Buddha Speaks - The Circle Of Life - Samsara

I had a conversation with a friend of mine about the strangeness of life; about how weird things happen to us and then, later on, we find that there is meaning in the incident.  I was thinking about how many people in my life have come in for a reason or for a specific purpose, and then how many of those people simply left my life.  I have no idea what has become of them.  As I was thinking all of this, I realized that I was doing a life review.  I asked forgiveness from those that I, in my mind, treated badly.  Then I went to do my Buddhist lesson for the day, and I realized that it was on “samsara”.  

The Symbol of Samsara is the 'Circle' as it has no beginning and no end.   Samsara is the Circle of life, an endless cycle of birth, death and re-birth.  ~ from Wiki.answers.com~

I felt that it was appropriate, given where my thoughts had been , that this lesson was about the circle of life.  I then read the story that went with the lesson, and I got a few chills along my back.  This story was speaking to the way I had been thinking.  Here it is.

 

A Case of Samsara

Imagine this scene: a layman sits in front of his house, eating a fish from the pond behind the house, holding his son in his lap. The dog is eating the fish bones and the man kicks the dog. Not an extraordinary scene one would think, but ven. Shariputra commented:

"He eats his father's flesh and kicks his mother away,
The enemy he killed he dandles on his lap,
The wife is gnawing at her husband's bones,
Samsara can be such a farce."

What had happened?. The man's father died and was reborn as a fish in the pool, the layman caught his father, the fish, killed it, and was now eating it. . The layman's mother was very attached to the house so she was reborn as the man's dog. The man's enemy had been killed for raping the man's wife; and because the enemy was so attached to her, he was reborn as her son. While he ate his father's meat, the dog - his mother - ate the fish bones, and so was beaten by her son. His own little son, his enemy, was sitting on his knee.

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You may have had a similar reaction to mine which was, “Wait a minute.  How can this be?”

In the circle of life, we can show up anywhere on the circle.  Our Karma helps determine who we need to be close to, and what lessons we need to learn.  I am still thinking about this story.

Judy@angelsandancestors.com    See www.angelsandancestors.com for a listing of events and the February 2011 Magazine.