a fable from beckyb

[trochee]

beckyb told me a story the other day from her cousin. I'm adapting it here because I wrote it down for an IM chat with firinel and I thought it might be interesting to others as well:

a bodhisattva was walking along and came upon a chalk mudra mantra.
the bodhi had nothing with him. it started to rain.
Rather than let the rain destroy the mantra, the bodhi put an old shoe over the mantra to protect it from the rain -- top-down, to avoid defiling the mantra more than necessary
this is a good thing, he thought.
he went on his way.
a second bodhisattva came down the same road, not two hours later. The rain had passed.
"Why is there a shoe on the mantra?!" she exclaimed.
"surely this is the work of some thoughtless, evil person!"
Here endeth the lesson.

It occurred to me that this story is a lot like recovering from the traumas of your past. You install all sorts of nasty countermeasures under those problems -- because you need them, to survive.

But when it is no longer raining, the shoe remains.

Comments

[beckyb.livejournal.com]

I said mandala actually. Now, the fact that sand mandalas are supposed to be impermanent shouldn't change the point of the story. I'm trying to remember what the lama (not my cousin actually) said. The essence is definitely correct. This was gently told to me when I was behaving in an absolutist kind of way one day.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

Ok, that makes the most sense. Yes, it's true that a monk wouldn't be overly concerned that rain was going to take away a chalk mandala, but the story is kind of an educational device :).