Life of the Buddha

An excellent BBC production on the Life of the Buddha. Very well done.



Here is the YouTube page where you can watch the remaining segments;

Life of the Buddha.

Quite a fine piece of work; the presentation of the Buddha's teachings is sympathetic and accurate, the look and feel of the dramatic scenes are believable.

Any points of criticism I could make border on hair-splitting. For instance, I don't think the Buddha on his return to Kapilavastu would have bowed to Yasodhara. And I did spot one anachronism; Prince Siddhattha riding a horse with stirrups.

Deepak Chopra's Buddha

The recent bestseller "Buddha" by Deepak Chopra follows a long literary tradition of fictionalized accounts of the Buddha's life story which really go back at least to the Buddhacarita of Ashvaghosa. In modern times, the genre starts with Matthew Arnold's "Light of Asia" and continued through Hermann Hessa (Siddhartha) and Thich Nat Hanh (Old Path, White Clouds). No doubt there have been many others. It is not unusual for such authors to use the character of the Buddha to voice philosophical ideas of their own. Matthew Arnold's "dew drop slipping into the shining sea" owes more to the Upanishads, perhaps by way of the Theosophical Society, then anything found in the Buddhist canon. Even Thich Nat Hanh rewrites quite a bit of the story and teachings, for instance putting a somewhat laboured feminist slant onto the story of the founding of the bhikkhuni order.

Deepak Chopra is certainly no exception. The literary enterprise of crafting a fictional life of the Buddha is not in itself illegitimate. Of his early life, we really have very little solid information. Even the well-known account of the Siddhattha's life as a prince, with his father Suddhodana attempting to keep him hidden from the realities of sickness, old-age and death is mostly an early post-canonical gloss. Some elements of this story are improbable, for one thing we know from canonical sources that the Sakyans at that time had a republican government. The early and unknown teller of these tales should perhaps be credited with founding the genre of ficitional Buddha stories.

While we may grant Mr. Chopra and the other authors some literary license for inventing details, it is fair to take them to task when they distort the known history and especially the teachings. If the Buddha's early life is very sketchy, his subsequent career and doctrines are very well documented in the Pali Canon.

For example, for whatever reason Deepak Chopra seems intent on making one of the Buddha's principal teachings to be the freeing of Indian civilization from a superstitious belief in the gods. In the introduction, he says the Buddha "never mentioned miracles or the gods, and had a doubtful view of both." Oh my. To cite just one counter-example among many, when the Buddha was asked point blank whether there are gods he answered, "It is known by me to be the case, Bharadvaja, that there are gods." (Majjhima 100)

So, Deeprak Chopra writes out the moving story of the Brahma Sahampatti begging the newly enlightened Buddha on bended knee to teach for the benefit of "those with little dust in their eyes." Instead, the event which moves the Buddha to get up from his Bodhi seat is a vision of the face of his wife Yasodhara! In passing, it should be noted that Chopra is not the only modern author to diss poor Sahampatti. Stephen Batchelor writes him off as "the ancient way of saying, an idea." This sort of thing seems to me a shame. Our modern taste is quite coarse, and seems unable to appreciate grandeur and high tragedy.

Curiously though, while there are no gods in Deepak Chopra's book, there is one devil. Mara is quite definitely personified. But he seems to my taste to be modelled much more on the Christian Satan than on the Mara of the Pali Canon. It is an odd cosmology that admits the demonic while denying the divine.

There are a few other incidents that appear to show Christian influence. In the middle section of the book, corresponding the period of the Bodhisatta's austerities and quest, at one point he is travelling with another "monk" (the term Chopra uses for samana) when they come across a farmer's cart over-turned in the ditch. Siddhattha proceeds to help the farmer push it out and in his mind he is critical of the other monk who seems to "have forgotten the monk's vow of service." Service in that sense was never a part of the Indian yogic tradition, either pre- or post-Buddhist. In addition, Siddhattha in his wanderings heals the sick and at least apparently raises the dead.

It is the last section, the Buddha after his enlightenment, that represents the greatest distortion though. Deepak Chopra's Buddha bears more resemblance to Keanu Reeeves in the Matrix movies than to the Buddha of the Pali Canon. He ends a war by striding into the battlefield and snatching the flashing swords away with his bare hands. And in another telling episode, he returns a weeping woman's dead husband by turning back time time so that his murder never happened. (Didn't Christopher Reeve save Margot Kidder in one of the Superman movies this way?) Compare this to the canonical Buddha and the story of Kisagotami.

