Thank you for the beautiful stories.
Godspeed dear friends.
Adrián Franco
Franco Zevada y Asociados, S.C.
Paseo de las Palmas 755-1201
Lomas de Chapultepec
11000, D.F.
México
Cel. +(52-1) 55-5401-4898
Of. +(52) 55-5202-2050
Sent from my iPhone, lots of typos
El 06/01/2013, a las 19:29, FG <kolidc@xxxxxxxxx> escribió:
Date: January 6, 2013
The monastery of the heart - Stories
"Is there anything I can do to make myself enlightened?" the seeker asked
the teacher. "As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning,"
the teacher answered. "Then of what use are the spiritual exercises you
prescribe?" the seeker said. And the teacher responded, "To make sure you
are not asleep when the sun begins to shine."
Some monks came to see Abba Poemen and said to him: Tell us, when we see
brothers dozing during the sacred office, should we pinch them so they will
stay awake? The old man said to them: Actually, if I saw a brother
sleeping, I would put his head on my knees and let him rest.
From the Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mother
Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said: Abba, as much as I am able I
practice a small rule, a little fasting, some prayer and meditation, and
remain quiet, and as much as possible I keep my thoughts clean. What else
should I do? Then the old man stood up and stretched out his hands toward
heaven, and his fingers became like ten torches of flame. And he said: If
you wish, you can be turned into fire.
A rabbi, upon entering a room, saw his son deep in prayer. In the corner
stood a cradle with a crying baby. The rabbi asked his son, "Can't you
hear? There's a baby crying in this room." The son said, "Father, I was
lost in God." And the rabbi said, "One who is lost in God can see the very
fly crawling up the wall." –Abel Herzberg
A disciple asked the master, "What's the difference between knowledge and
enlightenment?" And the master answered, "When you have knowledge, you use
a torch to show the way. When you have enlightenment, you become a torch.
One day the Master told the disciples of meeting a pilot who flew laborers
from China into Burma during World War II to work on jungle roads. The
flight was long and boring so the laborers would take to gambling. Since
they had no money to gamble with, they gambled with their lives—the loser
jumped out of the plane without a parachute! "How terrible!" said the
horrified disciples. "True," said the Master. "But it made the game
exciting." Later in the day he said, "You never live so fully as when you
gamble with your lives."
One day Chou-chou fell down in the snow and called out, "Help me up; help
me up."
A monk came and lay down beside him. Then Chou-chou got up and went away.
A cobbler came to Rabbi Isaac of Ger and said, "Tell me what to do about my
morning prayer. My customers are poor people who have only one pair of
shoes. I pick up their shoes late in the evening and work on them most of
the night: at dawn there is still work to be d one if they are to have
their shoes ready before they go to work. Now my question is: "What should
I do about my morning prayer?" "What have you been doing till now?" the
Rabbi asked. "Sometimes I rush through the prayer quickly and get back to
my work—but then I feel bad about it. At other times I let the hour of
prayer go by. Then, too, I feel a sense of loss and every now and then, as
I raise my hammer from the shoes, I can almost hear my heart sigh, "What an
unlucky cobbler I am that I am not able to make my morning prayer." Said
the Rabbi, "If I were God, I would value that sigh more than the prayer."
A Buddhist teacher told this parable: A man was struck by an arrow shot by
an unknown assailant. He became so angry that he refused to allow the arrow
to be removed or his wound treated. "I will not treat the wound until the
archer is located, sees what he has done to me and is properly punished,"
he said. Days grew into weeks and weeks into months and the wound festered.
Finally the poison killed him. The Buddha ended the story by asking: Who is
responsible for this man's death—the unknown assailant or the man himself
who foolishly clung to the arrow? When all were seated, the bishops asked
my lord Nonnus to speak to them, and at once the holy bishop began to speak
words for the edification and salvation of all. Now while we were marveling
at his holy teaching, lo, suddenly there came among us the chief actress of
Antioch, the first in the chorus in the theatre, sitting on a donkey. She
was dressed in the height of fantasy, wearing nothing but gold, pearls, and
precious stones, even her bare feet were covered with gold and pearls….
When the bishops saw her bareheaded and with all her limbs shamelessly
exposed with such lavish display, there was not one who did not hide his
face in his veil or his scapular, averting their eyes as if from a great
sin. But the most blessed Nonnus gazed at her very intently for a long
space of time. After she had gone by, he turned round and still gazed after
her. Then he turned towards the bishops sitting round him and said, "Were
you not delighted by her great beauty?" Still they did not answer, so
"Indeed," he said, "I was very greatly delighted and her beauty pleased me
very much. See, God will place her before the judgment seat and will judge
her on her gifts, just as God will judge us on our Episcopal calling."
