Reading Notes

Crocodile in River - Tecolutla - Veracruz - Mexico - 01

I loved this week's reading, I liked that it was several short stories. That made it easy to keep my attention focused. My favorite story of them was 'The Crocodile in the River'. It was the first one that was the Buddha telling a story about a past life, and I just thought the whole murderous monk being the crocodile was really interesting.

I decided that's the story I will retell this week, so here are my reading notes.

The story begins by saying the Buddha is telling it when he finds out about one of his monks, Devadatta, planning to kill him. My first question was that I wonder who exactly he's talking to. He says "brethren," so it seems he's talking to more than one person. I wonder if it is only his most trusted monks. I would want to include more detail on that in my retelling.

I also have to wonder why these crocodile females are so obsessed with a monkey's heart??? I don't really get that. It would make more sense to me if it said something like, there was a legend that the Bodhisatta's heart gave great power to whoever ate it, or something like that. The way it is now, I don't know why she wants his heart specifically. 

And of course the Bodhisatta outwits the crocodile, that's no surprise. I do wonder if the fact about not being able to keep their eyes and mouth open at the same time is true though. It would be really interesting if so.

I think after reading the story, I'm left wondering a lot more about what happens in the present day. So I think I might like to actually focus on that part of the story more than the crocodile and monkey story. I look forward to getting creative with it since there's so little detail!

Story source: Vanarinda Jataka, in The Jataka: Volume 1 translated by Robert Chalmers.

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