2012.04.28 _ 18

I sometimes wonder how open to be to new teachings. But what does it matter? If it resonates at the moment it's all I need. Maybe we have to wear all teachings and teachers out. They can only give pointers anyway. I'm still too obsessed with thought.

Nice to return to Karuna-metta today.

Another late Karuna-metta session.

It occurred to me that this meditation helps me, yes - certainly, and perhaps helps others too. But I also have another task to do, one that I've been neglecting of late, and one that (I'm told) will help many times more people. It is the third theme to this 99 days...

On day 12, I mentioned I'd come across Arya Sura and his Jatakamala. Sura was a fourth century monk and the work is a compilation of 34 already extant stories of previous incarnations of the being that was to become known as simply the Buddha. I ordered the most recent translation by Khoroche entitled "Once the Buddha was a monkey" (not Speyer's flawed 19th century translation). The tales are often simplistic and predictable, but valuable nevertheless, and I can imagine reading them to my children as bedtime stories had I known the book 30-35 years ago...

However these stories do show one thing more than anything else: the bodhisattva had a one-pointedness beyond anything I've come across. Perhaps it's the story form that does this, but such one-pointedness seems almost unnatural. Or does it? Am I simply using that apparent unnaturalness as an excuse for my own lack of perseverance. When I think of the good that I can spread, what is the cause of my delay? I may be a bodhisattva, but has my equanimity bred complacency, despite compassion? These are lessons I am learning, and obstacles I am overcoming.