Jataka tales – Dan Harper

The Tree Spirit’s Mistake

Sermon copyright (c) 2023 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon text may contain typographical errors. The sermon was actually delivered by Bev Burgess, worship associate, because I was out of town on family leave.

Readings

[The first reading was the poem “Global Warming Blues” by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie. Here’s the poet reciting her poem:]

The second reading this morning is part of a poem about ecological recovery. It’s an excerpt from the poem “New Ecology” by Ernesto Cardenal. This poem takes place in Nicaragua, some years after the authoritarian Somoza regime collapsed. The poet writes:

In September more coyotes were seen near San Ubaldo.
More alligators, soon after the victory…
The bird population has tripled, we’re told…
Somoza’s people also destroyed the lakes, rivers, and mountains.
Somoza used to sell the green turtle of the Caribbean.
They used to export turtle eggs and iguanas by the truckload.
The loggerhead turtle was being wiped out…
In danger of extinction the jungle’s tiger cat,

Its soft jungle-colored fur…
But the sawfish and the freshwater shark could finally breathe again.
Tisma is teeming once more with herons reflected in its mirrors
We’re going to decontaminate Lake Managua.
The humans weren’t the only ones who longed for liberation.
The whole ecology has been moaning….

Sermon: “The Tree Spirit’s Mistake”

Here we are, just finishing one of the warmest winters on record here in New England. We have had some cold snaps, and we definitely knew that it was winter, but over the course of this year’s heating season, temperatures have been surprisingly mild. This is actually a good thing for many of us, considering how much energy prices have risen this year. But it’s also not such a good thing, insofar as it reminds us of the looming ecological crisis. Mild winter weather means we’re probably going to have to brace ourselves for more scorching weather in the summer, and maybe another drought. We might even say that the ecological crisis is no longer looming, it is upon us.

So what should we do? Of course we’re going to take political action. Of course we’ll encourage technological fixes. But I also feel that our ecological crisis must be addressed spiritually. I’ll tell you an old Buddhist story to explain what I mean.

Once upon a time, Kokālika, who was one of the followers of the Buddha, asked his friends Sāriputta and Moggallāna to travel with him back to his own country. They refused to go, and the three friends exchanged harsh words.

One of Buddha’s followers said sadly, “Kokālika can’t live without his two friends, but he can’t live with them, either.”

“That reminds me of a story,” said Buddha, and he told his followers this tale:

Once upon a time, two tree-spirits lived in a forest. One was a small, modest tree; the other was a large majestic tree. In that same forest lived a ferocious tiger and a fearsome lion. This lion and this tiger killed and ate any animal they could get their paws on. They were messy eaters, and left rotting chunks of meat all over the forest floor. Because of them, no human being dared set foot in the forest.

The smaller tree-spirit decided they did not like the smell of rotting meat. The little tree-spirit told the great tree-spirit that they were going to drive the lion and tiger out of the forest.

“My friend,” said the great tree-spirit, “don’t you see that these two creatures protect our beloved forest? If you drive them out of the forest, human beings will come into our home and cut all us trees down for firewood.”

But the little tree-spirit didn’t listen. The very next day, they assumed the shape of a large and terrible monster, and drove the tiger and lion out of the forest.

As soon as the human beings realized that the tiger and the lion had left the forest, they came in and cut down half the trees. This frightened the little tree spirit, who cried out to the great tree spirit, “You were right, I should never have driven the tiger and the lion out of our forest. What can I do?”

“Go find the tiger and the lion and invite them to return,” said the great tree spirit. “That’s our only hope.”

The little tree spirit found the tiger and the lion and asked them to return. But the tiger and the lion just growled, and rudely replied, “We shall never return.” The next day, the humans returned, cut down all the trees, and the forest was gone.

The Buddha finished telling this story, and paused. The Buddha and all his followers believed that they had lived many previous lives, and his followers knew this story was about one of his previous lives. The Buddha continued: “I’m sure you guessed that the little tree spirit was Kokālika, the lion was Sāriputta, and the tiger was Moggallāna.” To which one of his followers responded, “And you, Buddha, were the great tree spirit.”

