What’s going on with “Nefer cuts his flesh to feed eagles and sacrifices his body to feed tigers”

1. Cutting meat to feed eagles:

Before he became a Buddha, Sakyamuni went through a period of ascetic cultivation. Legend has it that one day he was meditating in the forest. At this time, an eagle was chasing a dove in the sky. When the pigeon was desperate, it saw Sakyamuni and flew into his sleeve in an attempt to escape the disaster.

Sakyamuni naturally understood the dove’s desire to survive, so he said to the eagle: Please let this dove go. God will provide you with a good life.

The eagle replied: If I release this dove, then the dove will live, but I will starve to death. Where will the virtue of a good life come from?

Sakyamuni said: I am willing to exchange the same weight of meat for the life of a dove. So he took a scale, put the pigeon on the other side of the scale, and then started cutting his own flesh with a knife. It is strange to say that the pigeon is not heavy, but Gautama Buddha cut off a lot of meat and still could not balance the scale.

Finally, he jumped into the scale himself, and the weight was finally balanced. He closed his eyes and said, "If I don't go to hell, whoever does, just eat me."

2. Sacrificing one’s life to feed the tiger:

The prince of King Ganda Shili did not like the glory and wealth, so he fled to live in the mountains and forests, where he followed his master to practice.

There is a deep valley below the mountain forest where the prince is. At that time, there was a hungry tiger in the deep valley. She had just given birth to seven tiger cubs. It was a cold winter and there was heavy snow. The tigress held the cubs for three days under the deep valley. Because she was afraid that the cubs would freeze to death, the tigress never died. Fa went out to look for food and endured hunger to protect the little tiger.

But the heavy snow continued to fall, and the tiger mother and her baby were trapped in a deep valley due to hunger and sleepiness, and were about to die; the tigress was so hungry that she even wanted to eat her cubs.

When the immortals saw this scene, they asked: "Who can give up his own body to save these tigers below?" The prince was practicing meditation at the time. He heard the question from his concentration and thought: " Very good! My wish came true."

As soon as the prince finished speaking, mandala flowers fell like rain, and the earth shook. The prince took off his deerskin clothing, wrapped it around his leader, jumped off the cliff, and fell next to the hungry tiger. After the tigress received the flesh and blood of the Bodhisattva, both the tigress and her cubs were saved.

Extended information:

The Buddha preached his teachings in two parallel ways. One is in the form of teachings and reasoning, and the other is in the form of metaphors with vivid supernatural stories. The story recorded in the Buddhist scriptures about the Buddha's previous life - Prince Mahasattva sacrificed his life to feed tigers through spiritual practice, is a vivid metaphorical story about supernatural powers.

The story goes that the prince thought to himself: I donated my body countless times in the reincarnation of life and death a long time ago and lost my life in vain. Some are due to greed, some are due to anger, and some are due to ignorance. This passage tells us that greed arises like a hungry tiger, anger arises like a ferocious tiger, and infatuation arises like a drunken tiger. The tiger's bloody mouth devours human flesh, leaving nothing behind.

When ordinary people were not enlightened, no one was devoured by tigers of greed, anger and ignorance, and wasted their lives in vain. Buddha Sakyamuni was not the only one. Before ordinary people are awakened, they will spend countless calamities feeding tigers with their bodies. It's just that I didn't know it before I woke up.

Baidu Encyclopedia - Sacrifice yourself to feed a tiger