"THE TWO-HEADED BIRD"

An old monk asked Buddha why Devadatta, who was Buddha's cousin and disciple, had turned against Buddha and continually spoke against him. Buddha said, "I can't help it" and he told this story.

Long ago, there was a two-headed bird.The heads took turns resting, so one head could always be on the lookout.Actually one head was awake and on guard most of the time because the other one was always asleep.When they ate,the alert head would wake up the sleepy one to eat. When it was time to rest,the lazy one fell asleep again. The other one never complained and always stayed on guard.

One day,the lazy head said, "I want to sleep now,so you be on guard. "As it fell asleep once again, a breeze suddenly sprang up and blew down a fruit from a nearby tree, which then rolled to the bird. The fruit was ripe and smelled ever so good. The alert head thought, "the other head is asleep, so i don't want to wake it,but still enjoy the fruit even if i eat it. So i ate the fruit.

The sleepy head suddenly smelled the fragrance and heard the sleepless head burp.It woke up and asked, "what did you eat? How come your burps smell so good that they woke me up?" The alert said, "It was a ripe fruit. I didn't want to wake you up, so i ate myself". The sleepy head wasn't happy and asked, "why didn't you wake me up to enjoy it? All right, I'll get even someday." After that, its mind was filled with hatred.
A few days later, the lazy head said to the other head, "today you can get some rest and I'll stand guard." The alert head happily agreed. When it was asleep, another fruit blew down from the tree, but this time it was a poisonous fruit.T he sleepy head thought, "all right, I'll eat this one and we'll die together". With a heart full of hatred, he ate that poisonous fruit. Buddha said, "That sleepy head so many lives ago was Devadatta, and the one that was always awake and watchful was me. Although I've guided him to cultivate his morality in this life, his hatred towards me is always there"..



After listening to this story, we know that the most difficult thing to control is the mind. Devadatta was Buddha's cousin and disciple but Buddha still couldn't teach him the first thing about controlling the mind. The most important thing in spiritual formation is yourself. When you truly want to cultivate your morality and work hard to remove anger, greed, delusion, suspicion and arrogance; only then can you get rid of your anxieties. Otherwise, even if you were reborn as a bird with two heads, you would still have evil thoughts of hatred and revenge, which would harm both yourself and others. HOW SAD THAT WOULD BE?