At first, this story sounds like an ecological parable that’s easy to understand. We start with a stable ecosystem. The foolish tree-spirit upsets the balance of the ecosystem by getting rid of the large predators. The ecosystem begins to collapse. When the foolish tree-spirit tries to fix their mistake, they realize that upsetting the balance of an ecosystem is easy, but it’s difficult to restore that balance once it’s been upset.

But there is more to the story than that. The story really begins, not in the forest, but with conflict within the Buddha’s religious community. Three of the Buddha’s followers cannot get along. Their constant fighting upsets the balance of the community. The Buddha is trying to teach his followers that the quality of their human community affects the world around them. What we do in our religious communities, how we treat one another, affects more than just the people within our little communities.

We Unitarian Universalists teach ourselves something similar when we talk about respect for the interdependent web. A theologian named Bernard Loomer was one of the first to bring the idea of the interdependent web to Unitarian Universalists. Loomer had had a long career as a Presbyterian theologian when he began attending the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, California. The Berkeley Unitarian Universalists, when they realized the spiritual depths of his teaching, arranged for him to give weekly talks. In 1984, during one of those talks, Loomer told them that most people had misunderstood Jesus of Nazareth. When Jesus of Nazareth was speaking about what he called “the Kingdom of God,” he was using first century Jewish language to describe how all things are connected and dependent upon one another. While Jesus referred to this concept as the “Kingdom of God,” Loomer called it the “interdependent web of existence.” The interdependent web of existence means all human beings are connected, and we must treat each other as we ourselves wish to be treated. All living beings are connected in the same way, and all living beings are connected with the non-living world, with air and rock and water and sunlight, in one grand interdependent web of existence.

The old Universalists hinted at the same thing when they said, “God is love.” We might re-interpret that old Universalist statement for modern times something like this: God is not some transcendent supernatural being that exists outside of and beyond the world of science and reason; instead, God is the love that connects all things in an interdependent web. This is another positive statement of the power of the interdependent web of existence.

In the poem “Global Warming Blues,” Mariahdessa Ekere Tallie tells us what happens when we deny the interdependent web, when we deny our connection to all humans and to all living beings and to all non-living things. When we deny the interdependent web of existence, we get global warming and our towns become rivers, bodies floating and water high. (Or, for those of us who live here on the South Shore, we have surprisingly mild winters, and hot summers with too little rain.) The poet tells us: “Seem like for Big Men’s living / little folks has got to die.” The Big Men ignore the interdependent web; they deny their connectedness to other humans, to other living beings.

It matters how we human beings connect to one another. When we deny the interdependent web that binds all human beings together, we also deny the interdependent web that binds humans to non-human beings. The two cannot be separated. Systemic racism allows a few human beings to exploit and dominate other human beings. In the same way, the ecological crisis stems from a system that allows us human beings to exploit all living beings. Systemic sexism results in sexual harassment, gender pay gaps, and rape culture. And this is tied to a system that allows human beings to rape and exploit the earth and non-human beings.

How can we repair the damage that has been done to the interdependent web of all existence, human and non-human? You may say to yourself, I recycle, I compost, isn’t that enough? You may say, Does this mean I have to fight global climate change and racism and sexism and ableism and everything else all at the same time? That’s too much for someone who’s already working two jobs and trying to raise children.

But this does not have to be overwhelming. The Buddha taught his community a simple but profound truth: how they treated each other within their religious community made a difference in the wider world. The quality of our relationships inside our religious communities makes a difference in the wider world. As we work together to eliminate systemic racism inside our religious communities, we show the world that human relationships can be healed. As we gradually eliminate the sexism that still continues inside our religious communities, we teach both ourselves and the wider world that human relationships can be founded on something other than exploitation and dominance. What we do inside our religious communities is part of the interdependent web. As we learn to live together in love, we help heal the entire interdependent web of all existence.

We can keep on recycling and composting, working two jobs and raising our children. And direct political action is still necessary. And we can spread spiritual renewal within our religious communities, by living together in love. As we repair the interdependent web of existence within our religious communities, we also draw strength from that religious community, and with that strength we can bring love to the world around us. The love we bring to the world will combine with the love others are bringing. And so the healing of the world begins in a small way, in the interactions of this gathered community. May that healing continue to grow among us, as plants continue to grow in the depths of winter until at last springtime bursts forth in all its glory.

