Angulimaal: How the light gets in!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8-BT6y_wYg

Video Credit: Leonard Cohen & Others.

There's a crack, a crack in everything...

... that's how the light gets in!

~~~

"Ring the bells that still can ring!"

~~~

Angulimaal waited by the forest path. This was to be his last kill.

The monk continued walking gracefully towards him, so Angulimaal shouted:

O monk, do you not know me?

Are you not afraid?

Why are you not running away?

The gentle, kind eyed monk looked deep into Angulimaal's eyes. Angulimaal heard a tender compassionate voice:

It is you who has been running all this while, O Ahinsak!

I stopped going anywhere a long time ago.

Tathagata! The enlightened one! The one who always stays in the here and now!

But Angulimaal didn't know him.

Taken aback at hearing his real name again after a long time, Angulimaal looked closely at the monk. Did he know him from earlier?

The monk, now right in front of him, within range of his axe, smiled, shook his head, and said with a sigh:

O Ahinsak!

Do you remember what you had set out to be? ...

Can you see what you have become?...

Angulimaal couldn't hold it in any longer, a crack opened within..

He remembered.

He was a precocious child, strong and intelligent. His adoring parents - who feared for his future when Asita the astrologer saint told them at his birth that he would grow up to be a violent killer!

So they named him Ahinsak, hoping that it would save their beautiful child from this dark prophecy.

(Alas, naming hadn't prevented 'Siddartha' from becoming 'Buddha' - standing before him now.)

Life revolved around the Ashram and his dazzling Guru: his complete devotion and sincerity to whatever the Guru instructed or wished.

As he grew, his personality shone, his intellect sparkled.

The other students resented his presence, became jealous. They wanted to get rid of him. They conspired.

He's having an affair with your wife behind your back, they told the Guru.

This Guru wasn't much of a guru after-all.

He demanded that Ahinsak be bound in chains, and thrown out from the Ashram.

Stunned, Ahinsak begged his dear Guru to tell him the reason for this severe punishment. The Ashram, and his Guru were the sum total of Ahinsak's existence. He was completely distraught. Broken. Devastated.

The Guru wouldn't tell.

At the end of tears, and at the edge of his sanity, Ahinsak pleaded:

At least please tell me what prayashchitt, repentance, should I undertake - so that you will forgive me and take me back?

The Guru - an insecure psychopath, thundered:

Bring me the fingers of a thousand people whom you have killed with your own hands...

The conspirators were ready: his head half shaved, face painted black, seated facing backward on a donkey, driven through town with stones, curses and abuses raining on him, Ahinsak slipped from his precarious edge of sanity into utter madness and complete rage.

Angulimaal was born.

Buddha was to be his thousandth victim - the completion of his prayashchitt.

But the crack widened.

Angulimaal remembered what Ahinsak had wanted to be when he started out: of becoming the best of what one could be.

Not the monster he had become.

Not the ruthless Killer that he had turned into.

At long last, he realised...

He realised that his Guru wasn't a guru after all.

He realised that his guru had lied.

He realised that his Guru had no intention of taking him back - for how could a killer with a necklace of severed fingers belong in an Ashram!

The crack opened, and the light flooded in.

He cried in remorse at what he had done.

He cried at what was lost, and could never be recovered.

And then he heard the soft, gentle, kind voice again...

What if I tell you by the virtue of everything good that I may have done in my life - that you are now absolved?

~~~

Ahinsak was reborn.

He is said to have attained Nirvana too - bearing all the blows from the sticks, stones and words quietly and with equanimity - when he went about asking for alms.

~~~

Sure enough, there's this soft, gentle voice that those of us who regain sanity will hear as well today:

O Nation!

Do you remember what you wanted to be?

Can you see what you have become?

~~~

There indeed is a crack...

... a crack in everything!

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• Human Development Index: Ranked 131st amongst 189 Nations (59th lowest)
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• Press Freedom: 142nd /180 (39th lowest)
• Peace: 139th / 163 (25th lowest)
• Gender Gap: 140th / 156 (17th lowest)
• Hunger: 94th / 107 ( 14th lowest)
• Environment: 168th / 180 (13th lowest)
• Happiness: 144th / 153 (10th lowest)
• Internet Quality: 79th out of 85 Nations ( 7th lowest in the world)
• Water Quality: 120th / 122 ( 3rd lowest)

~~~

It didn't take 70 years, just 7.

~~~