Four Treatises on Buddhist Practice, by Phra Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo. ~ Translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
We shouldn’t waste our time engrossed simply with the life of the body for, as far as I can see, there’s nothing to the life of the body but eating and then sleeping, sleeping and then eating again. If we let ourselves get stuck simply on the level of sleeping and eating, we’re eventually headed for trouble. This can be illustrated with a story:
Once in a village by the seaside, there came a time of unbalance in the natural elements, and large numbers of the livestock – the water buffaloes – died of the plague. The men of the village, fearing that the disease would spread, took the buffalo carcasses and threw them into the sea.
As the carcasses floated away from shore, a flock of crows came to feed on them for many days. Each day, when the crows had eaten their fill, they would fly back to spend the night in the trees by the shore; and then would fly out the following dawn to continue eating. As days passed, and the carcasses floated further and further out to the deep sea, some of the crows – seeing the hardships in flying back to shore – decided to spend the night floating on the carcasses; others of the flock, though, didn’t mind the hardships and continued flying back to shore every evening.
Finally, when the carcasses had floated so far out to sea that flying back and forth was no longer possible, the flock decided to abandon that source of food and to search for a new source of food on land.
One of the crows, though, had stayed with the carcasses; when he saw that his fellows were no longer coming to claim a share of the food, he became overjoyed, thinking that the food he had would last him a long time. He became so engrossed in his eating that he never thought of looking back to shore. As the carcasses went floating further and further out, swarms of fish came from below to devour them until there was nothing left to eat.
Finally, the remains of the carcasses sank deep into the sea; and at that point, the crow realized that the time had come to fly back to shore. With this in mind, he flew to the north, but didn’t see land. He flew to the south, to the east and west, but didn’t see land. Finally, he ran out of strength and could fly no further, and so lowered his wings and dropped into the sea, where he became food for the fishes.
This is human life. If we let ourselves become engrossed only with eating and sleeping and mundane pleasures, without searching for virtue – i.e., if we don’t practice the virtues of the Saṅgha as we’ve been taught – we’re sure to reap the rewards – suffering – just like the crow who had to fall to his death in the sea.
This story is about us: The sea stands for the world, the flood of rebirth; the carcasses of the water buffaloes who had died of the plague stand for the body; the trees on the shore stand for monasteries and the Dhamma, and the crows stand for the heart – i.e., sometimes we feel like going to a monastery to practice the Dhamma and sometimes we don’t.
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From Basic Themes: Four Treatises on Buddhist Practice, by Phra Ajaan Lee Dhammadharo. ~ Translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/BasicThemes/Section0000.html
PDF: https://www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writings/Ebooks/BasicThemes_181215.pdf
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