No 775 of Living Life Series 1
Have we ever wondered why animals are referred to in the religious stories from the East and that despite being animals, they can achieve spirituality beyond what the common men can achieve ?
They have animal nature but this has not stopped them from going far in spirituality or at least associated intimately with temples. The holy cows of India are not to become household jokes of men. They labored and toiled the rice fields and they provide milk and more. Elephants too help in logging and transport. They are the pets of many temples and revered in temple precincts. Monkeys help to pluck coconuts. Monkeys and snakes too are temple inhabitants. Sheep and goats have their contributions and they too serve and provide welfare for men.
Lao Tse of China traveled on buffalo back upon his retirement as the imperial librarian of the then Chinese Emperor. He is central figure to early Taoism and mind you, the faithful buffalo is his closest companion and the buffalo is not even a man. We can say with certainty that the companion buffalo was more devout than any man. He did not choose a man but a buffalo.
The monkey god in the Journey to the West portrays that even with animal nature and tendency to kill and persecute evil beings and men, this had not stopped him from enlightenment.
He, the Great Sage is like many religious men nowadays often self-opinionated and too sure of self and ever ready to say that others are wrong - even going to extent of damning them to hell. But the committed monkey in the epic story is able to be better than men and achieve spirituality and be a saint.
If he can, surely those religious people who are ever ready to condemn others too can if they have the passion and will be able to achieve true spirituality and be saints.
The animal in men may make them lousy followers of a religion. Though they make a mockery of religion by despising and persecuting others, they may arrive and in a way the chosen ones.
As what the good lord Lord Bo Tien (武天菩萨) says, "The far may be near and the near far." The animals in men may be why men who are far from even being humane as men are able to be near to Heaven when they are by the animal in them far from Heaven.
The animal in men need not be the undoing of men. It needs not be a liability but can be an asset but for the present and for some time to come, society may view them as odd and unlikely candidates for true spirituality.
Small wonder that in Chinese culture, every man or woman is born in a year of an animal in the Chinese Zodiac. Every person is identified to an animal.
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