“Hear another parable. There was a man who was a master of a household who planted a vineyard, set a hedge about it, dug a wine press in it, built a tower, leased it out to farmers, and went into another country. When the season for the fruit came near, he sent his servants to the farmers to receive his fruit. The farmers took his servants, beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than the first; and they treated them the same way. But afterward he sent to them his son, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But the farmers, when they saw the son, said among themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and seize his inheritance.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard, then killed him. When therefore the lord of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those farmers?”

He began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a pit for the wine press, built a tower, rented it out to a farmer, and went into another country. When it was time, he sent a servant to the farmer to get from the farmer his share of the fruit of the vineyard. They took him, beat him, and sent him away empty. Again, he sent another servant to them; and they threw stones at him, wounded him in the head, and sent him away shamefully treated. Again he sent another, and they killed him, and many others, beating some, and killing some. Therefore still having one, his beloved son, he sent him last to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But those farmers said among themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ They took him, killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard. What therefore will the lord of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the farmers, and will give the vineyard to others. Haven’t you even read this Scripture: ‘The stone which the builders rejected was made the head of the corner.

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he spoke about them. When they sought to seize him, they feared the multitudes, because they considered him to be a prophet.

Monday in Jerusalem

Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book 6: The Cynics

When he was dining in a temple, and in the course of the meal loaves not free from dirt were put on the table, he took them up and threw them away, declaring that nothing unclean ought to enter a temple. To the man who said to him, "You don't know anything, although you are a philosopher," he replied, "Even if I am but a pretender to wisdom, that in itself is philosophy." When some one brought a child to him and declared him to be highly gifted and of excellent character, "What need then," said he, "has he of me?" Those who say admirable things, but fail to do them, he compared to a harp; for the harp, like them, he said, has neither hearing nor perception. He was going into a theatre, meeting face to face those who were coming out, and being asked why, "This," he said, "is what I practise doing all my life."

When he was being initiated into the Orphic mysteries, the priest said that those admitted into these rites would be partakers of many good things in Hades. "Why then," said he, "don't you die?" Being reproached because his parents were not both free-born, "Nor were they both wrestlers," quoth he, "but yet I am a wrestler." To the question why he had but few disciples he replied, "Because I use a silver rod to eject them." When he was asked why he was so bitter in reproving his pupils he replied, "Physicians are just the same with their patients." One day upon seeing an adulterer running for his life he exclaimed, "Poor wretch, what peril you might have escaped at the price of an obol." He used to say, as we learn from Hecato in his Anecdotes, that it is better to fall in with crows than with flatterers; for in the one case you are devoured when dead, in the other case while alive.

He was gathering figs, and was told by the keeper that not long before a man had hanged himself on that very fig-tree. "Then," said he, "I will now purge it." Seeing an Olympian victor casting repeated glances at a courtesan, "See," he said, "yonder ram frenzied for battle, how he is held fast by the neck fascinated by a common minx." Handsome courtesans he would compare to a deadly honeyed potion. He was breakfasting in the marketplace, and the bystanders gathered round him with cries of "dog." "It is you who are dogs," cried he, "when you stand round and watch me at my breakfast." When two cowards hid away from him, he called out, "Don't be afraid, a hound is not fond of beetroot."

Discourses 3.22: On the Calling of a Cynic

and he must first do his scouting accurately, and on returning must tell the truth, not driven by fear to designate as enemies those who are not such, nor in any other fashion be distraught or confused by his external impressions. He must, accordingly, be able, if it so chance, to lift up his voice, and, mounting the tragic stage, to speak like Socrates: "Alas! men, where are you rushing? What are you doing, O wretched people? Like blind men you go tottering all around. You have left the true path and are going off upon another; you are looking for serenity and happiness in the wrong place, where it does not exist, and you do not believe when another points them out to you. Why do you look for it outside? It does not reside in the body. If you doubt that, look at Myron, or Ophellius. It is not in possessions. If you doubt that, look at Croesus, look at the rich nowadays, the amount of lamentation with which their life is filled. It is not in office. Why, if it were, then those who have been consul two or three times ought to be happy men, but they are not. Whom are we going to believe about this question? You who look upon their estate from the outside and are dazzled by the external appearance, or the men themselves? What do they say? Listen to them when they lament, when they groan, when they think that their condition is more wretched and dangerous because of these very consulships, and their own reputation, and their prominence.