The philosophical underpinning of this New Age Buddha seems to be quite close to the ideas expressed in "What the Bleep Do I Know?" and other New Age sources; that this world is essentially a phantom or a dream and that enlightenment is a kind of lucid dreaming. It is not transcendence of the world, but mastery over it.

What is perhaps worse, is the scene where the Buddha is re-united with Suddhodana and they hug one another and weep like sensitive new age guys. Why is it that the modern taste seems to want a weeping Buddha? What part of making an end of suffering don't we get?

I also have some historical and literary criticisms of Chopra's "Buddha." Historically, I think his portrayal of the religion of the Brahmins is totally anachronistic. He has the head priest of the Sakyans sacrificing to Shiva, which belongs to much later period. The brahmins of the Buddha's time were still following the original Vedic Aryan religion and would have prayed to Indra. In general, his picture of Indian beliefs, customs and mores seems to be that of several centuries later than the time the book is ostensibly set in.

On the literary side, several of the characters in Deepak Chopra's book are much less interesting than the originals known from the canon and commentaries. Suddhodana, for example, is quite one-sided; a simple bloody-minded tyrant rather than a basically good figure with the one tragic flaw of ambition. The oldest sources are a rich mine of fascinating character studies, very human people with a mixture of noble qualities and vices. This seems to be lost in translation, and most of Chopra's characters are more like one-sided cartoons. Surely in a literary treatment with pretensions to the novelist's art, the complexities of the characters should have been enhanced and explored, rather than written out.

It should be said that Deepak Chopra in his last chapter does a reasonable job of summarizing some of the main points of the Buddhist teaching, including a fair summary of the Three Characteristics and of the Eightfold Path. However, he does end the book on a false note, in the very last sentence misrepresenting the goal of the path. "[the Buddha] promised that the end point would be eternity." This is no better, and perhaps worse, than "dewdrops slipping into shining seas."

Is Buddhism Too Conservative?

Two people separately sent me a link to this Mark Morford column; Does your religion dance?

In it, Mr. Morford deplores the tendency of religions to become ossified, and he sees signs of this even in Buddhism (he is a Buddhist, by the way)

The idea is everywhere, and not just in the obvious, sour religious outhouses of evangelical Christianity and fundamentalist Islam and rigid Catholicism. It even popped up while I was in conversation with tattooed Buddhist and author of "Dharma Punx" Noah Levine at the Roxie theater during LitQuake '07, he and I chatting about the dangers of dogma and the problem of trying to adhere too closely, too severely, to classical Buddhist rules of behavior, concluding that even Buddhism has its dangers, its limits and its issues and general theological potholes.

Levine, a fairly conservative Theravadan Buddhist, admitted that even he had to seriously adjust some of those old rules to make them tolerable and digestible, particularly in regards to how poorly classical Buddhism valued women and the feminine principle (not to mention other rather impossible dietary and lifestyle restrictions), outmoded ideas that sort of make you wince and cringe and say no no no, Buddha couldn't really have meant that, could he?

I'm not sure what he means by "rather impossible dietary and lifestyle restrictions." True, some Mahayana sects require vegetarianism, but that is hardly "impossible" and Theravada Buddhism imposes no dietary restrictions on lay Buddhists at all. Even for the bhikkhus, the only practical restriction is to eat only between dawn and noon, which believe me, is quite possible. As for "lifestyle restrictions" could he be referring to the fifth precept? Certainly for lay Buddhists at least, there is very little of the regulation of the minutiae of daily life that can be found in, for example, orthodox Judaism.

The issue of gender bias in Buddhism is a more serious one, and the reader can follow Morford's link to an excellent summary by Mettanando Bhikkhu. I would add that in this regard, not unlike some other contentious points, we should separate at least four layers (possibly more) of teaching;

1. The actual Buddha-Vacana, "words of the Buddha." To a traditional Buddhist, Buddha-Vacana is equivalent to truth, because the Buddha was perfectly enlightened. There is no question of the Buddha being wrong, or misled by so-called cultural norms. Some modern Buddhists may differ on this point, but then they are changing the definition of Buddhahood and making the whole exercise rather trivial.

