Buddha Parables

I enjoy reading buddha parables because they express so much clarity and wisdom.

The following buddha parables illustrate lessons about fate, forgiveness and the power of our minds.

This first buddha parable illustrates how everything is not already set in stone.

Fate Is In Our Hands

In a time long past, there was an old monk who, through diligent practice, had attained a certain degree of spiritual penetration.

"He had a young novice who was about eight years old. One day the monk looked at the boy's face and saw there that he would die within the next few months.

Saddened by this, he told the boy to take a long holiday and go and visit his parents. 'Take your time,' said the monk. 'Don't hurry back.' For he felt the boy should be with his family when he died.

Three months later, to his astonishment, the monk saw the boy walking back up the mountain.

When he arrived he looked intently at his face and saw that they boy would now live to a ripe old age.

'Tell me everything that happened while you were away,' said the monk. So the boy started to tell of his journey down from the mountain. He told of villages and towns he passed through, of rivers forded and mountains climbed.

Then he told how one day he came upon a stream in flood. He noticed, as he tried to pick his way across the flowing stream, that a colony of ants had become trapped on a small island formed by the flooding stream.

Moved by compassion for these poor creatures, he took a branch of a tree and laid it across one flow of the stream until it touched the little island.

As the ants made their way across, the boy held the branch steady, until he was sure all the ants had escaped to dry land.

Then he went on his way.

'So,' thought the old monk to himself, 'that is why the gods have lengthened his days.'

Compassionate acts can alter your fate. Conversely, acts of viciousness can adversely affect your fate."

from www.dharmaweb.org

The Buddha Teaches A Lesson On Forgiveness

This next budhha parable is one of my all time favorites. It says so much.

The Buddha was sitting under a tree talking to his disciples when a man came and spit on his face.

He wiped it off, and he asked the man, “What next? What do you want to say next?”

The man was a little puzzled because he himself never expected that when you spit on somebody’s face, he will ask, “What next?”

He had no such experience in his past. He had insulted people and they had become angry and they had reacted.

Or if they were cowards and weaklings, they had smiled, trying to bribe the man.

But Buddha was like neither, he was not angry nor in any way offended, nor in any way cowardly.

But just matter-of-factly he said, “What next?” There was no reaction on his part.

Buddha’s disciples became angry, they reacted.

His closest disciple, Ananda, said, “This is too much, and we cannot tolerate it. He has to be punished for it. Otherwise everybody will start doing things like this.”

Buddha said, “You keep silent. He has not offended me, but you are offending me.

He is new, a stranger. He must have heard from people something about me, that this man is an atheist, a dangerous man who is throwing people off their track, a revolutionary, a corrupter.

And he may have formed some idea, a notion of me. He has not spit on me, he has spit on his notion. He has spit on his idea of me because he does not know me at all, so how can he spit on me?

“If you think on it deeply,” Buddha said, “he has spit on his own mind. I am not part of it, and I can see that this poor man must have something else to say because this is a way of saying something.

Spitting is a way of saying something. There are moments when you feel that language is impotent: in deep love, in intense anger, in hate, in prayer.

There are intense moments when language is impotent. Then you have to do something.

When you are angry, intensely angry, you hit the person, you spit on him, you are saying something. I can understand him. He must have something more to say, that’s why I’m asking, “What next?”

The man was even more puzzled! And Buddha said to his disciples, “I am more offended by you because you know me, and you have lived for years with me, and still you react.”

Puzzled, confused, the man returned home. He could not sleep the whole night.

When you see a Buddha, it is difficult, impossible to sleep again the way you used to sleep before.

Again and again he was haunted by the experience. He could not explain it to himself, what had happened. He was trembling all over and perspiring.

He had never come across such a man; he shattered his whole mind and his whole pattern, his whole past.

The next morning he was back there. He threw himself at Buddha’s feet. Buddha asked him again, “What next? This, too, is a way of saying something that cannot be said in language.

When you come and touch my feet, you are saying something that cannot be said ordinarily, for which all words are a little narrow; it cannot be contained in them.”

Buddha said, “Look, Ananda, this man is again here, he is saying something. This man is a man of deep emotions.”

The man looked at Buddha and said, “Forgive me for what I did yesterday.”

Buddha said, “Forgive? But I am not the same man to whom you did it. The Ganges goes on flowing, it is never the same Ganges again.

Every man is a river. The man you spit upon is no longer here.

I look just like him, but I am not the same, much has happened in these twenty-four hours! The river has flowed so much.

So I cannot forgive you because I have no grudge against you.”

“And you also are new. I can see you are not the same man who came yesterday because that man was angry and he spit, whereas you are bowing at my feet, touching my feet.

How can you be the same man? You are not the same man, so let us forget about it.

Those two people, the man who spit and the man on whom he spit, both are no more. Come closer. Let us talk of something else.”

from www.youaretrulyloved.com

We Create Our Own Reality

We don't realize how much weight our thoughts carry but in actuality our thoughts create our whole worlds.

If we think we are sick (as in this next parable) we will get sick. If however, we see ourselves as well, we will be well.

This buddha parable highlights how powerful our minds really are.

Buddha Parable: The Power Of Our Minds

"There was once in China an expert archer. One day he went to a very high mountain with his bow on his back.

While strolling on the mountain, he became thirsty and wanted some water to drink. Fortunately, he found a small spring under a bush, and he immediately bent over the water to drink it out of his hands until his thirst was quenched.

However, when he finished drinking, he thought he saw a snake crawling in the water.

He immediately felt sick and wanted to vomit the water he had drunk, but the water did not come out.

He became seriously nervous about the water in his stomach, feeling something wriggling in it. When he got back home he became seriously ill.

Numerous doctors gave him medical treatment, but in vain; finally, he became nothing but skin and bones, resigning himself to die.

One day a traveler stopped at his home. Seeing the condition of the patient, he asked the reason.

The patient told him that he saw a snake crawling in the water of the spring and that he had swallowed the snake.

The traveler said that he could cure the illness if the patient would do as he told him to do, taking him to the same spring where he had drunk the water.

He told the patient, who was bearing the same bow on his back, to take the same pose as he had before.

The patient reluctantly bent over the water and was just going to scoop it up in his hands when he screamed out, that a snake was crawling in the water again.

The man told him to be quiet and to observe the snake more closely. The archer got control of himself and found that it was not a snake at all, but the shadow of the bow he was carrying on his back.

The archer realized that the snake he thought he had swallowed before was only the shadow of his bow.

After this, he felt quite relieved, and soon he regained his health.

We must recognize that our mind is the creator of our 'fate.'

In this case, the dust of fear accumulated on the archer's mind. When he wiped off this dust, he become healthy again."

H. Seki: 51ff from www.dharmaweb.org