dinotino®© D` Life Line

Once upon a time a big monk and a little monk were travelling together. They came to the bank of a river and found the bridge was damaged. They had to wade across the river. There they found a pretty lady stuck at the damaged bridge who couldn't cross the river on her own. The young monk offered to carry the pretty lady across the river on his back. The lady accepted. The old monk was shocked by the move of the young monk. "How can big disciple brother carry a lady when we are supposed to avoid all intimacy with females?" thought the little monk. But he kept quiet.

The young monk carried the lady across the river and the small monk followed unhappily. When they had crossed the river, the young monk let the lady down and they parted ways with her.All along the way for several miles, the old monk was very unhappy with the act of the young monk. He was making up all kinds of accusations about the young monk in his head. This got him madder and madder. But he still kept quiet. And the young monk had no inclination to explain his situation. Finally, at a rest point many hours later, the old monk could not stand it any further, he burst out angrily at the younger monk.

"How can you claim yourself a devout monk, when you seize the first opportunity to touch a female, especially when she is very pretty? All your teachings to me make you a big hypocrite."

The young monk looked surprised and said, "I had put down the pretty lady at the river bank many hours ago, how come you are still carrying her along?"

This very old Chinese zen story reflects the thinking of many people today. We encounter many unpleasant things in our life, they irritate and make us angry. Sometimes, they even cause us lot of hurt or make us bitter. But like the old monk, we are not willing to let them go away.

We keep on carrying the baggage of the "unpleasant memory" with us. We let them keep on coming back to hurt us, make us angry, make us bitter and cause us a lot of agony. Why?

Simply because we are not willing to put down or let go the baggage of the "unpleasant memory/feelings" . We should let it go immediately after the unpleasant event is over. This will help in removing the agony.

Signing Off -dinotino®©-

posted by dinotino ®© D` Life Line @ 13:38