Happy ending: the demon did eat him at a gulp. Suddenly he found out the demon who ate him and the one eaten were none other than himself. However, after that Milarepa was all alone and started to miss the demons. Anthony
________________________________ From: Kristopher Grey <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, 24 July 2012, 7:34 Subject: Re: [Zen] Demon [Zen] On 7/23/2012 6:43 PM, Anthony Wu wrote: > It is more fun to read koans like that. A story then (not sure the original source of this version): "Milarepa lived in a cave part of the time and once when he went out to find firewood, he returned to find his cave full of demons. Perhaps they had been there all the time, and only as Milarepa became more advanced in his practice could he see them. Anyway, his first thought was to get rid of these demons as fast as possible. So he ran that them, made noise and tried to chase them away. The demons were completely unfazed, in fact, the more he chased them, the more comfortable and settled in they seemed to be. So Milarepa changed tactics. He decided to teach them the dharma (Buddhist practices and teachings) hoping that hearing the truth of Buddhism they will change their minds and leave. He seemed to be accepting them, but actually, his motivation is still to get rid of them as quickly as possible. After teaching for a while he looked around and realized all the demons are still there, they simply stared at him with their huge bulging eyes. So Milarepa gave up. He realizes that since they could not be manipulated to leave, perhaps he had something to learn from them. So he looked deeply into the eyes of each demon and bowed to them, and said, “It like we’re going to be here together forever. I open myself to whatever you have to teach me”. In that moment all the demons except one disappeared. One huge, especially fierce demon remained, with flaring nostrils and dripping fangs. So Milarepa let go even further, stepping over to the largest demon he offered himself completely, holding nothing back. “Eat me if you wish”, he says and placed his head in its mouth... " Write your own ending, if you have need for such... K
