The Rabbit in the Moon

Looking out of my windows over the past few nights I've seen a large white moon in the clear sky and whenever I see a moon round about full I look for the rabbit.

There are various tales about a rabbit in or on the moon but I prefer the tale I was told in Sri Lanka over a decade ago by a stick-thin old man in the grounds of the ancient, ruined temples opposite the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy. It goes something like this:

A hunter was searching in the forests for food for his family but he failed to catch anything. Time and again he tried, but he failed. Close to starvation and death, the hunter built a fire, thinking that he would at least die warm. The rabbit saw all this and took pity on the hunter and leapt into the fire so that the hunter would be able to eat his cooked body and live to hunt again. The gods saw this supreme act of compassion and lifted up the rabbit and placed him in the moon as a symbol to mankind. The rabbit was an early incarnation of Lord Buddha on his journey through his lives on the road to enlightenment.

I like this story and I always think of it when I see a full moon. The old man in his white robe speaking to me in his broken English and me piecing the story together. It's re-told in Buddhist books (especially story books for the young) in different versions but this is my version, the version given to me by a kind old man welcoming a stranger one hot morning on my first trip to Sri Lanka. The day before I'd taken a train to Colombo and changed trains for a very crowded train up to Kandy in the hills, finding a creaking, old colonial hotel beside the lake and then going to the Temple of the Tooth to experience puja. It's a little treasure in my soul.

Can you see the rabbit?