The Lessons of a Gay Festival

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Another incident of the Lord Buddha's early youth clearly indicates that He had sincerely wished and desired that as humanity progresses on its upward part, it should relieve the domestic animals, from the present grinding burden of the hard physical toil that has been imposed on them by mankind for its own benefit.

It is narrated that when the Blessed One was growing into a youth, He was taken by the king to witness the royal ploughing festival in which the king and his ministers and nobles participated with the common man in ploughing the green fields amidst great rejoicing.

The Buddha was still too young to actively participate in this colourful event and was therefore left in the care of some attendants under the shade of a rose apple tree.

This was perhaps the Buddha's first opportunity at that time to witness a vast congregation of His people who were busy in their toil and grim struggle for existence. The opportunity also came at a time when He was fast growing into wisdom. He was gripped with the spectacle of colour, noise and movement but His quick mind and keen penetrating insight soon discovered that much avoidable pain, sorrow, suffering and cruelty lay hidden beneath the apparent gaiety and colour of a popular festival.

He discovered that the struggle for existence for mankind and specially those that who were poor, backward and weak, in a competitive social order, was as cruel and selfish as it was in the animal kingdom. He also noticed that domestic animals carried much of the burden of man's own toil on their back. In fact these creatures were actually being ground under this burden.

His kind heart sympathized with the down-trodden serf and the labourer and He pitied the lot of the kine which carried the cruel yoke on their shoulders and toiled without respite for the benefit of man.

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