Retelling of Buddha's Tangerine Teaching -

by AK - Jeff 9 Replies latest jw friends

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  AK - Jeff

  Eating a Tangerine

  Thich Nhat Hanh
  

  The Buddha's first teaching was given to a group of children from a small village near the tree of his enlightenment. As Thich Nhat Hanh describes, the Buddha made his teachings accessible to them through the experience of eating a tangerine. SIDDHARTHA [THE BUDDHA] quietly gestured for the children to sit back up and he said, "You are all intelligent children and I am sure you will be able to understand and practice the things I will share with you. The Great Path I have discovered is deep and subtle, but anyone willing to apply his or her heart and mind can understand and follow it. "When you children peel a tangerine, you can eat it with awareness or without awareness. What does it mean to eat a tangerine in awareness? When you are eating the tangerine, you are aware that you are eating the tangerine. You fully experience its lovely fragrance and sweet taste. When you peel the tangerine, you know that you are peeling the tangerine; when you remove a slice and put it in your mouth, you know that you are removing a slice and putting it in your mouth; when you experience the lovely fragrance and sweet taste of the tangerine, you are aware that you are experiencing the lovely fragrance and sweet taste of the tangerine. The tangerine Nandabala offered me had nine sections. I ate each morsel in awareness and saw how precious and wonderful it was. I did not forget the tangerine and thus the tangerine became something very real to me If the tangerine is real, the person eating it is real. That is what it means to eat a tangerine in awareness. "Children, what does it mean to eat a tangerine without awareness? When you are eating the tangerine, you do not know that you are eating the tangerine. You do not experience the lovely fragrance and sweet taste of the tangerine. When you peel the tangerine, you do not know that you are peeling the tangerine; when you remove a slice and put it in your mouth, you do not know that you are removing a slice and putting it in your mouth; when you smell the fragrance or taste the tangerine, you do not know that you are smelling the fragrance and tasting the tangerine. Eating a tangerine in such a way, you cannot appreciate its precious and wonderful nature. If you are not aware that you are eating the tangerine, the tangerine is not real. If the tangerine is not real, the person eating it is not real either. Children, that is eating a tangerine without awareness. "Children, eating the tangerine in mindfulness means that while eating the tangerine you are truly in touch with it. Your mind is not chasing after thoughts of yesterday or tomorrow, but is dwelling fully in the present moment. The tangerine is truly present. Living in mindful awareness means to live in the present moment, your mind and body dwelling in the very here and now. "A person who practices mindfulness can see things in the tangerine that others are unable to see. An aware person can see the tangerine tree, the tangerine blossom in the spring, the sunlight and rain which nourished the tangerine. Looking deeply, one can see ten thousand things which have made the tangerine possible. Looking at a tangerine, a person who practices awareness can see all the wonders of the universe and how all things interact with one another. Children, our daily life is just like a tangerine. Just as a tangerine is comprised of sections, each day is comprised of twenty four hours. One hour is like one section of tangerine. Living all twenty-four hours of a day is like eating all the sections of a tangerine. The path I have found is the path of living each hour of the day in awareness, mind and body always dwelling in the present moment. The opposite is to live in forgetfulness. If we live in forgetfulness, we do not know that we are alive. We do not fully experience life because our mind and body are not dwelling in the here and now.'
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  VoidEater

  Beautiful...

  ...and so un-JW, where you must each moment of each day be looking forward to God destroying the world...
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  changeling

  I like tangerines!

  changeling :)
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  jwfacts

  That is a beautiful illustration. Buddha very much promoted enjoying each moment, rather than living in the past or stressing about the future.
  
  I see some parallel between Buddhism with Jesus statement (Matthew 6:34) "So, never be anxious about the next day, for the next day will have its own anxieties. Sufficient for each day is its own badness", though this is presented from the negative rather than a positive point of view.
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  S3RAPH1M

  A beautiful illustration, thank you for this!!
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  buckster

  Thank you. Nice way to start my day.
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  marmot

  It's funny, back when I was breaking free I thought I was onto something when I worked out my own mishmash philosophy similar to this only to discover that Buddha beat me to it. This led me to more research and when I did some reading on Epicurus I discovered that he had been completely and unfairly demonized by the Watchtower Society. For instance, take this quote from Wikipedia:
  
  "For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by aponia, the absence of pain and fear, and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and bad, that death is the end of the body and the soul and should therefore not be feared, that the gods do not reward or punish humans, that the universe is infinite and eternal, and that events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space."
  
  That's a far cry from the wanton immoral pleasure-seeker that the WTS would have you believe. They sling around the "eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you shall die" line ALL the time when looking down their noses in contempt at people in "the world", when in fact if we all focused on living for the moment and less on grievances from the past or excessive worry over the future, we'd all be a lot happier.
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  Robdar

  Beautiful.

  Jeff, have you read "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle? Based on your post, I think you would like the book very much.
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  hamsterbait

  This is all very well -

  But Siddharta Gautama lived what 600 BC?

  The Tangerine is a relatively new hybrid of the orange, that certainly had not been grown so early. The nearest equivalent of the time is the Kumquat - a hideous little ball of bitter orange peel the size of an acorn, with one huge seed inside and virtually no pith, or the equally bitter larger, and by no means easy to peel Seville orange, which is uneatable until boiled in sugar to make marmalade.

  And oranges were worth their weight in gold, so how likely was it those kiddies ever even SAW one?

  So now like the forbidden fruit we have to ask, was it an apple or an orange?

  And since the word "orange" did not at one time exist - what color were carrots in europe before the golden fruit? -

  I cannot imagine the local kids listening to some guy who had just sat for forty days and forty nights under the Bo Tree, neither eating nor drinking, then resisting attacks from the queen of demons, appeals to the Earth Goddess for support, who then starts telling them about eating a fruit they never even tasted before.

  HB
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  Narkissos

  LOL. I had a similar issue with the anachronistic "twenty four hours" -- but both may result from a translation problem, or "liberty".