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danlo
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12 May 2005, 8:12 am

Once, when he was a young man, thirteen years before his Completion, the Perfect One became drunk on wine and gambled away his family estates on a single throw of dice. And Sarojin Garuda, who was his brother and chief discipline, said to him, "You have thrown away your lives, for now we shall have neither money to spend, food to eat, nor a roof over us to keep us dry when the rains come."
And the Perfect One replied, "All life is a gamble into the unknown. Now the sky must be our roof, and we must spend our lives Perfecting ourselves. And when we are Complete, we shall never be hungry again."
"Do you mean," Sarojin Garuda asked, "that we shall nourish our souls with the wind and sun, and that the union with the Whole will fill us with joy?"
And the Perfect One, who is also called The Laughing Monk, replied, "Of course, but I also mean that when we achieve Completion, our followers will give us their bread, their clothes, their very lives."
"But how will you attract followers when it is discovered that you were so foolish as to drink wine and to gamble away our estates?"
And the Perfect One replied, "As you will see, the people love no one so much as a perfect sinner who repents and becomes a perfect saint."
"Then you are ready to repent and give up all vice?" Sarojin Garuda asked.
And the Perfect One laughed and replied, "No, not yet."
After that the Perfect One went down to the South Lands, and he seduced the daughters of the vintners and drank their wine, and he danced the forbidden dances, and he ate the magic mushrooms that grew in the forests. He wandered for thirteen years before coming to the Holy City. There, at the Pool of Eternity, he renounced the world and achieved Completion, and all that he had prophesied came to pass.
Many years later, the Perfect One acquired palaces for each of the six seasons, and he filled them with priceless sculptures and fine wines; he took for himself 313 concubines and fathered four times as many children; he began to dance and eat mushrooms and throw dice again. Sarojin Garuda came to him and said, "Once again you’ve fallen into vice."
And the Perfect One replied, "In Completion all distinctions are as one, and there is neither vice nor virtue. The advantage of being Perfected is that one can see this clearly."
"But the people," Sarojin Garuda said after considering this, "are far from Perfection and do not see what you see."
And the Perfect One replied, "And that is why they love me as they do. They know that a Perfect One is beyond the good or evil of the world, and thus nothing can touch him."
Then the Perfect One began to laugh, and in listening to this holy laughter, the mind of Sarojin Garuda was freed of all doubt and imperfection, and he finally achieved what he had been seeking all his life. They both laughed together for a very long time, and they died very old, very rich, and very Complete.

~ from The Life of the Perfect One



BeeBee
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12 May 2005, 2:01 pm

That's neat.

What is The Life of the Perfect One?

BeeBee



Postperson
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12 May 2005, 7:28 pm

Is that a 'greed is good' parable?