The teacher asked his disciples: Can any of you give me an example of
enlightenment or holiness? One disciple stood and told the following story:
"I heard about a saint in the area who, wanting to visit a dying friend and
fearing to travel by night, said to the sun, `In the name of God stay on in
the sky till I reach the village where my friend is dying.' And the sun
stopped dead in the sky till the holy one reached the village." The teacher
thought awhile and replied, "Would it not have been better for the holy
person to overcome his fear of travelling by night?"
It was said about Abba Agathon that for three years he carried a pebble
around in his mouth until he learned to be silent. –Desert Mothers and
Fathers
The Seeker approached the Disciple respectfully and asked, "What is the
meaning of human life?" The Disciple consulted the Written Works of His
Master and confidently replied with the words of the Master himself: "Human
life is nothing but the expression of God's exuberance."
When the Seeker met the Master himself and asked him the same question, the
Master said, "I do not know."
A neighbor found Nasruddin on his knees searching for something. "What are
you searching for?" the neighbor asked. "My key," Nasruddin said, "I lost
it." Both men got on their knees to search for the lost key. They looked
and looked but to no avail. After awhile the neighbor said, "Where did you
lose the key?" Nasruddin replied, "I lost it at home." The exasperated
neighbor exclaimed, "Good Lord! Then why are you searching for it here?"
Nasruddin looked at him and said, "Because there is more light here.
The devil once went for a walk with a friend. They saw a man ahead of them
stoop down and pick up something from the road. "What did that man find?"
asked the friend. "A piece of Truth," said the devil. "Doesn't that disturb
you?" asked the friend. "No it does not," said the devil, "I shall allow
him to make a religious belief out of it."
The poet-monk Ryokan received a message from his brother. "Come quickly to
visit my home," the brother wrote. "I do not know what to do with my son.
He is always in trouble and I fear that he will soon land in prison. You
must talk to him and set him straight." Ryokan left immediately for his
brother's home. When he arrived he ate dinner with the family but said not
a word of admonition to the boy. He stayed the night and prepared to leave
the following morning. As the wayward boy was helping tie Ryokan's straw
sandals, he felt a warm drop of water on his shoulder. Glancing up, the boy
saw Ryokan, eyes full of tears, looking down on him. Ryokan departed
silently, and the boy soon mended his ways.
A young man knocked on the gate of a monastery and told the abbot that he
was disgusted with his way of life. He was very dissolute and couldn't find
anything worth his passion. Could he enter the monastery? "Surely," said
the abbot, "there is something you have dabbled with in life, at least?"
The young man thought a while and said, "Well, I played chess once or
twice." The abbot called for one of the elders of the monastery, a most
saintly man, and said, "I want you to play chess with this young man. It
will be a serious game because this is the young man's only chance to
change his life. Here are the conditions: if you lose, I will cut off your
head. If he loses, I will cut off his head. Now begin." At first the young
man was nervous and made all sorts of errors, then he began to think of
losing his life and started to concentrate. It soon became apparent that he
was a better chess player and would beat the old monk. But when he looked
across the chessboard and saw the kind face of the old monk he thought,
"Why should he die instead of me? He has led a good life and helped many
people. I have wasted my days." So the young man began to purposely make
wrong moves and prepared to die. Suddenly, the abbot picked up his sword
and swung it at the chessboard, cutting it in two. "Enough," he shouted.
Looking at the young man, he said, "You have learned the two things
necessary to be a monk. In playing as if your life depended on it, you
learned concentration. And in reflecting on the fate of the old monk, you
learned compassion. These two things—concentration and compassion—are all
that's necessary for the monastic life. Welcome.
I thought it good fortune to go the Magic Monastery for Easter. But at the
foot of the hill sat a blind beggar, and when I drew near to him to give
him some money, I heard him ask, "Who will lead me into the heart of God?"
I couldn't go on. Who would lead him into the heart of God? I sat down in
front of him. "Together," I said, "Together we'll go into the heart of
God." Tales from The Magic Monastery by Theophane the Monk
Abba Sisoes the Theban said to the disciple: Tell me what you see in me and
in turn I will tell you what I see in you. His disciple said to him: You
are good in soul, but a little harsh. The old man said to him: You are
good, but your soul is not tough.
Oren Lyons was the first Onondagan to enter college. When he returned to
his reservation for his first vacation, his uncle proposed a fishing trip
on a lake. Once he had his nephew in the middle of the lake where he wanted
him, he began to interrogate him. "Well, Oren," he said, "you've been to
college; you must be pretty smart now from all they've been teaching you.
