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Post by SigniferLux on Aug 20, 2013 20:41:30 GMT
A boy came upon a frowning man walking along the road to town. “What’s wrong?” he asked. The man held up a tattered bag and moaned, “All that I own in this wide world barely fills this miserable, wretched sack.”
“Too bad,” said the boy, and with that, he snatched the bag from the man’s hands and ran down the road with it.
Having lost everything, the man burst into tears and, more miserable than before, continued walking. Meanwhile, the boy quickly ran around the bend and placed the man’s sack in the middle of the road where he would have to come upon it.
When the man saw his bag sitting in the road before him, he laughed with joy, and shouted, “My sack! I thought I’d lost you!”
Watching through the bushes, the boy chuckled. “Well, that’s one way to make someone happy!”
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Post by SigniferLux on Aug 20, 2013 20:52:13 GMT
After a long trip, which lasted more than two months, through the forest, Nikela's group eventually reached some plains and then a city. They decided to stay there, in the local church of Sarenrae, where they were greeted as pilgrims and welcomed heartily.
Mikela didn't lose time and went to the priests, one by one, trying to collect stories for her book.
The devotee knelt to be initiated into discipleship. The teacher whispered the sacred words into his ear, warning him not to reveal it to anyone.
“What will happen if I do?” asked the devotee.
Said the teacher, “Anyone you reveal the words to will be liberated from the bondage of ignorance and suffering, but you yourself will be excluded from discipleship and suffer damnation.”
No sooner had he heard those words, than the devotee rushed to the marketplace, collected a large crowd around him, and repeated the sacred words for all to hear.
The disciples later reported this to the teacher and demanded that the man be expelled from the monastery for his disobedience.
The teacher smiled and said, “He has no need of anything I can teach. His action has shown him to be a teacher in his own right.”
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Post by SigniferLux on Aug 20, 2013 21:13:44 GMT
The land was harsh there, but not as harsh as one could imagine. The fertile land was already given to people and most of the commoners were hunters or servants, paying a lot to stay in a cool place.
Though, Nikela saw a weird sign, from which, after asking the owner of the land, came a story.
A Quaker had this sign put on a vacant piece of land next to his home: “This land will be given to anyone who is truly satisfied.”
A wealthy farmer who was riding by, stopped to read the sign and said to himself, “Since our friend the Quaker is so ready to part with this plot, I might as well claim it before someone else does. I am a rich man and have all I need, so I certainly qualify.”
With that he went up to the door and explained what he was there for. “And art thou truly satisfied?” the Quaker asked.
“I am, indeed, for I have everything I need.”
“Friend,” said the Quaker, “if thou art satisfied, what dost thou want the land for?”
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Post by SigniferLux on Aug 20, 2013 22:36:55 GMT
In her travels, Nikela came upon a man meditating, and through his words wrote a story.
To the disciples who were always asking for words of wisdom the Master said, “Wisdom is not expressed in words. It reveals itself in action.”
But when he saw them plunge headlong into activity, he laughed and said, “That isn’t action. That’s motion.”
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Post by SigniferLux on Aug 20, 2013 22:40:18 GMT
For a while, the group traveled with some merchants in a trading caravan. There was a man who accompanied the caravan who was blind though had many stories to share with Nikela.
A woman once came to the teacher and asked him to please tell her son to give up eating sugar. The teacher asked the woman to bring the boy back in a week. Exactly one week later the woman returned, and the teacher said to the boy, “Please give up eating sugar.” The woman thanked the teacher, and, as she turned to go, asked him why he had not said those words a week ago.”
The teacher replied, “Because a week ago, I had not given up eating sugar.”
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Post by SigniferLux on Aug 20, 2013 22:55:08 GMT
Nikela grew fond of the monk, Dalon. Although they seemed like they had many similarities, they ended up fighting a lot of times. One day, they were in a park, shouting at each other angrily. Thankfully, a priest of the local church came and spoke to them through a story, which Nikela wrote down that night in her book.
A Calidorian saint who was visiting a river to take a bath saw a family shouting angrily at each other. He turned to his disciples smiled and asked, “Why do people shout in anger shout at each other?”
His disciples thought for a while, then one of them said, ‘Because when we lose our calm, we shout.’
“But, why should you shout when the other person is next to you? You can as well tell him what you have to say in a soft manner.” asked the saint. Some disciples offered answers but none satisfied them. Finally the saint explained,
“When two people are angry at each other, their hearts are very distant. To cover that distance they must shout to be able to hear each other. The angrier they are, the more they will have to shout to hear each other across that great distance.
What happens when two people fall in love? They don’t shout at each other, but talk softly because their hearts are very close. The distance between them is either nonexistent or very small…”
The saint continued, “When they love each other even more, what happens? They do not speak, they only whisper and they get even closer to each other in their love. Finally they even need not whisper, they only look at each other and that’s all. That is how close two people are when they love each other.’
He looked at his disciples and said, “So when you argue do not let your hearts get distant, Do not say words that distance you further or else there will come a day when the distance is so great that you will not find the path to return.”
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Post by SigniferLux on Aug 20, 2013 22:59:07 GMT
Nikela and Dalon finally married each other, asking for the priest to help them with that. They both went to the church occassionally, to listen to the stories the old priest had to share.
The visiting historian was disposed to be argumentative. “Do not our efforts change the course of human history?” he demanded.
“Oh yes, they do,” said the Master.
