سرنوشت
در طول یک جنگ مهم، یک زنرال ژاپنی تصمیم گرفت که به دشمن یورش ببرد ولو اینکه تعدادافراد سپاه او بیشتر بودند.
او به پیروزی سپاهش اطمینان داشت، اما سربازها دچار تردید بودند. در راه نبرد، آنها در یک معبد مذهبی توقف کردند. بعد از دعا همراه سربازان، ژنرال سکه ای بیرون آورد و گفت :"حالا شیر یا خط می کنیم،اگر شیر آمد ما پیروز می شویم . اگر خط آمد شکست خواهیم خورد". سرنوشت معلوم خواهد شد.
او سکه را به هوا پرتاب کرد و همه مشتاقانه تا به زمین برسد آن را نگاه می کردند. شیر آمد. سربازها خیلی خوشحال و سرشار ازاطمینان شدند ،چنان که با قوت تمام به دشمن یورش بردند و پیروز شدند
پس از جنگ یک ستوان به ژنرال اظهار کرد:" کسی قادر به تغییر سرنوشت نیست"
"کاملن درسته"زنرال همانطوری که سکه را به ستوان نشان می داد این پاسخ را داد ، سکه ای که هر دو رویش شیر بود.
Christian Buddha
Christian Buddha
One of master Gasan's monks visited the university in Tokyo. When he returned, he asked the master if he had ever read the Christian Bible. "No," Gasan replied, "Please read some of it to me." The monk opened the Bible to the Sermon on the Mount in St. Matthew, and began reading. After reading Christ's words about the lilies in the field, he paused. Master Gasan was silent for a long time. "Yes," he finally said, "Whoever uttered these words is an enlightened being. What you have read to me is the essence of everything I have been trying to teach you here!"
(In another version of this story, it is a Christian who reads the Bible passage to Gasan.)
People's reactions to this story:
"It's so sad that wars are fought over differences in "religion," when in reality all the world's religions are saying the same essential things. If nations really took religion to heart, so many lives would be saved."
"If what is true for you is true, and what is true for me is true, than really nothing is true. If there are no absolutes in the universe higher than our own opinions or experiences, than we live on an ever shifting sand. True truth is true whether we know it, or believe it. It is absolute, unchanging, and independent of our reactions to it. God is God and we are not him. I believe this story is an attempt to dilute the hard division line that the Bible deliberately draws. Our culture trys to offer solutions that do not offend anyone. I wonder how Master Gasan would react to Christ's words "no one may come to the Father but by me." Or "the kingdom of heaven advances violently, and violent men lay hold of it."?"I think this is saying that a great lesson can come out of one short story. Something that someone is searching for desperately can be revealed in one simple story."
"This story held no interest for me. I don't believe in the existence of God and therefore believe that the Bible is a bunch of bologna!"
"Universalism is an extremely faulty world view. All the worlds religions do not teach the same thing. Religion is not about being good to your fellow man, or doing nice things to other people. So many of these comments seem to think that because most religions teach that, in general, you should'nt kill people, and you should'nt steal, and that you should feed the poor, etc., that its all the same thing. That misses the point entirely, and trivializes a vast amount of the most deeply held beliefs of the world's populace. Religion is about what you are, or at least the part of you that is you and not just molecules combined together in unique ways. The most important question that religion tries to answer are "How should we act towards other people?" but "How should we act towards God?" How we act towards others is a by-product of our relationship to the Divine." "There is only One God!"
"Master Gasan found a pleasant verse. How would he have responded to less beautiful Revelations or Oholibah in Ezekial 23:10.""Every religion has an awareness of the basic ethical principles that govern humanity. Anything else that a religion teaches is not about the human but about the divine."
"There is nothing even slightly Zen about this 'story.' It is an embarrassing, childish attempting to usurp the notion of Zen to endorse an unenlightened acceptance of Christian dogma without study, introspection, or question. Sad you published it. I admire both Christ and Buddah greatly, but this is catechism, rote dogma, not enlightenment."
"I think Gasan was so relieved that he finally got his point across to the monks!"
"This situation is similar to thinking about different races. People may look different on the outside, but when you look on the inside, everyone is basically the same."
"This story gives me a feeling of unity with everyone - I like that."
"This story is BORING! It begins nowhere and ends the same way. Shouldn't the essence of his teachings be understandable so we all can be enlightened as well? Master Gasan sounds like a fake or a very poor teacher"
"It sounds like Master Gasan has no idea of what he is talking about."
"Different people may be trying to convey the same message to others, but are going about it in different ways. I think that's good - diversity is good."
"We should always be learning. No one knows everything."
"Anyone can be a teacher."
"Gasan realizes that the monk's might become interested in what the Bible says, so he tries to act like he understands and believes in the Bible. He is trying to get the monks to respect him and think that these words and thoughts were also his."
