Questioner: What is sin?
Nisargadatta Maharaj: All that binds you.
- I Am That
It seems when the Buddha was teaching, he'd often receive visitors in the afternoons, and answer questions. The thing was, he'd answer anyone's questions: a thief, a murderous warrior, an untouchable, a prostitute. Finally, someone asks him - maybe Sariputra, the perpetual straight man - how it is that he can be calm and not judge these people?
The World Honored One said, "Sariputra, when I awoke, I had access to all the events of all past incarnations. Now, when I meet a warrior, I remember what it is like to be a warrior, and know that I am a human; I too have the capacity to be a warrior, if the chain of dependent causation had led to that moment in that lifetime. The casteless one, I know, is just like me except for the fact of the causes that led to his birth. So also, the prostitute and the thief. Thus, the Tathagata recognizes that those conditions are themselves dependent, and therefore empty and have no inherent meaning."
Sariputra thanked the Buddha for his teaching, but he was clearly still troubled, so the World Honored One asked if he had a further question. "If those conditions have no inherent meaning, how can we say 'do this,' and 'don't do that'? Is it not true that then everything is permissible?"
"Ah, not so, Sariputra," the World Honored One said. "For when I saw through to all the events of all past incarnations, I saw that the warrior I was, in later life, lost a limb, lost his sons, and eventually died when his Kingdom was conquered by another. Thus I saw that his actions were not productive and did not lead to liberation; and so I instructed our warrior in the ways that lead to liberation from dukhha. So also, the prostitute I recall, though she became a great courtesan and immensely wealthy, found that also did not lead to liberation; thus I taught our visitor the Eightfold Path that leads to liberation. Thus also the thief; thus, also, the casteless one. All of them, every one, sickens of the same disease; their deeds arise from dukhha, which arises from attachment, and thus in understanding, I teach them that which releases them from attachment and thus that from which their deeds arise. Just as I would not judge someone who was lame for their inability to walk, so I would not judge someone whose deeds arise from the disease of attachment."
- Charlie Martin, Karuna and Jesse Helms