For see, he must show certain services to his father-in-law, to the rest of his wife's relatives, to his wife herself; finally, he is driven from his profession, to act as a nurse in his own family and to provide for them. To make a long story short, he must get a kettle to heat water for the baby, for washing it in a bath-tub; wool for his wife when she has had a child, oil, a cot, a cup (the vessels get more and more numerous); not to speak of the rest of his business, and his distraction. Where, I beseech you, is left now our king, the man who has leisure for the public interest, Who hath charge of the folk and for many a thing must be watchful? Where, pray, is this king, whose duty it is to oversee the rest of men; those who have married; those who have had children; who is treating his wife well, and who ill; who quarrels; what household is stable, and what not; making his rounds like a physician, and feeling pulses? "You have a fever, you have a headache, you have the gout. You must abstain from food, you must eat, you must give up the bath; you need the surgeon's knife, you the cautery." Where is the man who is tied down to the duties of everyday life going to find leisure for such matters? Come, doesn't he have to get little cloaks for the children? Doesn't he have to send them off to a school-teacher with their little tablets and writing implements, and little notebooks; and, besides, get the little cot ready for them? For they can't be Cynics from the moment they leave the womb. And if he doesn't do all this, it would have been better to expose them at birth, rather than to kill them in this fashion.

What are you, then? Truly a shepherd! for you wail as the shepherds do when a wolf carries off one of their sheep; and these men over whom you rule are sheep. But why did you come here in the first place? Your desire was not in danger, was it, or your avoidance, your choice, or your refusal? "No," he answers, "but my brother's frail wife was carried off." Was it not, then, a great gain to lose a frail and adulterous wife? "Shall we, then, be despised by the Trojans?" Who are they? Wise men or foolish? If wise, why are you fighting with them? If foolish, why do you care? "In what, then, is the good, since it is not in these things? Tell us. Sir messenger and scout." "It is where you do not expect it, and do not wish to look for it. For if you had wished, you would have found it within you, and you would not now be wandering outside, nor would you be seeking what does not concern you, as though it were your own possession. Turn your thoughts upon yourselves, find out the kind of preconceived ideas which you have. what sort of a thing do you imagine the good to be? Serenity, happiness, freedom from restraint. Come, do you not imagine it to be something naturally great? Something precious? Something not injurious?

The Dhammapada

But those who, when the law has been well preached to them, follow the law, will pass across the dominion of death, however difficult to overcome. A wise man should leave the dark state (of ordinary life), and follow the bright state (of the Bhikshu). After going from his home to a homeless state, he should in his retirement look for enjoyment where there seemed to be no enjoyment. Leaving all pleasures behind, and calling nothing his own, the wise man should purge himself from all the troubles of the mind.

He who says what is not, goes to hell; he also who, having done a thing, says I have not done it. After death both are equal, they are men with evil deeds in the next world. Many men whose shoulders are covered with the yellow gown are ill-conditioned and unrestrained; such evil-doers by their evil deeds go to hell.

An evil deed, like newly-drawn milk, does not turn (suddenly); smouldering, like fire covered by ashes, it follows the fool. And when the evil deed, after it has become known, brings sorrow to the fool, then it destroys his bright lot, nay, it cleaves his head. Let the fool wish for a false reputation, for precedence among the Bhikshus, for lordship in the convents, for worship among other people!

The Bhagavad Gita

Who abide ever in this teaching of Mine full of faith and free from caviling, they too are released from actions. Who carp at My teaching and act not thereon, senseless, deluded in all knowledge, know thou these mindless ones as fated to be destroyed. Even the man of knowledge behaves in conformity with his own nature; beings follow nature; what shall restraint avail?

And he who shall study this sacred dialogue of ours, by him I shall be worshipped with the sacrifice of wisdom. Such is My mind. The man also who, full of faith, merely heareth it unreviling, even he, freed from evil, obtaineth the radiant worlds of the righteous. Hath this been heard, O son of Prithâ, with one-pointed mind? Has thy delusion, caused by unwisdom, been destroyed, O Dhananjaya?

