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energy all around him. He is a radiator, a radiation of the ultimate bliss.
So naturally, if a man like Gautam Buddha became enlightened when he was forty-two years old, and lived for forty years afterwards -- for forty years continuously the Buddha was inside these bones and the flesh and the skin -- how is it possible that all these bones and skin will not be affected by this tremendous metamorphosis? Hence came the expression, "flowers."
The man who translated it has forgotten. He simply says that Tanka Tennen said, "I had to burn the statue so I could take Gautam Buddha's BONES" -- not flowers. But everything changes with your change of consciousness. Everything becomes tremendously beautiful.
This was just to provoke those monks so they were cornered. Immediately, the high priest of the temple must have said, "HOW COULD A WOODEN STATUE HAVE BONES?" How could a wooden statue have flowers?
Tanka had made his point. He is saying that a wooden statue is not a buddha; it has not even the bones, it has not even the flowers of Buddha. It is simply wood, cut in a certain shape. You have given the shape to the wood, but you cannot make it a buddha.
Once the monks were cornered, Tanka said, "THEN WHY HAVE YOU CHASTISED ME?" Then why are you angry at me?
There are many versions of this story. The version that I love -- and I don't know whether it is in the scriptures or not -- I don't know from where I got it, but I am absolutely certain that is the right version.
It was not in the morning that Tanka Tennen was found, it was in the middle of the night when the priests saw a fire burning in the temple, because they were sleeping in the temple. The high priest came running: "Are you mad or something? What are you doing? You have burned one of my most valuable Buddhas!"
Then Tanka took his staff -- and the Buddha was almost burned -- and he started looking for flowers with his staff in the ashes of the Buddha. The high priest said, "What are you doing?"
He said, "I am looking for Buddha's flowers. I have heard that Buddha has bones, and those bones turn into flowers. I am looking for those flowers."
The
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