Calming the Quarrel

Reading

The reading this morning is rather long, but I think you’ll find it engaging. It is a Buddhist story, Jataka tale no. 33, translated by Viggo Fausboll, and published in 1873 in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. I have lightly edited and modernized the language.

“Living in harmony.” The Master related this story, while living in the grove of banyan-trees near Kapilavatthu, in reference to a dispute he had just witnessed. The Master, admonishing his royal relations, said: ‘Dispute between relatives is not becoming. Even animals which had conquered their enemies while living in concord, when quarreling suffered great destruction.’ Then his royal relatives called upon him to tell this story.

Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was king of Benares, the Bodhisattva was born a quail. He lived in the wood, with a following of many thousands of quails.

One day a quail-hunter went their dwelling-place and counterfeited the cry of quails. When the hunter saw that they had assembled, he threw his net over them, and after drawing it together, he filled his basket. He went to his house, sold the quails, and thus had his livelihood with that money.

The Bodhisattva said to the quails, “This quail-hunter destroys our kin. But I know a means by which he will not be able to catch us. As soon as he throws the net over us, each of you put your head into one mesh of the net. Then fly together and lift the net and carry it to a thorn-bush. This being done, we shall escape each from under his place.”

Saying, “Very good!” they all promised to do so.

The next day when the quail-hunter threw the net over them, they lifted the net together, and having cast it on a thorn-bush, they themselves fled away from underneath. It took so long for the fowler to extricate the net from the thorn-bush that it became dark, and he went away empty-handed.

Day after day, the quails continued in the same way. Each day the quail-hunter went to his house empty-handed. His wife grew angry, saying, “You come empty-handed every day. I think you are keeping another household.”

The fowler said, “Dear, I have no other household. Those quails live in harmony, and as soon as I throw my net on them, they fly away with it and cast it on a thorn-bush, and so escape. But fear not, they will not always live in harmony. Thou must not grieve. When they fall into disunion, I will take them all. Then I shall come and make your face smile.” Then he repeated this short poem:

While they agree, the birds go
and carry off the net;
but when they quarrel
they will fall into my power.

Not long thereafter, one quail, descending on the pasture-ground, unawares trod on the head of another. The other was angry, and said, “Who trod on my head?” The first said, “Be not angry, I trod upon you unawares.” Yet the first quail was angry. They began to quarrel. Before long, one said scornfully, “It is thou, I suppose, that liftest the net all by yourself.”

Hearing them quarreling, the Bodhisatta thought, “For those who quarrel there is no safety. Now they will not lift the net together. Then they will incur great destruction, and the quail-hutner will capture them. I cannot stay in this place any longer.” So he gathered together his close followers and flew away.

Soon the quail-hunter returned. Once again, he counterfeited the cry of the quails, and when they had assembled he threw the net over them. Then one quail said mockingly, “They say that last time while lifting the net, the feathers on thy head fell off. Now this time, lift!” Another said, “While thou wert lifting the net, thy wings on both sides dropped. Now you lift.”

While they quarreled thus, the fowler threw his net over them, gathered them together, and filled his basket. He went home, showed all the quails to his wife, and made her smile.

Having finished telling this story, the Master said, “Thus, O King! dispute among kinfolk is the root of destruction.” Having given this moral instruction, he completed the story by saying: “At that time the unwise quail was Devadatta, while I was the wise quail.”

Sermon: “Calming the Quarrel”

The reading this morning is one of the Jataka tales. The Jataka tales are ostensibly stories about one of the Buddha’s previous lives. At the same time, they are stories that often help us reflect on the problems of day to day life.

The Jataka tales typically start with a brief description of a problem faced by Buddha’s followers. The problem reminds Buddha of one of his previous lives — for, being an enlightened being he can remember all of his five hundred or so previous lives. The Buddha tells the story of this previous life, and concludes by drawing a moral to instruct his followers in how to live a better life. So there’s a framing story that presents an opening problem, a story told by Buddha, and a conclusion of the framing story, with a closing moral.

