Is Major Āsrava Determined by the Duration of Pursuit?

Some say that severing desire-realm love requires considerable time and involves heavy artificial effort, constituting a major leakage. They claim that for someone with intense greed, marriage can resolve it quickly, representing a minor leakage since it takes little time. According to this view, pursuits demanding prolonged effort are major leakages, while those achieved swiftly are minor. Such statements distort reality and contradict the Buddhist Four Noble Truths and the principles of liberation.

If expending great time on a pursuit constitutes a major leakage, then does an ordinary person spending three asamkhyeya kalpas seeking Buddhahood represent a major leakage? If severing desire-realm love is a major leakage, does that imply that preserving desire-realm love for immeasurable kalpas—thereby creating boundless karmas of greed, hatred, and delusion throughout the six realms since beginningless time and enduring limitless suffering of birth and death—is not a major leakage? Is the method to resolve greed really marriage, rather than contemplating suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and non-self to attain liberation? Is marriage truly the method to resolve desire-realm love? Then what should be the method to resolve hatred? Should one instantly kill the person who provokes hatred so that hatred ceases forever?

When an ordinary person kills someone in an instant, expending very little time, does that mean it is not a major leakage? Is yielding to greedy afflictions not a major leakage? By this logic, would the Buddha’s coming to the Saha world—a realm of deep afflictions—to teach the Dharma of liberation be meaningless? Would sentient beings attain liberation simply by yielding to their afflictions and desires?

Is the severity of leakage measured by the time spent or by the weight of the affliction? Is greed indulged in for an extremely brief moment not a major leakage? Is marriage the method to resolve greed? Is killing the method to resolve hatred? Who does not know that marriage itself is an expression of greed? Since beginningless time, sentient beings in human form have married life after life—has this not perpetuated their greed? Is it not abundantly clear that they have suffered immeasurably through countless lives due to this very greed?

Evidently, this person does not genuinely accept the Buddha Dharma, yet presumes the seat of a spiritual guide, instructing sentient beings to indulge freely in greed, hatred, and delusion—to follow their desires however they please. They teach others not to cultivate the truth of suffering, its origin, its cessation, or the path; not to sever greed and hatred, claiming it takes too much time and is not worth the effort, advocating instead for immediate gratification. This is utterly intolerable. Were such words spoken by non-Buddhists, it might be excused, as they are outsiders. But this is someone who claims to be a true spiritual guide, a teacher of liberation. Clearly, they seek to trap sentient beings in the six realms to indulge in greed alongside them. Every unwholesome karma created by an individual is like lifting a stone only to drop it on one’s own foot, or spitting at the sky only to have it fall back on one’s own face. In ancient times, a single erroneous word caused one to fall into the body of a wild fox. This person’s errors are vast and numerous—their retribution will be terrifying.