeling painful, racking, piercing feelings.’ This is called the way
of undertaking things that is pleasant now and ripens in the future as
pain."
M 45