2. The canonical texts. This cannot always with certainty be equated with the first category. Scholarship by and large upholds the integrity of the scriptures pretty well for such ancient texts, but it is almost a given that some corruptions have crept in over the centuries. The passage most often cited as evidence of inherent sexism in Buddhism is the passage in the Vinaya texts concerning the founding of the nun's order. (This is discussed at some length in the article by Mettanando linked to above.) And this passage is also one which many textual scholars cite as a likely late addition, in other words, not Buddha-Vacana at all. (See also the study by Bhikkhu Gnanarama, "A Mission Accomplished.")

It should be noted that in the canonical texts we have ample evidence of the existence of female arahats, some of whom had male students. The spiritual potential of women is never stated to anything other than equal to that of men. Even in the troublesome Vinaya text cited above there is a categorical expression to this effect when Ananda asks the Buddha if women may become arahats and the Buddha answers in the affirmative.

A peripheral issue here; I don't think it is good enough to reject a text because of a feeling that the Buddha could not have said that. Who are we to judge the mind of a Tathagata? But we should be open to valid historical, linguistic and compartive studies.

3. The commentaries. In Theravada Buddhism, the orthodox position is defined by the commentaries. These texts have a complex provenance, which I won't go into here, but they are certainly several centuries later than the Buddha's time. They are best understood as the scholastic expression of mature institutional Buddhism. The commentaries tend to be rather more gender-biased than anything in the canon. (I would include the text portions of the Jatakas in the commentarial layer, and some of those are notoriously misogynist.)

4. The practice of actual living Buddhists at any given time and place. This has varied widely, and has not always been fully in accord with any of the above layers. It is important to remember always that Buddhism is not just a collection of old texts, but a living tradition. And as such it is not immune to the law of anicca (constant change.) In our own day, we are witnessing a great improvement in the role of women in the sangha, both in the West and in some parts of Asia.

Too often criticisms of some aspect of Buddhism fail to take these nuances into account, and take some point from one of the subsidiary layers to make a blanket statement.

This also bears on Mr. Morford's more general concern. Buddhism, or any other mature religion for that matter, is a constant interplay between various layers of teaching. There is the core expression, in our case the Buddha-Vacana, which may not be one hundred percent recoverable, there are all the various attempts to comment and explain the teachings, and there is the actual living expression. And Buddhism has always been in a state of change. A study of Buddhist history demonstrates this. For example, consider the twentieth century rise of the Forest Monk movement in Thailand. This is a good thing, but it can be taken too far, and westerners in particular are usually far too impatient. Useful, creative change must be cautious and guided by the core principles.

So, yes, Mr. Morford, my religion does dance, but it does so adagio.

------------------------------

POSTSCRIPT - (This is another comment from Morford's piece, but not related particularly to any of the above.)

Morford also says this;

A similar idea came up again as I was sharing the stage with the luminous Sera Beak, author of "The Red Book," a funky spirituality tome for fiery youngish women, she and I talking to the small crowd over at the Alameda Literati Festival about the hot ideological tongue baths that simply must take place between the divine feminine (her oeuvre) and the profane masculine (mine? Sort of?), the idea that you cannot have one without the other and they are both, in fact, required.....It's a decidedly Tantric principle

I'm not familiar with Sera Beak's work, and this paragraph may be an over-simplification, but I do object to the idea of a "divine feminine" set against a "profane masculine." In the attempt to give due place to the female, it is not necessary to slip over into a denigration of the male. Both the male and female principles have divine and profane aspects. Nor is the view stated above particularly tantric, which is all about a harmonious balance of the two sides. The tantric expression of transcendence is the lightning flash in the void. The flash alone is meaningless, and the void alone is barren.

Does Capitalism Have No Shame?

Apparently not. Check out this column by SF Gate's Mark Morford, "Lets Get Drunk and Meditate." By the way, if you haven't discovered Morford's quirky writing yet, you are in for a treat.

