I read this story sometime back where it ended after the elephant was born as human being. Nice to know the full story. Very interesting!

Cheers, Rohit

Lovely tale to read before going to sleep. Thanks Aachi

dear aachi,
i always believed in the buddhistic principle of non violence ..and frm wen i was a kid i tried not to hurt any living organism ...but i dont think we all can succeed in tht motive..we hav to survive and eat plants for our own survival..
there was also one more question which bothered me was are all living organisms equal or is humans the most divine ...so if the elephant was born as a mosquito in the next life ..is it just a random occurence or becoz he has commited som sins

Nice story Aachi

Preethi
To answer your question I would replace the world divine with sentient beings. All are sentient beings. The element of choice lies only with Humans though and that makes them more able to enjoy/experience the Universe at a different level. This comes with the in-built rider that they create great causal ripples. Once again taking away the word sin I would replace it with action. Since they have choice, and the power of discernment they move in cycles of action/reaction. All that is done is balanced by the causal energy that it creates. Good and bad actions can be judged only on the basis of the causal responses to the action. 'Bad' or 'sinful' would then fit into the negative intention/actions which will set up waves of negative destinies.

Animals are not reborn based on their actions because they act in accord with their primal nature and not out of choice of doing good or bad. Human beings are reborn animals in response to the nature of causal patterns they create. That particular animal life then acts as the causal balance. Having completed that cycle they now return to a human birth to once again apply choice to how they will act/react and create the next set of causal fields.

Dear Aachi

Good morning. What a lovely story to wake up to. Thanks.
love
Anusheh

nice post aachi..and a very insightful share, jasjit..tx..

Thanks Aachi for the inspiring piece!

Thanks Jasjit, that was so simply put.

Wishing everyone a great day ahead :)

good morning rohit,

annie i hope you had a good nights sleep.

preethi, absolute non violence is absolutley impossible. it is just a refernce point given by Buddha for emulation. when we reach absolute non violence, we Become the buddha.

about transmigration into different species...this concept is very philosophical. The story in question might just be enough to make us feel that self sacrifice is a good concept. i personally feel....that i was a bacterium in interstellar space somewhere in my previous life!:)

Jasjit,

good morning. You have put it very succintly. I alwys had a feeling that nothing is sentient and non sentient...everything is alive. a man lives for 100 years...a rock lives for 1000000000 years perhaps...thats why we dont see it breathing and living...or talking to other rocks....because we ourselves live for a minute fraction of it's time.

what are your views on this?

Anusheh, sundar and Shubosree...good morning and thanks.

strange coincidence you say this aachi..a similar feeling with the eg u have quoted has been with me for a large part of my life...

Good morning Buddy

The web of words here we go. Aachi first let's get this out of the way. Language was coined to define and definition must limit the context or else it defeats the purpose of its creation. Sentient does not exclude alive, or to be more precise sentient is s sub-set of alive. In the metaphyical sense all that exists is alive even the deadened heaps of autumn leaves. Only because they now move into the stage of decomposition and releasing critical energy (nutrients to be precise) which will transform into other bio-chemic compositions and lead to re-birth of other seed, sapling and plant. In that sense nothing is/can be/or imagined as dead because all states are alive with transformation/change at the subtle and gross levels and in a never ending continum.

Hence your rock energy waves are at a completely different oscillation level than us-hence its 'breathing' is unobservable to the human eye- and allows a different time/space continum (than humans)in gross matter.

Sentient then brings in the consciousness wave matrix which again carries a deeply varied and complex frequency of potential and causal indivisibility to what we loosely call the Universe. Cell structures for instance reflect a DNA programming of great variance. The variance to me implies at the most basic level the potential of causality that the cell defines. From the subtlest to the most gross cause/effect principle then lies within that range and since it is the DNA which is also evolutionary in only a certain class of 'alive' organisms, it further reflects the potential towards inordinate permutations/combinations of what gets exprienced as ever-growing complex interconnectedness in the world.

EEsssh is that too esoteric early in the morning or what!

And then of course at the Zen level there's always my favourite Sardar Zen saying: 'Ki Pharak Painda Ey!.

A little more about the wisdom of elephants by osho. Enjoy! ; - ) :

