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of the Buddha. All that is higher is fragile; a lotus flower, a roseflower -- they have a certain strength and beauty, but if you put them under a rock they will be destroyed. Of course their fragrance will remain in the air.
The story is beautiful. It says that the rock came directly towards Buddha and just as it was going to hit Buddha it changed its route, leaving Buddha alive.
It looks just like a parable, but one never knows. Rocks are also alive, they grow, they have a certain sensitivity. Perhaps it is a factual phenomenon, because many other things of the same category happened.
Devadatta became very mad, he could not believe how the rock changed its course. Just one foot more and Buddha would have been crushed under it.
Devadatta's father had a mad elephant who was always kept in chains. He was very dangerous. Criminals who had been sentenced to death were thrown near the cage of the mad elephant, and he immediately pulled them in, killed them and ate them. They were keeping that elephant just to kill the criminals.
Devadatta got the key and asked the man in whose control the elephant had grown up .... Still, even in his madness, the elephant remembered him and always followed him. Wherever the man wanted to take him he could take him; the elephant never harmed him. It is said that elephants have perhaps the greatest memory system, they never forget. If you kill one elephant, a husband, or a wife -- they live in couples -- never leave the other one alive, otherwise the other one will find a way to kill you, wherever you go. Even twenty years afterwards people have been killed.
The same is true about cobra snakes: they live in couples. Never kill one; if you want to kill one, kill both. If you kill one the other will find a way, wherever you go; years may pass, but he will find a way to kill you. Their memory system is very strong.
Because this man had raised the elephant from his very childhood, even in his madness the elephant remembered him -- his love, his compassion. Devadatta bribed the man and told him to take the elephant towards Buddha, who was meditating outside the city in a mango grove.
The
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