Triple gem student :
“For myself, this was a good example that showed the difficulty of attaining Stream-“entry even no matter how intelligent or gifted one is. With Queen Mallika, she even had Venerable Ananda visit the palace regularly to teach the dhamma and she still didn’t attain stream-entry within her life time. But still learning and practicing the dhamma would benefit the life stream (Queen Mallika) bhava, jati’s to come.”
- Yes, exactly our efforts towards the Dhamma are not in vain. Sometimes our abilities do not guarantee our success. She will probably end up becoming sotāpanna. I invite everyone to read Theragatha and Therigatha. These are verses from male and female Arahant disciples. They tell how they struggled for Nibbāna for lifetimes and the Kusalas they developed. Venerable Arahant Kondanna (First disciple of Lord Buddha) avoided apayas for 100,000 Kappas!!! He learned the Dhamma from Lord Buddha Padumutarra and vowed to become a great arahant. Thanks to the Kusulas he acquired while serving the Sasana of Lord Padumutarra he never again took rebirth in the apayas. As a reminder, an arupa Brahma lives a maximum of 84,000 Kappas. The Venerable’s lifestream has passed 100,000 Kappas without seeing these worlds of pain ! It’s still incredible he reached Nibbāna at the end of this period. This is what should motivate us even if we don’t see visible results.
