Bhante Jinadata's teaching

From the discussion I had with Bhante Jinadata, this is what I have learnt: We should learn to tolerate the variance and varieties of views presented by people; learn to distinguish opinion from fact, train ourselves to discern conventional reality from ultimate reality; learn to know when to accept and when to act; dhamma per se is dry and not easily acceptable so dhamma has to be spiced up with mysticisms, customs and traditions, superstitions, etc to make it functional within a socity.

The frog, the centipede and the firefly

Bhnate Jinadata gave us an analogy of how most people perceive their experience and ability in his talk at SP Dhamma Centre. Three animals, a frog, a centipede and a firefly, were exploring the world when suddenly each of them was covered by a coconut shell. In the darkness of the covered coconut shell, the frog jumped and its head hit the coconut shell and it exclaimed,"How marvelous am I for now I can reach the sky!"

The centipede could not jump like the frog but it could crawl and so in the darkness of the coconut shell it crawled to the coconut shell and it crawled around the edge of the coconut shell and then exclaimed,"How fantastic I am, I can crawl to the edge of the world!"

The firefly could not jump nor crawl but it could fly. As it flew around the dark, enclosed space of the covered coconut shell, it exclaimed,"How magnificent I am, I can lit up the whole universe!"

The moral of the story is that most of us perceive our knowledge, skill, ability or achievement like these three naive creatures.

(retold by hoh foo kong, not exactly as I had heard it)