Zen and Shakyamuni

"Amongst millions of the poor, Shakyamuni was son of the rich. His father, the king, gave him all: a palace surrounded by wonderful gardens, the best foods, luxurious clothing, the most beautiful bride, hundreds of servants. Locked up in his luxury prison, he did not know the servants misery. All of the sudden, like a little bird that fell on his head, the futur buddha, just like a girl, was taken by a panic attack... Reality was not what he believed it to be!

So, like any spoiled child, instead of learning to love it just as it is, he hated it. "Life is suffering! How horrible to get old, get sick and die! All of it because we were born! To liberate myself, i must deny matter, never reincarnate, never create new bodies to live with women, never enjoy the pleasures of the senses, run away, run away, run away!". He was capable to abandon his father, his wife, his son, to change his palace for the shadow of a tree, to deny himself and, by shame oh his previous richness, to become the poorest of the poorest, clothed with the fabric that did not burn on the funeral pile. Thoughts of a spoiled child! But us, that were not raised between the walls of an artificial paradise who have been born in the middle of the world conflicts, who each time that we have slept under a roof we knew that many did not have a decent home, that each time that we ate food, millions of children were hanging around like ghosts with malnutrition, we that were raised amongst egoistic people, the sick, the old, the dying, we were still able to celebrate each new day as a feast! To dress up with fabric from the dead instead of loving life? Never"

"If we conceive existence as a perpetual reincarnation, we do not want to liberate ourselves from this sacred cycle. We will come back many and many times. We will improve little by little the world we will change the cruel cosmic laws, because we are the Creator's best aspect, his Consciousness. Consciousness that we must develop from life to life, by communicating it, by multiplying it. We are here, with a huge responsability on our shoulders: we will not scesse to exist as long as we do not succeed to make this universe a perfect one, which means a place where no one eats no one, that all begins and ends in joy, the pleasure of light balanced by the shadow's pleasure..."

"You, my friend, you can say that traditional texts are lies, only words. Yet, these words propose words that can help us to dive into the big truth. The foundation myths are essentials, without them we can not build a society. To attempt to destroy them is dangerous, because this means to eat up at the foundations on which human relations are built. If we can not destroy them, on the other hand, we can reinterpret them so that we they can be useful for what we propose..."

"This fabric made from funeral piles is like a cocoon in which the butterfly gets ready to open it's wings. This clothing is like the sacred place in which the mutation occurs. Shakyamuni picked up the dead fabrics, sawed them together with respect and fabricated his clothing; this means that he proceded in a creative way, as would do an artist. Of course, it would be silly to keep on living in the same boat which we used in order to cross the river instead of getting out of it and live on the othe side..."

Photos from Bodhanath, Kathmandu, Nepal.
Story told by Ejo Takata to Alexandro Jodorowski in The Spiritual Journey.