Contd….
Angulimaan, the Saint
Then what is his past that has such devilish
samskaras? Tradition tells that in one of his former lives he had been a
powerful spirit, a so-called yaksha, who used his superhuman strength to hurt
and kill living beings to satisfy his appetite for human flesh. In all his past
experiences that are reported in the Jatakas, two traits are prominent in him:
his physical strength and his lack of compassion. This was the dark heritage of
his past which broke into his present life, submerging the good qualities of
his early years. (No – don’t ask ‘maam do you know my past life? Or use it in
wrong place and say ‘so, me wanting to hurt him is actually because of my past
samskaras and I am not at fault?’ Please don’t right law in wrong place to get
away with your acts and thoughts. You can with people but karma will catch up
with you at right time….)
So, in
his final response to his teacher's demand, he did not even think of the
alternative, to gather the fingers from corpses thrown into India's open
charnel grounds. Instead he started living in dense forest attacking people who
crossed the forest. He found that when he kept fingers cut on tree tops, the
birds would peck them and hence to do away with their nuisance and to
safe-guard the fingers that he collected with so much of hard-work, he started
wearing them strung together as a garland around his neck and hence came to be
known a ‘Angulimaan’ – ‘anguli’ means little finger – a man wearing a garland
strung of little fingers. His notoriety spread far and wide and people started
avoiding that path. By repeatedly killing people without remorse, he became
‘devil incarnate’ by nature. There seemed no streak of Brahmin quality of
mercy, compassion, pity, sensitivity, love for the other, non-violence and such
noble qualities left in him.
Does
this mean ‘we are governed only by our samskaras and we do as per our destiny?
Read the related posts on ‘destiny, fate, choices’ and if you still don’t get
it, ask and I’ll try explaining again.
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