This confusion draggeth to hell the slayers of the family, and the family; for their ancestors fall, deprived of rice-balls and libations. By these caste-confusing misdeeds of the slayers of the family, the everlasting caste customs and family customs are abolished. The abode of the men whose family customs are extinguished, O Janârdana, is everlastingly in hell. Thus have we heard.

Shinto Oracles

All men's love of children and love of self are heinous crimes. Nothing is more admirable than to sever, were it only for a time, all earthly relations If men will have upright hearts they must be neither foolish nor clever; they must indulge neither in grief nor in hate, but be as the flowers which unfold under the genial warmth of a vernal sun If there be any who, having studied the books of China or practised the teachings of India, despise the instructions of the Gods of our own Japan, I will go to their houses and either slay their infant children or visit them with, sore disease, or turn away from them their followers, or by the God of Fire destroy their dwellings. This is not because I hate the doctrines of China or India, but because it is rejecting the root for the branches

Ye men of mine. Shun desire. If you shun desire you will ascend to a level with the Gods. Every little yielding to anxiety is a step away from the natural heart of man. If one leaves the natural heart of man, he becomes a beast. That men should be made so, is to me intolerable pain and unending sorrow

In the last days the world will be disturbed and all men troubled. The sovereign house will show respect for the military house, and local governors will make friends with wearisome fellows (Buddhist monks). Buddhist priests will take to them, wives, eat flesh, and propagate base doctrines. The land of Ashihara of the fair rice-ears is the rightful property of my descendants.

The Tao Te Ching

When the Great Tao (Way or Method) ceased to be observed, benevolence and righteousness came into vogue. (Then) appeared wisdom and shrewdness, and there ensued great hypocrisy. When harmony no longer prevailed throughout the six kinships, filial sons found their manifestation; when the states and clans fell into disorder, loyal ministers appeared.

The skilful traveller leaves no traces of his wheels or footsteps; the skilful speaker says nothing that can be found fault with or blamed; the skilful reckoner uses no tallies; the skilful closer needs no bolts or bars, while to open what he has shut will be impossible; the skilful binder uses no strings or knots, while to unloose what he has bound will be impossible. In the same way the sage is always skilful at saving men, and so he does not cast away any man; he is always skilful at saving things, and so he does not cast away anything. This is called 'Hiding the light of his procedure.' Therefore the man of skill is a master (to be looked up to) by him who has not the skill; and he who has not the skill is the helper of (the reputation of) him who has the skill. If the one did not honour his master, and the other did not rejoice in his helper, an (observer), though intelligent, might greatly err about them. This is called 'The utmost degree of mystery.'

The skilful masters (of the Tao) in old times, with a subtle and exquisite penetration, comprehended its mysteries, and were deep (also) so as to elude men's knowledge. As they were thus beyond men's knowledge, I will make an effort to describe of what sort they appeared to be. Shrinking looked they like those who wade through a stream in winter; irresolute like those who are afraid of all around them; grave like a guest (in awe of his host); evanescent like ice that is melting away; unpretentious like wood that has not been fashioned into anything; vacant like a valley, and dull like muddy water. Who can (make) the muddy water (clear)? Let it be still, and it will gradually become clear. Who can secure the condition of rest? Let movement go on, and the condition of rest will gradually arise. They who preserve this method of the Tao do not wish to be full (of themselves). It is through their not being full of themselves that they can afford to seem worn and not appear new and complete.

The Analects of Confucius

Tsze-lu, following the Master, happened to fall behind, when he met an old man, carrying across his shoulder on a staff a basket for weeds. Tsze-lu said to him, 'Have you seen my master, sir!' The old man replied, 'Your four limbs are unaccustomed to toil; you cannot distinguish the five kinds of grain:-- who is your master?' With this, he planted his staff in the ground, and proceeded to weed. Tsze-lu joined his hands across his breast, and stood before him. The old man kept Tsze-lu to pass the night in his house, killed a fowl, prepared millet, and feasted him. He also introduced to him his two sons. Next day, Tsze-lu went on his way, and reported his adventure. The Master said, 'He is a recluse,' and sent Tsze-lu back to see him again, but when he got to the place, the old man was gone. Tsze-lu then said to the family, 'Not to take office is not righteous. If the relations between old and young may not be neglected, how is it that he sets aside the duties that should be observed between sovereign and minister? Wishing to maintain his personal purity, he allows that great relation to come to confusion. A superior man takes office, and performs the righteous duties belonging to it. As to the failure of right principles to make progress, he is aware of that.'