This reading this morning was Jataka tale number 33, the Sammodamāna-Jātaka. You have probably heard it before, in some form or another, for it is one of the best-known stories in the South Asian cultural legacy. It’s a simple story, the kind of story you tell to your children to keep siblings from fighting with one another. Although perhaps we hope that children don’t feel the full horror of the ending of the story. When the quails quarrel, the quail-hunter captures them, and crushes them in a basket, where not doubt they panic and trod on one another’s heads and smother one another, until they are pulled out and sold for someone’s dinner. In short, as a result of their quarreling, they die a miserable death.

This story reminds me of the current situation in the United States. We face problems that can kill some of us. Those problems include things like a decrease in the number of decent jobs, an opioid crisis, racial injustice, a looming environmental disaster, and conflict with aggressive nations like Russia and North Korea. We have been told — we know in our hearts — that if we could just work together, we could address these problems. If we could keep our common goals in the forefront of our minds, we could work together. Only if we work together can we extricate ourselves from the danger.

So (to paraphrase a catchphrase made popular in 1896 by Christian Socialist Charles Sheldon), when we are faced with overwhelming social problems, we first ask the question: What would Buddha do? Then we ask the question: Can we follow the Buddha’s lead?

What does Buddha do in the story of the quails? He first tries persuasion and leadership. He gently explains the problem to the other quails: the reason so many of them are disappearing is that a quail-hunter is using a net to catch them. He then explains what they can do to avoid the problem: they can fly up together, lifting the net. And finally he persuades them to try.

Can we follow the Buddha’s lead? At first glance, it looks like we can follow the Buddha’s lead. We face more complex problems than the quails faced. We face — among other things — loss of jobs, an opioid crisis, racial injustice, environmental disaster, and international conflict. But if we worked together, we could address these problems.

On the other hand, we also know that not everyone is in complete agreement with the nature of the problems facing us. The quails in the story seemed to be in agreement about the problem facing them. But we today do not agree about everything. For example, some people in the United States would add same-sex marriage to the list of problems facing us; while we Unitarian Universalists generally support same sex marriage. So at second glance, it looks like we cannot follow the Buddha’s lead.

But if we look again, I think we can indeed follow the Buddha’s lead. We do not have to agree on everything in order to work together. As an example of what I mean, I can point to the last two Unitarian Universalist congregations I served. Both those congregations did a lot to fight homelessness. Both of those Unitarian Universalist congregations had to team up with other congregations in order to carry on an effective fight against homelessness, and some of those other congregations we worked with were bitterly opposed to same sex marriage. But we managed to put aside our differences to work together towards a common goal.

And I suspect the story of the quails glosses over some of the problems the Buddha faced to convince the other quails to work together. The story makes it sound easy, but I’m willing to bet that the Buddhas had to do a lot of persuading and explaining to get the quails to work together.

The real miracle in this story is that the Buddha did all that persuading and explaining without losing his temper, without losing his cool. He managed to not get into any fights with the other quails. He managed to stay calm and centered. And remember too that at this point he wasn’t yet the Buddha; he had not yet achieved Enlightenment. In that incarnation, he was merely a Boddhisatva, that is, someone who has the potential to reach Enlightenment. The progressive Buddhists I know believe we all have the potential to achieve Enlightenment, meaning each of us (in that specific sense) is a Boddhisatva.

In other words, we — you and I — have the capability to do what the Buddha did in his incarnation as a quail. We have the capability to persuade and explain how to work together for the common good. And to do that, we will have to be like the Buddha, and remain calm and centered.

That’s the hard part, isn’t it? I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty good at persuading and explaining. But in order to be good at explaining and persuading, you have to stay calm and centered. I found this out when I was selling building materials. I quickly learned that if you came across as desperate, you were likely to lose the sale. Similarly, if the Buddha had come across as desperate, half the quails would just stop listening to him. He cultivated a state of being where he was both fully aware of the danger — it was, after all, a matter of life and death — and he did not let the danger ruffle the calm of his soul.

And this, it seems to me, is one of the big problems we face in the United States today. We are letting danger ruffle the calm of our souls. We go from passive to frantic very quickly. When we become frantic, we are no longer effective at either explaining or persuading.

