Wenn nicht hier und jetzt, wo und wann dann?
Just testing…
One day a young Buddhist on his journey home came to the banks of a wide river. Staring hopelessly at the great obstacle in front of him, he pondered for hours on just how to cross such a wide barrier. Just as he was about to give up his pursuit to continue his journey he saw a great teacher on the other side of the river. The young Buddhist yells over to the teacher, “Oh wise one, can you tell me how to get to the other side of this river”?
The teacher ponders for a moment looks up and down the river and yells back, “My son, you are on the other side”.
One day, a Buddhist Monk named I-hsiu (literary, “One Rest”) took his young student to go to town to do some business. As they approached a small river, they saw a very pretty girl walking back and forth looking very concerned.
“Lady”, asked I-hsiu, “you look very concerned. What is troubling you?”
“I want to cross the river to visit my dad who is very sick, but the bridge had fallen. Where is the next nearest bridge?”
“The next closest one is many miles away. But, don’t worry, I will carry you across the river.”
So I-hsiu carried the girl on his back and walked across the river stream. Once they reached the other side, he put her down and, saying farewell to each other, went on their ways separately.
Observing the whole thing, the young student was rather uneasy. He thought, “the Master taught us that women are man-eating tigers (see the story “Women are Tigers” in this site) yet today he carried a pretty girl on his back across a river! That does not make any sense. Isn’t the Lord Buddha teach us to keep a distance from a stranger girl?”
Over the next couple of month, the whole thing was still bothering him in his mind. Finally, the student could not stand it any longer and raised the issue with I-hsiu.
Upon hearing this, I-hsiu bursted into laughter: “I had put down the girl ever since I had crossed the river. You must be very tired carrying her around for the last two months!”
One day Mara, the Evil One, was travelling through the villages of India with his attendants. he saw a man doing walking meditation whose face was lit up on wonder. The man had just discovered something on the ground in front of him. Mara’s attendant asked what that was and Mara replied, “A piece of truth.”
“Doesn’t this bother you when someone finds a piece of truth, O Evil One?” his attendant asked. “No,” Mara replied. “Right after this, they usually make a belief out of it.”