Bhikkhu Bodhi Challenges Buddhists

Buddhadhamma Quarterly is possibly the finest Buddhist magazine available, always presenting thoughtful in-depth articles by leading teachers and scholars. In the current issue, Fall 2007, there is a thought provoking essay by Bhikkhu Bodhi (best known as translator of large chunks of the Sutta Pitaka.) You can read a long excerpt on the Buddhadhamma website; A Challenge to Buddhists. The gist of the piece is that Buddhists need to find ways to actively involve themselves in relieving the horrendous suffering experienced on this planet. As the Bhante puts it;

Seeing the immensity of the world’s anguish has raised in my mind questions about the future prospects for Buddhism in the West. I’ve been struck by how seldom the theme of global suffering—the palpable suffering of real human beings—is thematically explored... It seems to me that we Western Buddhists tend to dwell in a cognitive space that defines the first noble truth largely against the background of our middle-class lifestyles: as the gnawing of discontent; the ennui of over-satiation; the pain of unfulfilling relationships...our focus on these aspects of dukkha has made us oblivious to the vast, catastrophic suffering that daily overwhelms three-fourths of the world’s population.

Ah yes, the complacency of the "Upper Middle Path." While seeing some merit in the Engaged Buddhist movement, Bhikkhu Bodhi also sees some limitations;

while some Engaged Buddhists seek fresh perspectives from the dharma, for many Buddhism simply provides spiritual practices to use while simultaneously espousing socio-political causes not much different from those of the mainstream Left.

He goes on, in the remainder of the essay not yet posted on-line, to note how much more effective some organizations with Christian and Jewish roots have been (he cites World Vision and the Jewish World Service) than the much smaller Buddhist efforts. His conclusion;

The special challenge facing Buddhism in our age is to stand up as an advocate for justice in the world, a voice of conscience for those victims of social, economic nad political injustice who cannot stand up for themselves....This is, in my view, a deeply moral challenge...I believe it also points in a direction that Buddhism should take if it is to share in the Buddha's ongoing mission to humanity.

Bhikkhu Bodhi's essay raises two questions in my mind; why haven't Buddhists been more engaged in social and political action to relieve suffering? And how can we do better?

Bhikkhu Bodhi's critique mostly involves western Buddhists, and in the quotes above he cites the mostly middle class base and it's concern with purely personal manifestations of dukkha. That is a valid observation; most of the first or second generation converts to Buddhism in North America are above average in income and educational level. This is not in itself surprising or negative; the Buddha's own converts were disproportionately from the higher strata of Indian society. However, it has created a mind-set which finds it easier to relate to the dukkha of post-modern angst than to the dukkha of hunger.

It is also true that most new Buddhists are primarily drawn to the religion for the meditation, as a vehicle of self-help. Back in the 'sixties and 'seventies when various strands of Buddhism were first being imported to mainstream America, there was a conscious effort to avoid what were called disparagingly "cultural trappings" and to present the teachings in a form pretty much stripped down just to meditation. This was a tactical move that may have helped the initial early spread of the teaching, but led unfortunately to an unbalanced approach. I get the feeling that this trend has been turning around for at least ten years and that many western buddhists are looking for more than just a self-help practice.

It's not that western Buddhists are apolitical, on the contrary many are passionately committed to various causes, it is just that in most cases there isn't much intersection between their spiritual and political lives. Nor is there much of either community social work or political action coming from Buddhist institutional structures.

Is there a doctrinal aspect of Buddhism that hinders action in the world? Possibly. There is the underlying sense that this conditioned realm is inherently flawed and will always be so. However, there is also a very great emphasis on compassion for all beings caught in it. And there are plenty of scriptural references to the Buddha advising on how to live a comfortable and decent life within this world, and even commenting on what we would relate to as social or political questions.

Turning to the second question, what can we do about it? There may be many practical ways we can help relieve suffering, and some Buddhist groups are doing great work - the Sri Lankan Sarvodaya organization is a sterling example; founded way back in 1958. In the western countries, Buddhists have been active in hospice and prison work.

On the political side, I think we have to be wary of any organized "Buddhist Party." These have not always turned out happily in Asian countries. Better, in my opinion, to bring our Buddhist sensibilities to bear through existing structures.

But one thing I think would be very useful would be some attempt to formulate a coherent Buddhist vision of contemporary social issues and problems. (And we should acknowledge those who are working in that direction already, like the Buddhist Peace Fellowship)

Buddhism can have a lot to contribute to improving the dialogue. To begin with, we can try and transcend the us vs. them mentality that inflicts itself on so much political discourse, of the right and of the left. This is because the whole dichotomy of good and evil has no place in Buddhism. There is, instead, an analysis of actions into those which are skilful (relieving suffering) and unskilful (causing suffering.) This perspective alone, if widely disseminated, would improve both thought and action immensely.

