Golden Steps To Salvation

Author(s): Padmasagarsuri
Publisher: Arunoday Foundation

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scholar said, “You fool! you blind fellow! Don't you realize who I am? and from where I am coming? I am a Brahmin and I am returning home after taking a bath in the river Ganga. By touching me you have pollutted me. Now I should go back to the river and take a bath again and it will be a waste of time.”
The scavenger said, "Now I too should take a bath in the Ganga.” The scholar said, “Why should you take a bath?” The scavenger said, “Because my body has been polluted by the contact of a chandala (an untouchable).” The scholar said, "What do you say? I am a Brāhmin, I say, I am a Brāhmin!”
The scavenger said, “In the shastras it is said that an angry man is a chandala (an untouchable) and that it is character not birth that makes a man a chandala (untouchable) or a Brāhmin. You have become a chandala by getting angry with me; and by contact with your body, I have become polluted; and I can become pure only by taking a bath in the Ganga.”
The Brāhmin accepted his mistake; and after his eyes (mental eyes) were opened by this conversation, he felt grateful to the scavenger.
उवसमेण हणे कोहम् ॥
Uvasamena hane Koham Anger should be checked by means of restraint.
A Kshatriya once insulted and abused the Buddha but he remained unprovoked and calm. The kshatriya continued to scold the Buddha until he felt tired of speaking. He wondered why his abuses and insults had no effect on the Buddha, He thought about it for a long time. When he could not realize the cause for the Buddha's imperturbability, he asked the Buddha himself to tell him why he had not been provoked. The Buddha said. “Brother! If you offer me a gift and if I do not accept it, with whom does the gift-article lie?”
The kshatriya said, “Why? It will remain with me.”