“And have not our human labors changed the earth?”
“They certainly have,” said the Master.
“Then why do you teach that human effort is of little consequence?”
Said the teacher, “Because when the wind subsides, the leaves still fall.”
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Post by SigniferLux on Aug 20, 2013 23:01:53 GMT
Many people gathered to listen to the old priest's stories, trying to find inspiration to live on in the hot desert days and cold desert nights.
A teacher lived the simplest kind of life in a small, remote hut. One night a thief entered the hut, only to discover there was nothing in it to steal. The teacher returned and caught him in the act.
“You may have come a long way to visit me,” he told the disillusioned prowler, “and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.”
The thief was bewildered. But he took his clothes and crept back into the night.
The teacher sat naked, watching the moon. “Poor fellow,” he mused. “I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon.”
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Post by SigniferLux on Aug 20, 2013 23:04:01 GMT
“What is the highest act a person can perform?”
“Sitting in meditation.”
But the teacher himself was rarely seen to sit in meditation. He was ceaselessly engaged in housework and fieldwork, in meeting people and writing books. He even took up the bookkeeping chores of the monastery.
“Why then, do you spend all your time in work?”
“When one works, one need not cease to sit in meditation.”
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Post by SigniferLux on Aug 20, 2013 23:05:54 GMT
The teacher seemed quite impervious to what people thought of him. When the disciples asked how he had attained this stage of inner freedom, he laughed aloud and said:
“Till I was twenty I did not care what people thought of me.
After twenty I worried endlessly about what my neighbors thought.
Then one day after fifty I suddenly saw that they hardly ever thought of me at all.”
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Post by SigniferLux on Aug 20, 2013 23:07:13 GMT
The teacher once told the story of a priceless antique bowl that fetched a fortune at a public auction. It had been used by a tramp who ended his days in poverty, quite unaware of the value of the bowl with which he begged for pennies. When a disciple asked the teacher what the bowl stood for, the teacher said, “Your self!”
Asked to elaborate, he said, “All your attention is focused on the penny knowledge you collect from books and teachers. You would do better to pay attention to the bowl in which you hold it.”
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Post by SigniferLux on Aug 20, 2013 23:18:53 GMT
A traveller once came upon a place in Calidor where a great deal of building work was going on. He began to talk with the stone cutters and asking them about their work.
He approached the first worker and asked, “What are you doing?” The man, very disgruntled and obviously unhappy in his hard toil, replied, “I’m cutting these huge boulders with the simplest of tools and putting them together in the way I’ve been told to do. I’m sweating in this heat and my back is hurting. What’s more, I’m totally bored and I wish I didn’t have to do this hard and meaningless job.”
The traveller moved on quickly to interview a second worker. He asked the same question: “What are you doing?” The worker replied, “Well, I have a wife and children at home, so I come here every morning and I work these boulders into regular shapes, as I’m told to do. It gets repetitive sometimes, but it helps to feed my family and that’s all I want.”
Somewhat encouraged, the traveller went on to a third worker and asked, “And what are you doing?”
The third worker responded with shining eyes, as he pointed up to the heavens, “I’m building a cathedral!”
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Post by SigniferLux on Aug 20, 2013 23:20:16 GMT
A monk keeps promising his student that he will take him on a picnic but is always too busy to do so. One day they see a procession carrying a corpse.
“Where is he going?” the monk asks his student.
“On a picnic.”
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Post by SigniferLux on Aug 20, 2013 23:23:21 GMT
The last of the stories that the old priest told before he dissapeared from the city was:
Do not become slaves to any holy book. There was once a man who formed a religious cult and people regarded him as a very learned person. He had a few followers who recorded his instructions in a book. Over the years the book became voluminous with all sorts of instructions recorded therein. The followers were advised not to do anything without first consulting the holy book. Whenever the followers went and whatever they did, they would consult the book which served as the manual in guiding their lives. One day when the leader was crossing a timber bridge, he fell into the river. The followers were with him but none of them knew what to do under the circumstances. So they consulted the holy book.
“Help! Help!” the Master shouted, “I can’t swim.”
“Please wait a while Master. Please don’t get drowned,” they pleaded. “We are still seaching in our holy book. There must be an instruction on what to do if you fell off from a wooden bridge into a river.”
While they were thus turning over the pages of the holy book in order to find out the appropriate instruction, the teacher disappeared in the water and drowned.
This story confused the people listening to it, but Nikela nevertheless wrote it down.
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Post by SigniferLux on Aug 20, 2013 23:39:21 GMT
Nikela and her group have passed through the desert now to reach plains and mountains. In the next city they found, one build on a great hill, she found a small piece of paper with a story written in it. After reading it, she decided t owrite down the story.
A long time ago, there was a monastery in Calidor which possessed only one thing of any material value: a set of three beautiful, ancient scrolls on which was written the holy scriptures. One day, a monk yelled out to the priest that some-one was stealing the scrolls. Sure enough, the priest found that two of the scrolls were missing: the thief had dropped the third in his haste to escape. The priest grabbed the third scroll and went racing off after the thief. After a long chase, the exhausted thief fell at the priest’s feet, expecting some terrible punishment to be inflicted on him. Instead, the priest said gently, “My son, you left this scroll behind. The teaching is incomplete without it.” A short time after that, the thief returned to the monastery with the scrolls, and begged to be allowed to stay on as a monk.
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