subject: Buddhist Masters Watched Out for Thieves [print this page] In Bali, after planting, weeding and waiting, the rice shoots grow longer, and the field owners come more often to check. As the crop ripens and the heads of rice show signs of attainments, who arrives, but rice finches, not there to help the rice crop, but to eat it! The farmers hard work in the field is about to be stolen! Just before the rice is to be harvested, the farmers have to guard the rice crop night and day for finches. With huge white flags on sticks, they run through the fields with the same ferocity and appearance as sports fans. However, these farmers are not shouting, "Yea team" with painted faces, so excited and happy that they do not know what to do except drink more beer!
The first time I saw people rushing around a field waving flags, I thought it was a Balinese celebration inviting holy spirits to their rice crop shouting "AHHHHHHHAHHHH" very loudly. As soon as they turned their backs, the rice finches returned, again and again. However, if they did not flush up the finches with the flags, the rice would disappear and they would have no crop at all!
Like the farmer with a valuable crop, meditators must guard their minds, the repository of their attainments, which are the results of their preparation toward awaking the mind. The rice is about to ripen, however, many have no idea how to be vigilant. Those who are new do not know what it feels like to have a genuine attainment, or an attainment about to ripen, and have no idea that, nearby, the rice finches are waiting! In Tibet, we knew that someone with high levels of attainment had a genuine concerns that their attainments might be stolen from them. You would think that for someone at an advanced level, this could not be possible, and realizations were permanent, but that is not true, they can be lost! These types of rice finches have many names: love of power, seeking money, pride, distraction, anger and more!
