Mindfulness
Means life
QUEEN SAMAVATI and her ladies-in-waiting all wanted to go and pay homage to the
Buddha but feared that the king would not
approve. So they made holes in the walls of their living quarters from which
they could see the Buddha as he passed by the palace and bow their heads in
reverence to him.
Another
consort in the king’s harem, however, was of a different mind. She despised the
Buddha. She had never forgotten how her father had once offered her hand in
marriage to him and how he had flatly refused. She had felt so humiliated that
she vowed to make him pay dearly for it one day.
Her chance
had finally come, she thought upon discovering what the queen and her maids
were up to. She went and lied to the king saying that the Buddha was secretly
seeing Queen Samavati behind his back. She then took the king to see the holes
in the walls for himself. But when the king asked his queen to account for
them, he remained satisfied with her reply and let the matter drop.
The
consort then decided that if she would not be able to take out her revenge on
the Buddha himself, she would take it out on his admirers. This she did by
trying to make the king believe that Queen Samavati and her maids were plotting
to kill him. She firs warned the king to beware of the ladies’ treachery, and
then went and hid a snake in his lute. When the king picked it up to play. the
snake came out kissing at him, ready to strike. It took little else to convince
the king that his consort was indeed telling him the truth.
He went to
Queen Samavati’s chambers and commanded her and her maids to stand up all in a
row He then shot poisoned arrows at them. No matter how hard he tried, however,
he missed them all, for the arrows seemed to veer away from their intended
targets all by themselves. This proved to the king that the ladies were all pure and innocent, and to show remorse for his
mistake. he
allowed
the ladies to invite the Buddha and his monks to the palace for a meal.
The wicked consort, in the meantime, was beside herself with frustration and rage. but she was not about ready to give up. Next. she devised what she considered to be a foolproof plan. She asked an uncle to set fire to Samavati’s quarters while the women were all inside. As the building went up in flames,
however, the queen and her attendants did not flinch. They continued to mindfully meditate and succeeded in reaching the higher levels of spiritual attainment before they finally died.
The king at once suspected that his consort was the one behind the
disaster and wanted to prove it. lie said in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, “Whoever has done this is my savior and should be richly rewarded. Up to now I have lived in the Fear of being murdered
by my own wife, but now I am free and can sleep in peace.”
The foolish consort immediately revealed her and her uncle’s part
in the horrendous crime, anxious &r the king’s flavors. The king feigned
delight at her confession and asked her
to invite her entire family to the palace
where they would be honored.. Once
assembled, however, they were all put to death.
When
it was reported to the Buddha how the queen and
her attendants had died. he told them
that those who were mindful did not die.
Ii was those not mindful who, even though still
alive, were as good as dead.
No comments:
Post a Comment