So when the villagers saw him weeping bitterly, they asked, "What's wrong?"
"Alas," the man groaned, "I weep because my son will die in seven days."
"But perhaps he won't!" the people replied, offering comfort. "Why weep in advance?"
"Because I know that he will die," the man insisted, "and I am never wrong."
When the boy was still alive after seven days, his father killed him.
At the funeral, the villagers murmured to one another, full of admiration, "Our wise man really can foresee the future!"
~ ~ ~
This story is another "fool's tale" from the Baiyu Jing 百喻經 Sutra of a Hundred Parables. You can find an English translation of this story online at the Internet Archive in Li Rongxi's A Garland for the Fool. You can also find the Chinese text and another English translation online. In this story, the main character is not the fool (he is something even worse!); this time, the fools are the people who go on believing in the wicked fortune-teller.
Although we might make fun of fortune-tellers and of the people who believe in them, we are all trying to do "fortune-telling" when we think about the future, making plans, and even acting wrongly in the present because of the expectations we had about the future and our willful insistence to make things go as we planned them. So, while this story is obviously fantastical, I think there is a warning here for all of us to ponder whenever we are tempted to live out our futures in advance and to even make our dreams (or fears) come true.
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