A KORA OF KORAS

Yama and Yamantaka
There is a dramatic and very well known story in the Tibetan Buddhist
tradition that dramatizes the embrace of typically shunned forms of acting and
the ‘practice of reversals’:
A monk was told by his teacher that if he meditated and engaged in mantra and
prayer continuously for 50 years, he would achieve enlightenment. So the monk
found a remote cave, arranged for a local person to bring him food and meager
supplies every few months and then proceeded to unceasingly meditate, pray and
chant mantras in that cave.
After 49 years, 11 months and 29 days, on the very eve of his goal of 50 years of
practice and his promised enlightenment, two thieves entered the front of his cave
with a stolen bull. The thieves did not notice the holy man sitting in the back of
the cave and they talked between themselves about the best way to escape the
people pursuing them and they decided to kill the bull. The monk heard what
they were about to do and in his highly sensitive state was filled with compassion
for the bull and cried out from the darkness of the cave for them to stop. The
thieves were surprised and scared but quickly recovered when they saw the
weapon-less hermit.