My son read me a story on Sunday night, from an illustrated book entitled Zen Shorts, by Jon Muth. His mother and he had stumbled across the book on the weekly trip to the library. The book is meant to grant children a window into Eastern philosophy, and it involves a trio of kids who befriend a wise panda bear named Stillwater. To one of the children, he tells the following tale (with full attribution to Mr. Muth):
Two traveling monks reached a town where there was a young woman waiting to step out of her sedan chair. The rains had made deep puddles and she couldn’t step across without spoiling her silken robes. She stood there, looking very cross and impatient. She was scolding her attendants. They had nowhere to place the packages they held for her, so they couldn’t help her across the puddle.
The young monk noticed the young woman, said nothing, and walked by. The older monk quietly picked her up and put her on her back, transported her across the water, and put her down on the other side. She didn’t thank the other monk, she just shoved him out of the way and departed.
As they continued on their way, the young monk was brooding and preoccupied. After several hours, unable to hold her silence, he spoke out. “That young woman back there was very selfish and rude, but you picked her up on your back and carried her! Then she didn’t even thank you!”
“I set the woman down hours ago,” replied the older monk. “Why are you still carrying her?”
The story ends there, and Stillwater, the wise panda, looks to the last of the children, holding a grudge against one of his child friends, whether he has carried his own load of frustration long enough. But I turned 44 today, and have carried many burdens in my life (and, to be sure, have been carried as well – far more so than anything in the aggregate that I have tried to carry). I held my son in my arms as the day ended tonight and he asked whether I’d still be there for him, or whether I’d leave him someday as I had left my wife – his mother – before. I told him that I hadn’t left her alone, although we were no longer husband and wife. But I told him that together, she and I would never leave him, of that I could promise. And it struck me that the old Zen story had been left incomplete.
“I understand,” said the younger monk. “But where are the servants that you left behind? Are they not still on the other side of the mud, waiting to cross?”
At that, the older monk stopped, put down his walking staff, and folded down on the ground. The younger monk bowed deeply, and sat down beside him. The older monk took a rice ball from his pack, filled with fish, and split it neatly in two. He shared it with the younger monk. They ate together in silence, and then stood up as one.
Let us stand up together. Hope you all have a wonderful next year.
Really appreciate these thoughts today Peter. Had a discussion with my daughter this week about being kind to people and how that is more important than lots of other things in our life and we don’t recognize it early enough.