Tsze-lu asked whether he should immediately carry into practice what he heard. The Master said, 'There are your father and elder brothers to be consulted;-- why should you act on that principle of immediately carrying into practice what you hear?' Zan Yu asked the same, whether he should immediately carry into practice what he heard, and the Master answered, 'Immediately carry into practice what you hear.' Kung-hsi Hwa said, 'Yu asked whether he should carry immediately into practice what he heard, and you said, "There are your father and elder brothers to be consulted." Ch'iu asked whether he should immediately carry into practice what he heard, and you said, "Carry it immediately into practice." I, Ch'ih, am perplexed, and venture to ask you for an explanation.' The Master said, 'Ch'iu is retiring and slow; therefore, I urged him forward. Yu has more than his own share of energy; therefore I kept him back.'

The disciple Zan returning from the court, the Master said to him, 'How are you so late?' He replied, 'We had government business.' The Master said, 'It must have been family affairs. If there had been government business, though I am not now in office, I should have been consulted about it.'

The Meaning of the Glorious Koran

Return unto your father and say: O our father! Lo! thy son hath stolen. We testify only to that which we know; we are not guardians of the Unseen. Ask the township where we were, and the caravan with which we travelled hither. Lo! we speak the truth. (And when they came unto their father and had spoken thus to him) he said: Nay, but your minds have beguiled you into something. (My course is) comely patience! It may be that Allah will bring them all unto me. Lo! He, only He, is the Knower, the Wise.

Then he went apart unto his housefolk so that they brought a fatted calf; And he set it before them, saying: Will ye not eat? Then he conceived a fear of them. They said: Fear not! and gave him tidings of (the birth of) a wise son. Then his wife came forward, making moan, and smote her face, and cried: A barren old woman!

And hath the story of the litigants come unto thee? How they climbed the wall into the royal chamber; How they burst in upon David, and he was afraid of them. They said: Be not afraid! (We are) two litigants, one of whom hath wronged the other, therefor judge aright between us; be not unjust; and show us the fair way.

The Japji

The air is the guru, water our father, and the great earth our mother; Day and night are our two nurses, male and female, who set the whole world a-playing. Merits and demerits shall be read out in the presence of the Judge. According to men's acts, some shall be near, and others distant from God. They who have pondered on the Name and departed after the completion of their toil, Shall have their countenances made bright, O Nanak; how many shall be emancipated in company with them!

Numberless are the fools appallingly blind; Numberless are the thieves and devourers of others' property; Numberless those who establish their sovereignty by force; Numberless the cut-throats and murderers; Numberless the sinners who pride themselves on committing sin; Numberless the liars who roam about lying; Numberless the filthy who enjoy filthy gain; Numberless the slanderers who carry loads of calumny on their heads; Nanak thus describeth the degraded. So lowly am I, I cannot even once be a sacrifice unto Thee. Whatever pleaseth Thee is good. Formless One, Thou art ever secure.

When the hands, feet, and other members of the body are covered with filth, It is removed by washing with water. When thy clothes are polluted, Apply soap, and the impurity shall be washed away. So when the mind is defiled by sin, It is cleansed by the love of the Name. Men do not become saints or sinners by merely calling themselves so. The recording angels take with them a record of man's acts. It is he himself soweth, and he himself eateth. Nanak, man suffereth transmigration by God's order.

World English Bible

Parable of the Absent Landlord

When the chief Pharisees and the scribes who had sought to entangle Jesus with their questions had finished listening to the story of the two sons, they withdrew to take further counsel, and the Master, turning his attention to the listening multitude, told another parable:

173:4.1

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