The Boy Who Eats Too Many Sweets The Daily Enlightenment Buddhist Inspirations (since 1997)

The short-sighted’s fault
is not seeing far enough.
– Stonepeace | Books

Someone asked – ‘If there is a future life, I would most likely have forgotten about this life then? If so, why should I not simply indulge in pleasures all the way now, before I die?’ This sounds like a reasonable question, which can be reasonably answered with the story of ‘The Boy Who Ate Too Many Sweets’….

Once, there was an immature boy, who ignored his mother’s advice not to eat too many sweets without brushing his teeth. She had warned him that this will lead to a terribly painful toothache sooner or later. The boy did not care, as he thought this might not happen, that even if it did, enjoying the sweets now would be ‘better’.

A few weeks later, the boy had a terrible toothache. As he did not take his mother’s advice to heart earlier, he did not understand, what more remember how he got the toothache. He thus continued the same mistake of eating too many sweets, leading to the next painful toothache, and the next… till he lost all his teeth. Even as an adult, this continued…

And because there is a future life, this bad habit continued due to his foolish wilfulness, leading to more needless suffering. In that next life, just as it is difficult for us to recall last night’s dream when we awake in the morning, it became even harder to recall his mother’s kind warning. His repeated suffering remained painful, since he did not know why he suffers endlessly, and how to end it.

Such is the danger of not believing how the natural law of karmic cause and effect governs this life, and from life to life. Not understanding it leads to much suffering in this and future lives. Over-indulgence distracts us from doing our best in this limited life, to learn and practise the Buddha’s teachings on karma, rebirth and such, that lead to liberation, which is lasting True Happiness!

As Nagasena taught in the Nagasena Bhiksu Sutra, ‘The good and bad deeds done by a person always follow him, just like the shadow follows the body. When a person dies, only his body is dissolved, but his deeds remain. It is just as when a person writes under a lamp at night, when the fire is extinguished, the writing still remains. When the fire is lit again, the writing can be seen again. Thus, the deeds done in this life lead to the formation in the next life and then the doer receives the result accordingly.’