So how can we stay calm and centered? This is something that religion is actually quite useful for. In fact, helping people stay calm and centered is one of the default settings in just about any organized religion. And most organized religions offer a number of different techniques we can use to stay calm and centered. We human beings are a diverse lot, and organized religions typically offer more than one path to being calm and centered. Buddhism, for example, encourages people to meditate, to study sacred texts, to chant, to gather together in community, to give offerings and alms, and Zen Buddhists even get to practice archery.

Or, more to the point, take our own organized religion, Unitarian Universalism. In our worship service alone, we offer a diversity of paths: we can sit in community, we can sing, we can listen to music, we can share our joys and sorrows, we can listen to a sermon, we even have a short time of silence for those of us who need silence. Beyond Sunday morning worship, you can join a Circle Ministry group, you can go on a meditation retreat, you can do hands-on volunteering, you can lead worship yourself in the summer. These are all spiritual practices you can find in our congregation, practices that can help you get calm and centered.

And I suspect the most important aspect of Unitarian Universalist spiritual practice, or indeed of any organized religion, is the communal aspect. Thich Nhat Hahn, one of the most interesting Buddhist thinkers of the past few decades, used the term “inter-being” to describe how we are linked to all beings. Thich Nhat Hahn said, “You cannot be by yourself alone, you have to inter-be with everything else.” (1) We Unitarian Universalists often use the phrase, “the interdependent web of existence,” which means much the same thing. (2)

“You cannot be by yourself alone.” This is the most important part of learning how to be calm and centered. “You have to inter-be with everything else.” This is how the Buddha remained calm and centered in the story about the quails: he was always fully aware of how he was “inter-being” with all the other quails, and indeed with all existence.

So in our spiritual practices, this is what we must always remain fully aware of: we are all part of each other; we all “inter-be.” It’s fairly easy to remember that when we gather for Sunday worship services. We mostly like one another, and while there are inevitably feuds and squabbles in every congregation, the bonds between us end to be stronger than the weak forces trying to pull us apart. So we gather for Sunday worship — or for Circle Ministry, or to volunteer, or for a mediation retreat — we gather together with people we more or less get along with, and that is the key to our spiritual practice. We remember what it is to get along with other people. We remember inter-being.

The next step is to take that spiritual practice out into the wider world. When we hear something inflammatory on social media, we can remember that feeling of inter-being. Instead of lashing out, we remain calm and centered. Remaining calm and centered, we can stay focused on what’s really important: that we must work together if we’re going to get out of this mess we’re in. And so we can remember that we don’t need to react to that inflammatory social media post. When we don’t react to that social media post, that helps other to back down, so that they can return to being calm and centered. So it is that calmness can spread, and so it might be that we can learn to work together again.

Not that this is an easy task. It’s hard to remember about inter-being. It’s hard to really and truly believe in the interdependent web of existence. That’s why we keep coming back to communities like this one; we all need constant reminders. Well, maybe not all of us. It does seem that there are a few special persons, like the Buddha, who don’t need constant reminders. The rest of us rely on each other, we rely on our gathered community, to help us stay calm and centered. And then we’re able to take that feeling of calm, that feeling of being centered, out into the world. May it be so: may we spread calm wherever we go in our lives; may we live our lives as if we are all interdependent.

Notes

(1) Dharma talk by Thich Nhat Hanh, 1998, “The Island of Self” http://www.purifymind.com/IslandSelf.htm This dharma talk was reprinted in a slightly different form in the book No Mud No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering (Parallax Press). Available as a print book or ebook from Parallax Press or it can be borrowed online from the Internet Archive.

(2) The phrase “interdependent web of existence” comes from theologian Bernard Loomer, who was affiliated with the Unitarian Unviersalists and the Presbyterians. Loomer used the phrase to describe what Jesus of Nazareth meant by the phrase “the Kingdom of Heaven.” One can also find parallels between the concepts of interdependence and intersubjectivity, and the Jewish Philopher Martin Buber’s book I and Thou. While all these concepts have distinct differences, arising in part out of the distinctly different religious traditions from whence they come, nevertheless the parallels are striking.

The Power of Stories

The sermon below was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, California, at the 9:30 and 11:00 a.m. services. The sermon text below is a reading text; the actual sermon contained improvisation and extemporaneous remarks. Sermon copyright (c) 2011 Daniel Harper.