"Cultural prejudices prevent us from seeing the Universals. It is irrational to think that a different truth applies to everyone."
"All races across the world are teaching the same ideas through religion, but one person's way of teaching may differ from another."
"I think the story is trying to say that we can ALL be right - or that sometimes a person needs to leave their usual surroundings in order to see and understand what's in front of their face."
"How could Master Gasan never have read the Bible? Maybe that's the point of the story - even a Zen master can be illiterate."
"I read this story twice and didn't like it. I felt like I needed more, but I wasn't sure what."
"This story seems choppy and unfinished."
"'Lillies of the field' is a rather zen story, encouraging naturalness acceptance of being.""It is interesting that when presented with the Bible, the Master was open to listening. I don't find the same to be true when the situation is reversed,
. It feels very comfortable to me to be Buddhist and still feel at peace with others who do not share my views." "Maybe the point is that we don't need Bibles OR Zen teachers to find enlightenment. We already have it within ourselves."
"This comment is not about the story but about the other comments: Taken collectively, they illustrate Martin Luther's observation, 'A book is like a mirror -- if an ape looks in, no saint will look out!'"
Banishing a Ghost
Banishing a Ghost
The wife of a man became very sick. On her deathbed, she said to him, "I love you so much! I don't want to leave you, and I don't want you to betray me. Promise that you will not see any other women once I die, or I will come back to haunt you."
For several months after her death, the husband did avoid other women, but then he met someone and fell in love. On the night that they were engaged to be married, the ghost of his former wife appeared to him. She blamed him for not keeping the promise, and every night thereafter she returned to taunt him. The ghost would remind him of everything that transpired between him and his fiancee that day, even to the point of repeating, word for word, their conversations. It upset him so badly that he couldn't sleep at all.
Desperate, he sought the advice of a Zen master who lived near the village. "This is a very clever ghost," the master said upon hearing the man's story. "It is!" replied the man. "She remembers every detail of what I say and do. It knows everything!" The master smiled, "You should admire such a ghost, but I will tell you what to do the next time you see it."
That night the ghost returned. The man responded just as the master had advised. "You are such a wise ghost," the man said, "You know that I can hide nothing from you. If you can answer me one question, I will break off the engagement and remain single for the rest of my life." "Ask your question," the ghost replied. The man scooped up a handful of beans from a large bag on the floor, "Tell me exactly how many beans there are in my hand."
At that moment the ghost disappeared and never returned.
People's reactions to this story:
"Ghosts are just human and can't know or do anything that a human can't."
"No one knows everything. Not even a spirit. You can be wise in some ways, but not in all ways."
"The ghost kept coming back because the man was always impressed by how it seemed to know everything. It had power over him. But when he finally stood up to it, and challenged it, the ghost disappeared forever."
"The ghost is actually a part of the man. So it couldn't know anything that the man himself didn't know."
"The ghost comes from the man's own mind. He created it. It is his own guilt that came back to haunt him."
"The reason something haunts us is because we keep our attention on it. When we move on beyond it it will disappear."
"To me, this story just shows that souls have memories, but not enlightenment."
"I don't like the ending. I read the story with high expectations, but felt let down in the
end."
"Why didn't the ghost know that the man had seen a Zen master?"
"If the wife really loved the husband, how could she subject him to such a promise?"
"Everything the ghost knew didn't amount to a handful of beans!"
هنوز نمردم
امپراطور از پیشوا گودو پرسید:پس از مرگ برای روح چه اتفاقی می افتد؟
گادو پاسخ داد: من چگونه بدانم؟
امپراتور گفت: چون شما یک پیشوا هستید
گادو گفت: بله آقا ، ولی نه یک آدم مرده
Not Dead Yet
The Emperor asked Master Gudo, "What happens to a man of enlightenment after death?"
"How should I know?" replied Gudo.
"Because you are a master," answered the Emperor.
"Yes sir," said Gudo, "but not a dead one."
People's reactions to this story:
"Knowledgeable people are not afraid to say "I don't know" regarding things that they _cannot_ know. Observe all that you can. Do not invent what you cannot know."
"This story seems to me to be saying that we should rely on our own experience. That is the only thing that we truly "know". The master could not talk about what happened to an enlightened man after death because he had never experienced death."
Why should the emperor care? If he doesn't know, he's not enlightened and shouldn't try to act enlightened because he's not!!!
"I believe that this story is trying to tell us that first hand experience is the only kind of knowlage we can truely have."
"I guess that the master is still not enlightened completely."
A wise man knows that he is not wise-just like Socrates.
The truely wise are not afraid to say "I don't know."
To know that you know what you know is all anyone can really know!!
Your alive so mind your own business!
I think master Gudo wants the emporer to realise he should not think of the future but now.
The future is unforseeable and the past is but dead images, we only really experience the present moment.
When one answers a question with another question that person is avoiding answering the question. Maybe the Zen master knows the answer and doesn't want to share it with the Emperor.
