Buddha Pears – Believe It Or Believe It Not

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Gao has been working on his pear-growing technique for six years and this season he managed to grow 10,000 Buddha-shaped baby pears. Each fruit is grown in an intricate Buddha mold and ends up looking like a juicy figurine. The ingenious farmer says the locals in his home village of Hexia, norther China, have been buying his Buddha pears as soon as he picks them from the trees. Most of them think they are cute and that they bring good luck. Chinese Farmer Grows Buddha-Shaped Pears

It did take a bit of time for the truth of this interesting endeavour to sink in. Buddha shaped pears. Amazing!

Thank goodness we who aspire to sit still (meditate) don’t grow in molds. Although that’s a common mistake in the early days. Well intentioned newbies quite often attempt to fit into an imagined ideal posture for meditation. And once there attempt to internally mould themselves into meditation mind.

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7 thoughts on “Buddha Pears – Believe It Or Believe It Not”

  1. to the good friend who sent me the link and photograph on the anniversary of my ordination. Not today by the way.

  2. I did wonder whether the mold used to make these beauties might be likened to keeping to the precepts.

  3. Yes Ian I had that same kind of thought. A bit like Monkey with the tightening band around his head, but…well one can go lots of places with this kind of thinking about the Precepts.

    I would like to think that the depth of Precepts, the deepening understanding of them, wins out over something constrictive applied by either oneself or others. AND I don’t believe there is a time when the actual teaching of the Precepts, as we have them formulated, ever goes away. Something to return to don’t you think? Sometimes their formulation is conscious and most often, as one gains experience, it is those internal promptings which have us brought into consciousness of them.

    Uh! I am talking to the converted I know, so sorry if I sound a bit preachy.

    Any chance you can find a good link to the teaching around Monkey and leave it in a comment as a shortened URL? You who can find anything on the internet, fast.

  4. A brief search on the “monkey” story lead me to this website:- http://fwd4.me/11IW
    Great pictures…
    Also of interest:- fwd4.me/11IZ

    Sun’s (aka Monkey) behavior is checked by a band placed around his head by Guanyin (aka Kanzeon), which cannot be removed by Sun Wukong himself until the journey’s end. Xuanzang can tighten this band by chanting the “Ring Tightening Mantra” (taught to him by Guanyin) whenever he needs to chastise him. The spell is referred to by Xuanzang’s disciples as the “Headache Sutra”, which is the Buddhist mantra “o? ma?ipadme h??”. Xuanzang speaks this mantra quickly in repetition.

  5. In the quote it talks about chastising Monkey but I’d say it was to remind him to keep to the Precepts.

  6. Being Buddha takes on a whole new meaning with these Buddha pears for the eating of.

    As for sitting meditation. I do not believe in adopting a posture for meditation which has all the hall marks of doing meditation. When meditation does us! However, big breath, to sit erect in bright attentiveness, knowing full well we were not designed to sit balanced on our sitting bones for extended periods of time, is significant in terms of body/mind being alert. The key words are bright attentiveness which….I guess is about finding balance on those sitting bones.

    That’s the end of my thoughts on the subject for now as I am off to balance…attentively! Thanks for listening.

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