Why does no good deed go unpunished?
Why do we have sayings like these?
For many years, one of my very favorite, short Buddhist tales is about Mara, the buddhist god of ignorance and evil. It is Mara's purpose to bring about disharmony, misfortune and chaos. If someone's life is going well, it's Mara's pleasure to bring disruption. It's also Mara's role and sole reason for being.
Like other spiritual beings, Mara has his followers. They travel with him as he makes his way through our world causing trouble. One day Mara and posse find themselves in a village where they come upon a man engaged in walking meditation. It's working. The man has attained a moment of clarity and transcendence. Something he discovered on the ground has opened this awareness for him and he is gazing, transfixed upon the object. He is One with Truth at this moment.
Mara and his followers walk by without disturbing the man. The followers, concerned by Mara's lack of interference, ask what it was that the man had found, to which Mara responds, 'a piece of truth.'
'Doesn't this bother you when someone finds a piece of truth? Aren't you going to take it away?'
'No', said Mara, 'right after this they usually make a belief out of it.'
Stay in the awareness.
In the book, A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life's Purpose, author, Eckhart Tolle adds 'Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind.'
This story of Mara is rich with wisdom. Sit, for a long time, with the idea of experiencing awareness and Oneness with Truth - the doing nothing stage - the action through non-action stage.
Then remember, because we've all had the experience, how it feels when an awareness becomes an idea, which then becomes a belief, which generates rules of behavior, and that is the moment we've lost the connection to Truth.
The trick is in the sifting.
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