Sometimes, if you have to answer a question with a question, maybe more thought should have been put into it before it was spoken.
A fool can ask more questions than a wise man can answer.
I think this story is beautiful. It states,very briefly, the great flaws I see with traditional western religions. They all promise life after death and eternal bliss-worshipping God. But they miss the point--it doesn't matter what happens after death if we live our lives right.
Cross each bridge when you get to it.
"The World of the Living and the World of the Dead....so close but yet so far."
Just shows that you shouldn't trust all the quacks who claim to know everything about the afterlife!
جانشین
تندرستی پیشوای ذن در حال زوال بود. او می دانست مرگش نزدیک است بنابراین به همه ی رهروها اعلام کرد که به زودی لباس و کاسه ی برنجش را به پیشوای بعدی معبد خواهد داد. او گفت که انتخابش بر اساس یک مسابقه خواهد بود.هر کسی که خواهان آن است باید خرد معنوی خود را با یک شعر
The old Zen master's health was fading. Knowing his death was near, he announced to all
the monks that he soon would be passing down his robe and rice bowl to appoint the next master of the monastery. His choice, he said, would be based on a contest. Anyone seeking the appointment was required to demonstrate his spiritual wisdom by submitting a poem. The head monk, the most obvious successor, presented a poem that was well composed and insightful. All the monks anticipated his selection as their new leader. However, the next morning another poem appeared on the wall in the hallway, apparently written during the dark hours of the night. It stunned everyone with it's elegance and profundity but no one knew who the author was. Determined to find this person, the old master began questioning all the monks. To his surprise, the investigation led to the rather quiet kitchen worker who pounded rice for the meals. Upon hearing the news, the jealous head monk and his comrades plotted to kill their rival. In secret, the old master passed down his robe and bowl to the rice pounder, who quickly fled from the monastery, later to become a widely renowned Zen teacher.
Successor
The old Zen master's health was fading. Knowing his death was near, he announced to all the monks that he soon would be passing down his robe and rice bowl to appoint the next master of the monastery. His choice, he said, would be based on a contest. Anyone seeking the appointment was required to demonstrate his spiritual wisdom by submitting a poem. The head monk, the most obvious successor, presented a poem that was well composed and insightful. All the monks anticipated his selection as their new leader. However, the next morning another poem appeared on the wall in the hallway, apparently written during the dark hours of the night. It stunned everyone with it's elegance and profundity but no one knew who the author was. Determined to find this person, the old master began questioning all the monks. To his surprise, the investigation led to the rather quiet kitchen worker who pounded rice for the meals. Upon hearing the news, the jealous head monk and his comrades plotted to kill their rival. In secret, the old master passed down his robe and bowl to the rice pounder, who quickly fled from the monastery, later to become a widely renowned Zen teacher.
People's reactions to this story:
"The person who everyone thinks is best doesn't always end up winning."
"The obvious choice is not always the best choice."
"Expect the unexpected. Take nothing for granted."
"Some people are born leaders."
"Never judge a book by its cover. It's a platitude, but it's true. Everyone has a hidden talent inside them."
"I would tell this story to children who lack self-esteem. It would allow them to see that anyone can accomplish anything, regardless of their appearance, race, money, etc."
"Why is it that the quiet people always seem to be the intelligent ones?"
"This story says a lot about 'little' people. Those who are not well known often are the ones who are well-composed and insightful."
"People you would never expect to be the 'ONE' usually turn out to be the best, if they're just given a chance."
"Sometimes the one you expect least to speak out does so, and does so wonderfully. I think this is a major problem with Americans. They prejudge so quickly."
"The greatest good can exist in the most unlikely places. Some people really hate this fact."
"The people who act like they are smart aren't really smart at all."
"Power corrupts."
"The other monks didn't understand that it was not a contest to find a winner, but to find a believer."
"People of great importance often fail to realize that everyone is equal.... And for the monks who plotted the killing, they are already part dead. "
"The kitchen worker would never have killed for the position. Knowledge (Zen) is not politics.
"Some people will do just about anything to get what they want."
"I guess pounding rice gives you lots of time to meditate and find selflessness."
"When small-minded people don't get what they want, their true colors come out."
"It pisses me off when the successful underdog is attacked for no other reason than just being the best! Were this story told to an impressionable individual, it might frightened that person away from trying to succeed."
"In life, there are no rules."
"Instead of this weak little rice pounder staying in the village, he runs away with the robe and bowl. He could have been an inspiration to the others in the village who didn't succeed! There are always people who are jealous, but to give into them only gives them another victory."
"The rice pounder didn't really want to become the next master. He just wanted to show his self without anyone knowing."
"Reminds me of King Arthur and how he pulled the sword out of the stone - but no one believed him."
"This sounds like Cinderella!"
"People who are truthful and genuine will go furthest in life."
"I guess the old Zen master learned to read the writing on the wall."