There is a wonderful little story about two monks who lived together in a monastery for many years; they were great friends. Then they died within a few months of one another. One of them got reborn in the heaven realms, the other monk got reborn as a worm in a dung pile. The one up in the heaven realms was having a wonderful time, enjoying all the heavenly pleasures. But he started thinking about his friend, "I wonder where my old mate has gone?" So he scanned all of the heaven realms, but could not find a trace of his friend. Then he scanned the realm of human beings, but he could not see any trace of his friend there, so he looked in the realm of animals and then of insects. Finally he found him, reborn as a worm in a dung pile... Wow! He thought: "I am going to help my friend. I am going to go down there to that dung pile and take him up to the heavenly realm so he too can enjoy the heavenly pleasures and bliss of living in these wonderful realms."
So he went down to the dung pile and called his mate. And the little worm wriggled out and said: "Who are you?", "I am your friend. We used to be monks together in a past life, and I have come up to take you to the heaven realms where life is wonderful and blissful." But the worm said: "Go away, get lost!" "But I am your friend, and I live in the heaven realms," and he described the heaven realms to him. But the worm said: "No thank you, I am quite happy here in my dung pile. Please go away." Then the heavenly being thought: "Well if I could only just grab hold of him and take him up to the heaven realms, he could see for himself." So he grabbed hold of the worm and started tugging at him; and the harder he tugged, the harder that worm clung to his pile of dung.
Do you get the moral of the story? How many of us are attached to our pile of dung?
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Beautiful buddhist stories
It has to be because buddhismus has not written documents for many times and monks and believers had to learn texts by heart, or maybe the stories are easyer to understand and to remember - I don't know. But I think buddhist stories are very interesting and wise. I like them really very much. And here I wanted to post one of them.
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I like some of the Buddhist stories - the Jataka tales.I posted one or two in http://dhammadelights.blogspot.com. I don't understand some of them but the one I understand are really very nice!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a student at ILTK, lamas loved to accompain their explanations with learning stories. It was very clear for us because it was not to read something yourself, something that you are not ready to understand, but it was simple explanation of difficult phylosophical and religious questions. And they seemd to be very interesting and entertaiful.
ReplyDeleteThat is why I love learnig stories. They simplify the understanding of difficult things.
I thought the moral of the story was... happiness resides within, no matter if you're stuck in dung pile... or in the heavens... the sorrow that may befall the heavenly monk is a result of his desires to close with his friend. Am I wrong? What do I know... I'm just a dumb kid. Sorry for misunderstanding.
ReplyDeleteI interpreted it in an other way but I think you are right. To be in the heaven is not a sign that the person became Illuminated...
DeleteThank you very much for your explanation! It's one of my favorite stories but now I understood that I did not understand it. :-))))