The major issues of the early twenty-first century are the environment, war, poverty and liberty. All of these are closely related and need to be addressed holistically. Buddhism ultimately traces all of these problems to the three great roots of greed, hatred and delusion. This simple, but powerful, insight needs to be spun out and elaborated to define the various specific chains of causality, and to see where they can be effectively and compassionately addressed.

Hopefully I'll find time to spin out some of these ideas a bit more on this blog in the future. In the meanwhile, what do you think?

Back to You

Regarding my posted critique of "The Buddha Was Wrong"; the site author (a chap known by the handle OneMind) has posted his reply over on his forum (a copy can be found in the comments here also.) I've posted a riposte to that reply on his forum. You can follow the dueling dialectic here; FreeSpeech Forum.

Actually, he was spot on

A friend sent me an email suggesting I have a look at a website whose author has apparently been making a lot of noise over at the e-Sangha discussion board. The site has the deliberately cheeky name "The Buddha Was Wrong." There's nothing really new here, it's the same tired old retreads of the materialist/skeptic position.

Take his article on Rebirth as an example; he states that "there are literally hundreds of scientific studies of brain death which proves the mind does not exist when the last neuron in the brain fires." This is the kind of zero content statement materialists love to throw around. What studies, where and by whom? Obviously there are no such studies, nor ever could be even in principle. How can you prove that mind does not exist?

On the contrary, materialist science is quite unable to account for what philosopher of mind David J. Chalmers calls "The Hard Problem." That is, the simple reality of knowing; consciousness or in Pali citta. Consider the difference between facial recognition software looking at your face and your best friend doing the same. In both cases, there is an initial impact of light waves on a sensitive mechanism (eyes, camera) then the signal is converted and sent to a processor (fibre-optics to a computer, nerves to a brain) where further parsing and decoding occurs. In both cases the output is a "recognition" of your face. But only in the case of your friend is there a subjective, first-person singular experience of seeing.

This end-point of knowing is so perfectly immediate and simple that it cannot, even in theory, be reduced to an algorithmic explanation. There is either a knowing (in the case of your friend) or there is not (in the case of the facial-recognition system.) Everything else in the system can be explicated algorithmically, at least in theory. This last and crucial step cannot.

Why is this important? Because if mind were a physical process, depending on neurons, then it would have to be capable of an algorithmic explanation. "Neuron A fires and sets off neuron B which constitutes knowing." Even to put it in these terms demonstrates the absurdity of it. No, the Buddha was right after all.

Incidentally, perhaps the only statement on this web-site that I agree with is this; "Without the concept of rebirth, the rest of Buddhist philosophy breaks down and becomes irrelevant." I've been saying that for years.

Fortunately, we don't have to abandon rebirth or accept materialism. There is really zero evidence for the latter and quite a bit for the former. The author of the site mentions the recently deceased Ian Stevenson, just to dismiss his meticulous case-studies as "anecdotal." Really, by the nature of the problem, how could there be definitive evidence that isn't of an anecdotal nature? Anyone who has taken the trouble to look into Dr. Stevenson's work will know that he has collected hundreds of cases where a child's past life memories have been objectively verified, even to the remembering of specific names and details of someone's life in another town.

But there are other indicators of rebirth in the common domain. For instance, the remarkable cases of child prodigies. Someone like Mozart learning to play the piano at seven, or Morphy learning chess even earlier simply by watching adults play. The remarkable thing about these individuals is the culturally specific nature of their precocious ability. It isn't a case of strong general intelligence, but of coming into the world with a narrowly specific skill already there, taking only a little nudge to recover.

Furthermore, any parent will tell you that children come into this world with strong personal traits. And the case of identical twins proves that there is something other than either nature or nurture at play. Twins who came from the same zygote, with the same DNA down to the last base pair, and raised by the same parents, can still manifest different personalities.

I could go on. There is the odd phenomenon of people developing strong affinities to a particular foreign culture or historical period. There is love (or aversion!) at first sight. A totally irrational sense that I already know this person, this person is important to me.

None of this this will convince the "skeptic" (in quotes because most of them aren't sceptical at all, in the real sense). Their minds are already made up and they don't want to be bothered with what they dismiss as anomalies. And admittedly, none of this should count as final definitive evidence. But it is fair to say that all of these things are more easily explained with rebirth than without it.