I’d like to speak to you this morning about the power of stories, both formal stories with a beginning, middle, and end, and the informal stories that we tell about ourselves. And I’ll begin by telling you a story, the story of the Frightened Rabbit. You may have heard this story before in a slightly different form, but I’m going to tell it more or less the way Buddhists have told it for the last two thousand five hundred years. ¹

One day in the town of Savatthi, some of Buddha’s followers, known as the bhikkus, went out to beg for their food, as they did every day.

Each day, the bhikkus went to a different part of the town to beg. One day, they went past some holy men who lay naked on beds of thorn-plants, in the hope that this would help them become more holy. Further along, they saw more holy men. These holy men had built a large bonfire, and even though the day was hot and the sun was bright, they sat as close as they could to the broiling fire, in the hope that the burning heat would help them become more holy.

The bhikkus continued on their way, stopping at each house to beg for their food. When each of their begging bowls was filled with food, they returned to where they lived with Buddha. And Buddha came to sit and eat with them.

“Buddha,” said one bhikku, “when we were out getting our food this morning, we walked past some holy men who were lying naked on cruel, sharp thorns.” She paused for a moment. “Will doing this make them any more holy?”

“And Buddha,” said another bhikku, “we also walked past some holy men who were sitting next to a blazing fire, out under the blazing hot sun. Will this make them any more holy?”

“No,” said Buddha. “These men are heretics. They have deluded themselves, and so they avoid the truth. They lie on thorns and bake themselves only because someone told them to. Which reminds me of the frightened rabbit and the horrible noise.” And then the Buddha told this story:

Once upon a time (said the Buddha), there was a little rabbit who lived in a forest by the Western Ocean. This little rabbit lived in a beautiful grove of trees, at the foot of a Bengal quince tree, the kind of tree under which the god Shiva was said to have lived. Next to the Bengal quince tree was a palm tree where the little rabbit liked to sit and nibble grass.

A Bengal quince (Aegle marmelos)

One fine day, the little rabbit sat under the palm tree nibbling grass and thinking about what would happen to him if the world got destroyed by Lord Shiva. At just that moment, a large, hard Bengal quince fell off the tree and hit the ground directly behind the little rabbit.

“The earth is cracking apart!” cried the little rabbit, and he ran as fast as he could away from the sound.

Another rabbit saw him running, and said, “What’s going on?”

“The earth is cracking apart!” cried the little rabbit.

The second rabbit ran after him, shouting, “The earth is cracking apart!” Soon, all the rabbits in the neighborhood were running with them.

When the other animals saw all the rabbits running, they said, “What’s going on?”

“The earth is cracking apart!” cried the rabbits, “Run for your lives!”

The other animals began to run, too: the wild pigs, the deer, the buffaloes, the rhinoceroses, the tigers, and even the elephants all began to run, shouting, “The earth is being destroyed!”

Ad lib comment during service: Perhaps this story will
remind you of a story in the news yesterday and today.

Now, in another part of the forest there lived a good and kind lion. She saw all the animals running, and heard them shouting, “The earth is being destroyed! Run for your lives!” The lion was wise, and immediately saw that the earth was not being destroyed. She could also see that the animals were so frightened that if they didn’t stop they would run into the Western Ocean and drown. She ran as fast as she could and got in front of all the animals. She roared three times.

When the animals heard the good and kind lion roaring, they call came to a stop.

The lion said, “Why are you all running?”

“The earth is being destroyed,” said the animals.

The lion said, “How do you know the earth is being destroyed?”

One animal said, “The elephants saw it.”

But the elephants said, “It wasn’t us. The tigers saw it.”

But the tigers hadn’t seen anything. “It was the rhinoceroses,” they said.

But the rhinoceroses said, “The water buffaloes gave the alarm,” they said.

But the buffaloes hadn’t given the alarm. Nor did the deer know anything. The wild pigs said they started running when they saw the rabbits running. One by one, each of the rabbits said that they hadn’t seen anything, until at last the little rabbit said, “I was the one who heard the earth breaking into pieces.”

The lion said, “Where were you when you saw this?”