All the dogs bark, but the meditator goes on like an elephant without paying any attention. What they are saying is, in a way, true: you can go out of the mind from two doors. Either you fall below the mind -- then you are insane. If you fall above the mind, then you are enlightened.
There is a little similarity between the madman and the enlightened man, because both are out of the mind. That is the similarity. But one has gone beyond the mind, and one has gone below the mind -- although both have gone outside the mind. So the mind has a certain truth in the argument, "Don't go out of the mind; that is the way of becoming mad. Come back home."
But the meditator goes alone, just like an elephant -- dogs barking, barking, barking.... Slowly slowly, their barking fades away, far away, as if it is just an echo in the valleys, or maybe a dream you have seen somewhere. The farther you go beyond the mind, the less and less you hear the barking of the dogs, their arguments, their ideologies, their philosophies. Their religions, their theologies, their political beliefs, their social beliefs, their educational conditioning... all goes on barking, barking, but you go on like an elephant, reaching farther and farther, deeper into yourself. Soon you will be so far away, you won't even listen to the barking of the dogs.
And once you are that far away, dogs lose interest. They go on their way to do the work they had been doing, separately. Now there is no need of the assembly, the elephant has gone. Perhaps they believe he has gone because they were barking -- this is how mind functions: "Perhaps the elephant became afraid."
I have heard...
One elephant was passing over a bridge with a small fly sitting on his head. The bridge started wavering -- it was an old bridge -- and the fly said to the elephant after they had passed the bridge... It didn't fall, but it was wavering and there was every possibility. The fly said to the elephant, "Son, we were too much for the bridge!"
The elephant heard somebody saying something. He said, "Who are you? And where are you? And as far as my mother is concerned, she cannot sit on my head."
The fly came closer to his eyes... and it is strange that elephants are so big, but their eyes are very small. That shows God has not made this world. Such an unscientific attitude! Such a big animal, and with such tiny eyes... must be the work of some idiot. It cannot be the work of an intelligent God.
So the elephant looked at the fly, and he said, "Mother, it is right. Because of us two, the bridge was shaking."
The idea that elephants are very wise comes from such stories. He accepted it: "Don't bother, don't argue with this stupid fly who calls me her son, and thinks that because of both of us the bridge was shaking. There is no point in arguing. It is better to accept that, `Mother, you are right,' and just go on your way."
Don't be distracted.
Not to be distracted is wisdom.

'Communism & Zen Fire, Zen Wind', Chapter 6

Thanks Rohit that was great.

And the same kind of story (or same?..but doesn't matter) by Osho :

Gautam Buddha himself remembers his past lives: in one life, he says, he was an elephant, and after the life of the elephant he was born as a man. And the reason why the elephant was born as a man... he tells a beautiful incident:
The forest in which the elephant lived suddenly caught on fire. It was a summer night and a strong wind was blowing, and the whole forest was on fire. The elephant, just like the other animals, started moving out of the forest. Because the fire was all around, it was very difficult to find a way out of it, particularly for such a big animal like the elephant.
Finally he comes under a big tree which has not yet caught fire, and just to take a little rest, he stands under the tree and looks all around to see in which direction he should move to get out of the fire. As he takes up one of his feet to move, suddenly a small rabbit comes just underneath his foot, thinking it is a shelter. Of course the rabbit cannot see the elephant -- the elephant is too big.
In the dark night every animal is so shaken and frightened; the rabbit is trembling, afraid for his life, and the elephant will kill the rabbit if he puts his foot down. If he does not put his foot down to move -- and the fire is approaching closer! But the elephant finally decides to sacrifice his own life, and not to kill the rabbit. Just because of this decision, the consciousness takes a jump from the elephant form into human form.
People are coming from different sources for different reasons. The theory of reincarnation is basically a more scientific approach to evolution than that of Charles Darwin. It is well known that different animals have different characters. If you read Aesop's fables or the ancient PANCHTANTRA, which is the most ancient book of parables -- and researchers think that the fables of Aesop are all taken from PANCHTANTRA. In fact, historically, there has never been any man with the name Aesop; these are the stories of PANCHTANTRA told by Gautam Buddha, who is also called Bodhisattva.
As the word `Bodhisattva' moved from India -- Alexander was the first to take the name of Buddha to the West -- it became `Bodhisat'. It is always a problem: whenever a word moves from one language to another language, and then another language, it goes on changing its form. It is Bodhisat which becomes Aesop, but it has gone through at least five or six languages before it turns up as Aesop.
All the stories are told by Buddha himself. All the stories are about animals -- animals talking -- and each story has tremendous significance. If you look in the animal world, for example, the elephant has a memory which is far stronger than any human being. He never forgets; it is just not in his nature to forget anything. The elephant will recognize its master even after thirty years.

The Great Zen Master : Ta Hui, Ch. 18

Jasjit,

that was absolutely wonderful...it gave me a new angle to think. thanks.

rohit, lovely shares...thank you.

Sundar,

which galaxy were you in? :) I was in the cartwheel galaxy...the hubble image of it is beautiful. haha

:) aachi...dunno where i was ; memory lapse with all this blogging!!!!!

Hello Aachi,

"absolute non violence is absolutley impossible. it is just a refernce point given by Buddha for emulation. when we reach absolute non violence, we Become the buddha"

Does this mean that we are totally negating the possibility of reaching buddhahood ever!!!?? coz, as you rightly say, absolute non violence is quite impossible.

But then again, on second thoughts, goddesses like Durga and Kali, they represent destruction and yet worshipped. thats because the destruction is of the "evil". so may be absolute non-violence is not required after all.

just thinking aloud ...