Back to the Buddha Was Wrong website; the author's strong bias shows through in many spots. In his entry for "The Buddha" he shows a picture of a mud shack and claims that this is what the prince Gotama's famous palace must have looked like. I'm not sure what he was trying to prove with this, but it just shows the typical ahistorical prejudice of the modern materialist. Ancient India was quite a bit more advanced than this, as both archaelogy and literary sources attest. Nor is there any justice to his snide comment that "There were no tooth brushes in those days and human hygiene wasn’t much better." Even a cursory reading of the Vinaya texts demonstrates that there was meticulous attention to personal hygeniene not excluding oral. There are numerous passages about the proper manufacture and use of "tooth-sticks." The author doesn't serve the credibility of his cause with such ludicrous historical errors.

I won't go into his very protestant diatribes against the monastic order, for fear of sounding partisan, except to note that like many of the "skeptic" critics who denounce cultural baggage, he quite fails to notice the enormous pile he is dragging around himself.

Finally, for a really good web-site with numerous articles dealing with all the issues involved in the confrontation of Buddhism and materialism you can't do better than "Buddhism vs. Materialism."

Desire Continued

Barry wrote (in the comments)

What is wrong with enjoying one's food or a householder enjoying their marriage bed or any of the many beautiful and wonderful things in this human life? Surely they all belong?

This is exactly what I mean by wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Phrasing the rhetorical question in terms of right and wrong is misleading. Of course, there is nothing "wrong" with sensual enjoyment per se. That is not the issue.

The issue is one of results. The realization of the Unconditioned, nibbana, is only to be had by a disengagement with the Conditioned, samsara. All the "beautiful and wonderful things" are still marked by dukkha and anicca (misery and impermanence) and engagement in even the most refined objects of the senses lead only to rebirth in the sensual desire sphere. A moral life but one still enmeshed in sensuality can, at best, lead only to the heavenly realms.

The middle path as defined in the Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta is between the ignoble extremes of sensuality and ascetism. It doesn't mean a moderate enjoyment of sensuality, but a contented non-seeking after either pleasure or pain.

The realization of nibbana only comes from disenchantment and dispassion towards the conditioned objects of sense. You simply cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Desire (Reposted Tale of Two Similes)

Some good discussion about the nature of desire in the comments section.

Let's remember that the Buddha was very clear in his formulation; the second noble truth says that the cause of suffering is desire (dukkha, tanha). I detect a little bit of wanting to have your cake and eat it too in attempts to shift the problem away from desire to attachment or something else.

Here is an old post from October, 2005 with some salient points;

A Tale of Two Similes

I previously blogged about my trip to the Exploring the Mind conference, and mentionedespecially Mark Epstein's lecture, which I quite enjoyed although one or two points bothered me.Well, I'm currently reading his new book "Open to Desire: Embracing a Lust for Life" and I'm finding more than a pointor two to be bothered about. (For example, that title)

But for now I'll just focus on one symptomatic point that illustrates most of my problem withthe "psychologized" form of Buddhism. Dr. Epstein quotes a well-known story from the Zen tradition.This is a great favourite of western Buddhists and shows up a lot in slightly different versions.But there is a subtly different version in the Theravada literature that is not nearly so wellknown. Read the two versions below and then I'll add a comment or two;

Zen Version, as retold by Dr. Epstein There is a famous storyfrom Japan that expresses the peculiar delight with which desire is held in the Buddhist tradition.A young woman, it is told, is walking through a field when she encounters a tiger that eyes herhungrily. She runs and the tiger pursues her. She comes to a cliff, takes hold of the root of awild vine and, in a single motion, swings herself over the precipice. Dangling there, clutching thevine, she sees the tiger sniffing the ground above her. Trembling, she looks down. It is a long wayto the bottom, and she feels momentarily dizzy. Then she , sees something else. There is anothertiger below, presumably a hungry one, who has also noticed her plight. The tigers prowl, one aboveand one below; waiting for their feast. She clings to the vine. Suddenly; two mice appear at theedge of the cliff and start to gnaw at the roots that hold her. The woman notices a wildstrawberry growing nearby on the side of the hill. She reaches with one hand to pluck thestrawberry, still clutching the vine with the other, and places the fruit in her mouth. She takesone bite. Ahhhh! How sweet it tastes. This is the end of the story. We never learn what happens or,rather, we are told exactly what we need to hear.

