The return of the sparrow Re: Re: [Buddha-l] Re: Shiva, the return!

[Joy Vriens]

Dear Weng Fai and Franz, 
 
>> Apparently, the mother, on seeing what her kid did, grab the kid and  
>> left - without informing anyone. 
 
>> What do you think is the karma on the mother and child? Which plane  
>> will they be reborn to? 
 
>I asked myself the same question. (Of course I asked it as the parent  
>of a nearly three year old with a distinct independent streak.) I could  
>so easily see myself in that mother's situation. I reckon I'd have to  
>throw myself down in 100,000 prostrations on the floor of the local  
>Tibetan temple. She, on the other hand, does indeed look like she's  
>skulking off. I wonder what hell realm she's already in. As for the  
>kid, it's more complicated, but there's no question in my mind he was  
>consciously destroying what he knew was complex and beautiful. This is  
>why the Buddha taught us no to reproduce. 

This event clearly raises many questions for the conscientious Buddhists we are. What surprises me is that no praying committee has been raised to organise a 24/24 praying session until the mandala is restored. The merit would obviously be dedicated to the mother and the boy in order to divert their rebirth in hells that I don't even dare to imagine. Where is great compassion when one really needs it? I even think I can sense some Schadefreude in the guesses about the future fate of the boy and the mother...

At one of those big domino stone do's in the Netherlands (the Western equivalent of sand mandalas), where people spend weeks to set up a domino stone circuit (you know the one knocking down the next one on prime time television), a sparrow flew in. Out of fear that the sparrow would touch one of the stones and set the whole thing off, the staff had to shoot it. I guess you feel what I am hinting at. Wouldn't it be better to prevent the boy from committing bad karma that would have him -and his poor mother- spend aeons in a hell realm? Are those Kansas Buddhists bodhisattvas or wimps? I thought you folks always said that a man has to do what a man's got to do. 

I see it as sign of time that symbols are desacralised, especially when it's done by heaven itself... 
http://tinyurl.com/3xnyqd (thanks for the tinyurl link Joanna) 

Joy