“I was at home in the beautiful grove of trees,” said the little rabbit, “next to my house at the foot of the Bengal quince tree. I was sitting near my favorite little palm tree nibbling grass, when I heard the earth start to break up behind me. So I ran away.”

The lion knew that the Bengal quinces were starting to ripen, and she suspected that one of the fruits had fallen from the tree and hit the ground behind the little rabbit. “Stay here for a while,” she said to the animals. “I will take the little rabbit with me, and we will see what is happening there.”

The kind lion had the little rabbit jump up onto her broad back, and off she ran to where the little rabbit had been sitting nibbling grass. When they got to the Bengal quince tree, the little rabbit pointed in terror and said, “There! There it is! That’s where the earth is breaking up!” And he closed his eyes in terror.

“Little rabbit,” said the lion in a kind voice, “open your eyes and you will see that the earth is not breaking up. I can see just where you were crouching under the little palm tree nibbling on some grass, and right behind that a large fruit from the Bengal quince tree is lying on the ground. What you heard was the sound of that big quince hitting the ground behind you. It must have made a loud sound, and no wonder you got scared, but there really is nothing to fear.”

The good lion went back and told the other animals what she had found. The animals all sighed in relief, and everything returned to normal.

“That’s the story,” said the Buddha.

One of the bhikkus said, “Those animals should not have listened to the little rabbit without checking for themselves that the earth was breaking up. Common sense should have told them that the earth wasn’t breaking up.”

Another bhikku said, “I guess those men who lie naked on the thorns are like the animals in the story. They didn’t pay attention to their common sense.”

A bhikku added, “The lion was truly wise and compassionate. If it had not been for her, all the animals would have drowned.”

Then, because Buddha and his followers all believed that they had lived many different lives, the Buddha said that in one of his previous lives he had been the lion in the story: a wise and compassionate being who helped others.

Did you notice what happened in this story? — or I should say, in each of these stories: the story about the animals, and the story about Buddha’s followers?

In the story about the animals, a Bengal quince, a piece of fruit, falls to the ground. The little rabbit hears the sound and thinks the world is cracking apart! When the wise lion hears the little rabbit’s story about what he thought had happened, she figures out what really happened, and she helps the little rabbit to retell the story in a better way. In the story about Buddha’s followers, they see some holy men lying on thorns and baking themselves in intense heat, and they’re trying to make sense out of what they see. Buddha tells them a story to help them understand what they already knew — lying on thorns and baking in intense heat are not going to make you any more holy.

We have our educational goals, and there are the Seven Principles printed on those wallet cards you can get outside the main door to this room; as important as these are, they are not nearly as important to our religious community as the stories we tell to one another.

At the beginning of the service, Jack Hardy told us: “When I listen to stories at church I imagine what the person in the story is feeling and thinking what I would do in that situation.” So when Buddha tells the story about the little rabbit to his followers, his followers imagine that they are the little rabbit, and they imagine that they are the wise lion, and they realize that it is better to be the wise lion than the little rabbit. And in listening to the story, and using their imaginations, Buddha’s followers are changed, transformed for the better.

At the beginning of the service, Heather Chen told us how our congregation is a unique community for kids. Now even though she didn’t start with “Once upon a time” and end with “they lived happily ever after,” Heather was really telling us a kind of story about how our kids experience our congregation: she is telling us that while our kids are learning a lot, more importantly they are becoming a part of the community that is our congregation. We are constantly telling each other little stories about who we are and what’s important to us, and these little stories shape us, transform us for the better.

The writer Ursula K. LeGuin once wrote, “We shape each other to be human.” ² This is why we tell each other stories — big formal stories that may begin with the words “Once upon a time…” and informal little stories and conversations that reveal what is in our hearts and souls. Story by story, conversation by conversation, bit by bit, we shape each other, transform each other into better human beings.

Notes

Note 1:

The story in the sermon is Jataka tale number 322, Duddubha Jataka. My source was The Jataka: Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births, ed. E. B. Cowell, vol. III, trans. H. T. Francis and R. A. Neil (1895; rpt., Pali Text Society: Oxford, 2005) pp. 49-52.

Note 2:

Ursula K. LeGuin, “Coming of Age in Karhide,” in New Legends, ed. Greg Bear, (Tor, 1995).