Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Real Beauty

I am fascinated by Zen stories and I will keep adding some of my favorites with additional thoughts here...

There were two temples in a village divided by a small wall. One temple had a young priest and the other had an old swami ji. The first temple had a beautiful small garden. One day some special guests were visiting the first temple. The priest got the whole temple cleaned, grass cut and all autumn leaves raked properly. The old swami ji was looking at these preparations curiously.  The priest saw the swami ji admiring his garden and asked if it looks beautiful. Swami ji asked him to pull him over the wall to the garden. Swami ji now went to the tree in the middle of the garden, held its trunk and shook it hard. All the autumn leaves fell in all directions. Swami ji walked back and said, “Now it looks beautiful again for this season”.

 How many times it happens that we start comparing Apples with Oranges (metaphorically), children with grown-ups, and our likings with the others' liking. This story took sometime to sink in but then I started admiring the garden with rustic look in autumn. Spring wont be charming without that either.

2 comments:

Bhaskar Narasimhaiah said...

I liked this story very much Arun.

....this is the work of value system residing in our mind.

There are no such things as beauty-ugly, good-bad, right-wrong, holy-evil, truth-lie and triumph-failure in the objective world.

These dualities are mere creations of mind. We, human beings with powerful and creative mind, take the divided or segmented world view.

The world is seamless and simply exists its way.

arunb said...

Thanks Bhaskar. Please keep contributing to the blog by adding your thoughts and any inspirational tales.

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I was born in the lap of Himalayas (Himachal Pradesh) in the home of educationalists. I grew up in an environment where asking questions was encouraged; and curiosity was considered foundation to enlightenment. I dedicate all my learning in life to those who encouraged me in my quest to “figure things out” and responded to my curiosities. Spiritual orientation helps me to accept possibilities beyond the realm of logic.