Aspiring Bodhisattvas

"Tradition holds that the giving of alms is the first of the ten perfections required of a future Buddha. ... there was no limit to the number of existences in which Gautama Buddha became perfect in almsgiving, but the height of his perfection was reached during a lifetime in which he was a rabbit,
the Wise Hare".

~ Lewis Hyde, The Gift, pp. 75-76

I was not aware of this tradition or of the story at all at the time I painted the above painting, The Hare and the Moon, in 2008. In fact, the story of how the image for the painting came about is a very interesting one, the composition having come together under pressure within a period of a few hours. What I find interesting is, given my long pursuit of spiritual understanding, that these images of the hare and the moon, not to mention my title for the piece, arose not from study but from intuition and openness to what I could create when it seemed as though I had no ideas available to me.

To have come across this story just a few weeks ago, 3 years after painting the piece, in Hyde's brilliant masterpiece, The Gift, validates the assumption that when we are present to the Silence and listening for an inspired muse of an idea, we do truly tap into Infinite Intelligence, which generously articulates Itself through us in alignment with our own developed capacities.

We do not have to be cognitively aware, rather simply open to "hearing" or "seeing" something new. We are creating through our own unique perspective from that which is equally-everywhere-present. We are I think actually not "creating", but rather formulating from what is infinitely already created. We need not be scholars as there are whole worlds available to us that if we listen deeply enough we may catch snippets and thus find inspired expression connected to archetypes and tomes of wisdom.

"'Wise Hare,' said Sakka [ruler of the heaven of sensual pleasure disguised as a Brahman to test the rabbit's sincerity], 'let your virtue be proclaimed to the end of this world-cycle.' And taking a mountain in his hand, he squeezed it and, with the juice, drew the outline of a hare on the disc of the moon."

~ Lewis Hyde, The Gift, p.77

~ ten thousand blessings to you ~