This picture was taken during last year’s Paperhand Puppet Intervention’s show, “As The Crow Flies: Tales from Four Directions” at Forest Theater here in Chapel Hill, NC. To see more pics from the show, click here.

I liked this segment not just because of the awesome 40-foot Buddha that later walked through the aisles, but because of the story they conveyed:

Gautama (who later become Buddha) sat under a tree in the forest and vowed not to move until he reached enlightenment. During the next several weeks, Mara (considered an evil spirit, illusion, or simply a nuisance) and his daughters or helpers tempted Gautama with desire, lust, aversion, and so on.

Gautama remained calm during these trials. He sat and meditated while the demons whirled about, threatening and attacking him. The future Buddha remained so calm and centered that the thunderbolts Mara threw from the sky became lotus flowers. Mara and his followers eventually grew discouraged and left the forest; while Gautama has reached Enlightenment and becomes the Buddha.

This story reminds me to hold my ground when everything around me is going crazy. It is also similar to the Christian story of Satan’s temptation of Christ in the desert. Finally, it even reminds me of Tammy Faye (Bakker) Messner’s urgings to love your enemy, which she preached through puppets on her children’s TV show in the 1970s.

And speaking of puppets, you can still check out Paperhand Puppet’s current performance, “A Shoe for Your Foot” this weekend at the NC Museum of Art in lovely Raleigh, NC. You can read an article I wrote two years ago for The Daily Tar Heel about Paperhand here.