|
THE Tibetan Buddhist teacher Dudjom Rinpoche
narrates the story of a fearsome bandit from India, who, after a lifetime
devoted to looting and pillaging, began to repent for all the terrible
suffering he had been causing. He began to yearn for atonement, for some way
of absolving himself from what he had done. He lay down his arms and went up
to the ashrarm of a renowned rishi and said to him: "All my adult life I've
been a killer and I am now in torment. Is there a way of making amends, some
way of offering expiation (prayashchitta) for all my past sins ?"
The rishi looked the bandit up and down and then asked him what he was good at.
After a prolonged silence, the bandit sheepishly admitted that if there was one thing he seemed to have
talent for it was for stealing. The rishi replied with a smile that the
repenting dacoit's honest answer was perfectly in order, that the skill of
the light-fingered fraternity was exactly the sort of expertise he'd need
now to save his soul. "Please go to a quiet glade in the Himalaya and try to
rob yourself of all your perceptions. While you are at it, steal off all the
stars and planets in the sky," the rishi exhorted: "Steal the mountains and
silver- topped forests and the rivers and streams too and dissolve them all
into the belly of emptiness, the all- encompassing space of the nature of
mind."
With great humility and one-pointedness of purpose, the bandit did
exactly as he was advised and soon realised the true nature of his mind, and
eventually came to be regarded as one of the great saints of India. what
this means is, like the cat, a bandit too can have many lives and not all of
them have to be bad. In fact, we
shouldn't also be equating happiness with goodness with as many hedonists or
utilitarians tend to do. One could be happy being bad as Duryodhana the evil
Kaurava prince was. Indeed, for all the latter's villainous ways, for the
Mahabharata hero Karna, the egotistic prince was a friend worth dying for.
Similarly, one could be unhappy even while being good, as Yudhistira, the Pandava prince was after
the Great War. His victory was haunted
by the colossal loss of lives and the many compromises the Pandavas had to
make with truth and fair play to get back their kingdom. However, as Sri
Krishna teaches Arjuna in the Bhagvad Gita, being liberated really goes
beyond good and evil, to the root of skilful or enlightened action which
stands for righteousness. |
