Jataka Tale: The Sky Is Falling

This is story, a Buddhist story. And some of these stories contain wonderful teachings and messages. Like Aesop's Fables – kind of a wisdom fable. So this story is one of the Jataka Tales. It's one of the classic canonical fables, that are purported to be the past life stories of the Buddha, when he was an animal. In all the stories he is the wise animal.

Transcript

So today,

This week,

For these little Dharma talks,

I'm going to tell stories,

Buddhist stories.

And some of these stories contain wonderful teachings and messages,

Like the Aesop's fables,

Kind of a wisdom fable.

So this story is one of the Jataka tales.

It's one of the classic Kanakkal fables that are purported to be the past lives of the stories of the Buddha,

So when he was an animal.

And in all these stories,

He was the wise animal.

And in this story in particular,

It's about a rabbit.

And the rabbit is not the Buddha.

The Buddha's coming.

So this rabbit,

It's a nice comfortable day,

The middle of the day,

And the rabbit decides to take a nap underneath the tree.

And he falls asleep,

And he's contently sleeping,

Napping,

And everything is fine in the universe,

You know how it is when you take a nap.

It's nice.

Then suddenly,

Something large falls on the ground right next to the rabbit,

Like clunk,

Boom,

Bang.

And the rabbit wakes up with a jolt,

And he concludes that the sky is falling.

So the rabbit jumps up,

And he runs along,

Yelling,

The sky is falling,

The sky is falling.

And he comes across other rabbits,

And the other rabbits are saying,

Like,

Why are you running?

And he says,

Run,

Run,

Because the sky is falling.

So the other rabbits join him,

And they start running around,

And then they run into more rabbits.

And it's the same story.

So now all these rabbits are running,

And they're yelling,

The sky is falling,

The sky is falling.

So then they come across a group of deer,

And the deer say,

Well,

What are you doing?

And the rabbit says,

The sky is falling,

Run,

Run.

And the first one begins to run,

And then the whole herd of deer begin to run.

And they're all yelling,

The sky is falling,

The sky is falling.

And they go along further,

And they come across a rhinoceros.

And the rhinoceros says,

What are you doing?

Why are you running?

Because the sky is falling.

You have to run.

Run for safety.

So first one rhinoceros,

And then many of them began to run.

And by this time,

The ground is shaking,

Because there's so much weight and so many animals running.

And they're all afraid that the sky is falling.

And so they come across an elephant.

And pretty soon,

There's a huge herd of elephant pounding against the ground,

Shaking the earth.

And everyone is yelling,

The sky is falling,

The sky is falling.

And they're heading to this big cliff.

And they're just beside themselves with fear.

They don't even know where they're going.

But they're heading towards this cliff.

And they're all going to go right off of it.

They're going to fall right off the cliff.

But towering above this cliff,

On another cliff in the distance,

Kind of like a mountaintop,

Is a great lion.

The lion is the story of the Buddha.

And the lion looks down and sees what's going on.

And he sees the danger that all these animals are in.

So with a giant leap,

The lion leaps down in front of the charging animals and roars,

Stop.

And all the animals kind of screech to a halt in front of the lion.

And the lion says to them calmly,

What is going on here?

And the elephant says,

Well,

The sky is falling.

The sky is falling.

And the lion says,

Well,

Who told you that?

Well,

The rhinoceros told me that.

So the lion asked the rhinoceros,

And well,

Who told you that?

And well,

The deer told me that.

And asking the deer,

The deer said,

Well,

The rabbits.

And asking the rabbits,

The rabbit says,

They all turn around and point to that first rabbit.

That's the one who told us.

And the lion said to the rabbit,

Where did you get the idea that the sky is falling?

And the rabbit said,

Well,

There was this loud bang,

And something fell right next to me.

And the lion says,

Well,

Let's take a look.

Let's go back there.

And so with some trepidation,

The rabbit led the whole large gathering of animals and the lion back underneath the tree.

And it happened to be a mango tree.

And lying on the ground next to where the rabbit was napping was a mango.

It was a mango that had fallen off the tree and landed right next to the head of the rabbit.

So the lion pointed that out and said,

There's no sky falling,

Just mango.

So everyone went back to their different activities.

So the story is not about running from what we're afraid of.

It's about taking a good look to investigate what's really happening here.

Asking yourself this very important question,

What's really happening here?

Where have I learned this?

Is it some rumor or some idea?

What's the source?

Then what is the source of this idea or this fear?

The idea is to understand the source of our information.

Is it just an opinion like it was for the rabbit?

Is it what we've heard from somebody else?

There's this beautiful word in the Pali,

Ehipasiko.

Ehipasiko.

Come and see for yourself.

That's what it means.

Come and see for yourself.

We don't really know for ourselves,

But maybe we've heard something.

Oh,

I've heard this story.

This is how it is out there.

And then is fear triggered?

Is anger triggered?

If it's something that we've seen and seen directly,

Maybe it's reasonable.

But if it's many steps removed from the original source,

Aren't we becoming like the herd of animals running towards a cliff?

Aren't we starting to create realities,

Create world views and understandings and create enemies and scenarios and doomsday ideas,

Which we're running from and are preoccupied with?

And what happens is we lose our sensibilities.

So who's going to be the lion?

Who stops us?

Who says stop?

Let's go back and look.

Really take a look and investigate what's really happening here.

Let's follow the steps back.

We know there's not going to be a lion or a Buddha who jumps out in front of us.

But it's the Buddha within that represents our own capacity to say stop.

We can do that.

We do it all the time.

We pause.

It's a really healthy stopping.

We stop our running.

We stop our circling around.

We stop our spinning out.

We really stop and turn and look what is happening.

Turn and look towards the danger.

If it's appropriate to look at,

Look towards our fear.

So courage is needed in this Buddhist practice to stop and look at what we're afraid of,

To stop and look at where we're angry,

What we're angry at,

To look and ask the question,

What's really going on here?

What's really the source of my reactivity and my reactions?

Recently I was annoyed with someone and I stopped to take a look at it and I realized very quickly that a huge percentage of how I was irritated and annoyed had to do with the stories that I was making up about the situation,

Not about what was actually happening.

I was guessing and then that guess,

Making a picture of what it was and then I was reacting to my own picture,

Not to the person.

So in stopping I realized,

Oh,

It's not the other person I have to contend with.

I have to contend with myself.

I stopped and I looked and I saw where is it and I found it in myself.

So we have this ability to stop.

We have to stop and turn and look and see what is really the source of this.

Where is the beginning of this?

Maybe it's just that a mango fell on the ground like in the story of the rabbit.

So to support this ability to stop and to take a good look,

We have to breathe.

We have a habit of coming back and just breathing with a situation.

We're building that habit every time we meet together.

Breathing is like not denying anything or turning away from anything,

Just consciously breathing.

And when we do this,

It gives us patience.

It gives us just a little bit of room.

You know the saying breathing room?

Like that space for the mind to look and investigate and see what's really going on.

When we don't have that,

We're caught up in all the animals of our mind.

Spreading rumors to each other,

Spinning out with the whole zoo of our mind starting to race and run towards that cliff.

Stop.

Take a look.

So the sky is falling.

If you think that's the case,

Stop and take a good look at where this idea came from.

Maybe you'll find instead like a sweet,

Ripe mango waiting for you.

Some treasure,

Some sweetness.

If we really look deeply at a situation,

You know?

So thank you.

We'll continue with our storytelling on Thursday.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Reviews

This is wonderful, Lisa, really made me 😁 The "zoo of our minds" - fantastic! Thank you 🌟