If they don't understand you...

A fervent Buddhist lady made every effort to love others. But every time she went to the market, a merchant made indecent proposals to her.

One rainy morning, when the man bothered her once again, she lost control and hit him on the face with her umbrella.

That same afternoon, she sought out a monk and told him what had happened.
“I am ashamed,” she said. “I couldn’t control my hate.”

“You did wrong to hate him,” answered the monk. ” But life is about communicating our feelings to each other – and you need to understand that people are different”.

“The next time he says something, fill your heart with goodness.
“And hit him again with your umbrella, because that’s the only language he knows.”

That Which Never Dies

A woman's husband died. She was young, had only one child. She wanted to commit sati, she wanted to jump in the funeral pyre with her husband, but this small child prevented her. She had to live for this small child.

But then the small child died; now it was too much. She went almost insane, asking people, "Is there any physician anywhere who can make my child alive again? I was living only for him, now my whole life is simply dark." It happened that Buddha was coming to the town, so people said, "You take the child to Buddha. Tell him that you were living for this child, and the child has died, and ask him, 'You are such a great enlightened person, call him back to life! Have mercy on me!'"

So she went to Buddha. She put the dead body of the child at Buddha's feet and she said, "Call him back to life. You know all the secrets of life, you have attained to the ultimate peak of existence. Can't you do a small miracle for a poor woman?"

Buddha said, "I will do it, but there is a condition."

She said, "I will fulfill any condition."

Buddha said, "The condition is, you go around the town and from a house where nobody has ever died, bring a few mustard seeds."

The woman could not understand the strategy. She went to one house, and they said, "A few mustard seeds? We can bring a few bullock carts full of mustard seeds if Buddha can bring your son back to life. But we have seen so many deaths in our family...." It was a small village, and she went to every house. Everybody was ready: "How many seeds do you want?" But the condition was impossible because they had all seen so many deaths in their families....

By the evening she understood that whoever is born is going to die, so what is the point of getting the child back again? "He will die again. It is better for you yourself to seek the eternal, which is never born and never dies." She came back, empty-handed.

Buddha asked, "Where are the mustard seeds?" She laughed. In the morning she had come crying; now she laughed, and she said, "You tricked me! Everybody who is born is going to die. There is no family in the whole world where nobody has died. So I don't want my son to be brought again back to life--what is the point? Forget about the child. Initiate me into the art of meditation so that I can go into the land, the space of immortality, where birth and death have never happened."

Wisdom of the Buddha

Buddha was well known for his ability to respond to evil with good. There was a man who knew about his reputation and he traveled miles and miles and miles to test Buddha. When he arrived and stood before Buddha, he verbally abused him constantly, he insulted him, he challenged him, he did everything he could to offend Buddha.

Buddha was unmoved, he simply turned to the man and said, “May I ask you a question?”

The man responded with “Well, what?”

Buddha said, “If someone offers you a gift and you decline to accept it to whom then does it belong?”

The man said, “Then it belongs to the person who offered it”

Buddha smiled, “That is correct. So if I decline to accept your abuse does it not then still belong to you?”

The man was speechless and walked away.