The story, as I understand it, is about desire. As a Buddhist teaching story,it is obviously about other things as well. It is about being in the moment and the fragility ofeveryday life and doing one thing at a time, but it also seems to be a metaphor for desire. Thewoman encounters her desire and it appears as a tiger. In psychoanalysis, the tiger would be calleda projection. Fierce, wild, devouring. A beast. just as with desire, there seem to be only twooptions: to flee or to surrender to it.

Our protagonist runs from the beast, only to encounter a second tiger. There isno escape. Cornered, she hangs on for dear life. But desire continues to torment her. It changesform, multiplies, threatens her as she struggles to avoid it. Even in the form of the mice it isdangerous. How can she escape? The solution lies in the strawberry. What does she do? She tastes itand it is good. She takes one bite, not even knowing if she will have a second one, not knowing ifthere will be a next moment at all. With complete attention, she savors the flavor of the fruit.Desire is the tiger and the mouse, but it is also the strawberry. When the young woman stopsrunning and gives up the fear of being devoured, she can finally taste it. The flavor of desire isgood.

Theravada Version; from the Avadana A man is lost in a drearydesert for a long time, being persecuted by misfortune. Then he comes to a dark and dense forest.Exhausted from the scorching sun, he is at first delighted to enter the cool shade. As he wanderson, however, thorns and jungle undergrowth cause him difficulty so that he can progress only withgreat hardship. As he struggles like this, wild animals come closer from all sides. With flarednostrils, glinting eyes and greedy jaws, they get closer and closer. Full of fear , he tries toescape , but the jungle becomes even more dense.

On this desperate escape from the desert, from the thorny forest and from thewild animals he finally comes to a half-overgrown well. In his fear he seeks refuge there. But ashe hurls himself into the well, one of his feet becomes entangled in a creeper wine, and he findshimself hanging upside down in the dark well. Although almost unconscious from fear and despair,his eyes have grown accustomed to the dark, and he sees a poisonous snake winding itself slowlytowards him, flicking its tongue in and out. Full of terror, he looks up again only to see the headof a huge elephant with two enormous tusks looking over the edge of the well.

Among the vines of the creeper in which he became stuck, wild bees swarm busilyand occasionally one of them stings him. Whenever he is stung, he flinches from the pain. At thesame time, however, droplets of honey drip from time to time onto his face. Greedily he licks themup, enjoying their sweetness, and concentrating completely on their dripping on hill.

Suddenly he notices two mice-one black and one white gnawing on the roots of thecreeper holding him. It is just a matter of time before the roots are chewed through and he fallsinto the abyss and into the snake's reach. But on the pinnacle of despair, yet another drop ofhoney drips onto his face. He sticks out his tongue to get it and for a moment forgets his hopelesssituation.

All of a sudden he notices that the wild animals have disappeared. A merciful manlooks into the well and shouts down that he will free him from his terrible peril. The man caughtin the well shouts back: "Just a moment! Wait till I've enjoyed this honey!"

The explanation of the similes;

The arid desert: the cyclic existence of beings .
The dense jungle: humanbirth.
The cool shade: childish carelessness.
The thorns: the necessity to wind oneselfthrough life .
The wild animals: manifold diseases.
The well: lust for the body.
Thecreeper: hope and expectation.
The poisonous snake: the inevitable decay of old age .
Theelephant : an expression for the power of death.
The bees: changing fate .
The honeydrops; the five sense desires, longed for, loved, thrilling, belonging to desire , charming.
The two mice: day and night, sun and moon, that gnaw away at one's life .
The merciful man:the Awakened One .

These two stories illustrate the point I previously made in this blog about the importance ofThird Noble Truth. In the first version, there is no escape from the well (no faith in Third NobleTruth or Nibbana) whereas in the second (older) version a man representing the Buddha appears tooffer an escape; transcendence.

Notice how this turns the point of the story one hundred and eighty degrees. In the version usedby Dr. Epstein, eating the strawberry becomes an almost heroic act of existential engagement withthe present moment. Given the assumptions of the story, the best thing you can do is enjoy thesweetness of the strawberry. But in the Theravada version, continuing to lick the honey becomes anact of supreme folly. There is a man offering a way out, and only a fool would hesitate to take it,no matter how sweet the honey.

As Ajahn Chah put it; if you stop and smell the roses along the way it may be dark before youfind your way home.