Let me ask you a question. Who are you?" Taken aback by the question, Oren
fumbled for an answer. "What do you mean, who am I? Why, I'm your nephew,
of course." His uncle rejected his answer and repeated his question.
Successively, the nephew ventured that he was Oren Lyons, an Onondagan, a
human being, a man, a young man, all to no avail. When his uncle had
reduced him to silence and he asked to be informed as to who he was, his
uncle said, "Do you see that bluff over there? Oren, you are the bluff. And
that giant pine on the other shore? Oren, you are that pine. And this water
that supports our boat? You are this water."
A handful of wheat grains were found in the tomb of the ancient Egyptian
kings. The grains were five thousand years old. Someone planted the seeds
and watered them. And, to the amazement of all, the grains came to life and
sprouted. After five thousand years!
The story goes that Thomas Aquinas, on of the world's greatest theologians,
suddenly stopped writing towards the end of his life. When he was asked why
he was not completing his theological works, Thomas replied: "When I was
celebrating the liturgy some months ago I experienced something of the
Divine. That day I lost all appetite for writing. In fact, all I have ever
written about God seems to me to be like a straw." –Anthony de Mello, SJ
A group of frogs were traveling through the woods, and two of them fell
into a deep pit. When the frogs that had escaped the pit saw how deep it
was, they told the two trapped frogs that they were as good as dead. The
two frogs ignored the comments and tried to jump up out of the pit with all
their might. The other frogs kept telling them to stop, that they were as
good as dead. Finally, one of the frogs took heed to what the other frogs
were saying and gave up. He fell down and died. The other frog continued to
jump as hard as he could. Once again, the crowd of frogs yelled at him to
stop the pain and just die. But he jumped even harder and finally made it
out. When he got out, the other frogs said, "Didn't you hear us? Why did
you keep trying?" The frog explained, "I'm deaf. I thought you were
cheering for me - telling me not to give up and encouraging me to jump
higher."
The Talmud tells of an old man in the village who kept giving money to
ne'er-do-wells. The villagers were aghast at such wantonness. "Why give
these people money when you know they'll only waste it?" they wanted to
know. And the old man answered, "Shall I be pickier with them than God has
been with me?"
"What is humility?" I asked an old monk. And he replied, "Humility is being
the first to say `I love you.' " --from Tales of a Magic Monastery by
Theophane the Monk
A brother asked an old man: "What is humility?" And the old man said, "To
do good to those who hurt you." The brother said, "If you cannot go that
far, what should you do?" The old man replied, "Get away from them and keep
your mouth shut."
--Saying of the Desert Mothers and Fathers
The only survivor of a shipwreck washed up on a small, uninhabited island.
He prayed feverishly for God to rescue him, and every day he scanned the
horizon for help, but none seemed forthcoming. Exhausted, he eventually
managed to build a little hut out of driftwood to protect him from the
elements, and to store his few possessions. But then one day, after
scavenging for food, he arrived home to find his little hut in flames, the
smoke rolling up to the sky. The worst had happened; everything was lost.
He was stung with grief and anger. "God, how could you do this to me," he
cried. Early the next day, however, he was awakened by the sound of a ship
that was approaching the island. It had come to rescue him. "How did you
know I was here?" asked the weary man of his rescuers. "We saw you smoke
signal," they replied.
A man walking through the forest saw a fox that had lost its legs and
wondered how it lived. Then he saw a tiger with game in its mouth approach
the fox. The tiger ate its fill and left the rest of the meat for the fox.
The next day the man watched as the tiger again fed the fox with leftover
meat. The man began to wonder about God's greatness and said to himself,
"I, too, shall just rest in a corner with full trust in the God who will
provide me with all I need." He did this for many days, but nothing
happened, and he was almost at death's door when he heard a voice say, "O
you who are in the path of error, open your eyes to the truth! Follow the
example of the tiger and stop imitating the disabled fox."
Once a famous doctor met one of his patients on the street. Without a word
of greeting, the doctor said, "I told you not to walk on that leg until it
heals." "But it IS healed," said the man. "Impossible!" replied the doctor.
"I saw the wound in that leg. It will take months." The man explained, "I
went to another kind of healer. I went to the mystical rabbi, the one they
call the Baal Shem Tov." The doctor narrowed his eyes, then simply walked
away. A week later, the doctor went to visit Baal Shem Tov. "I hear you
claim to be a healer," the doctor said. The Baal Shev looked at the man who
had knocked on his door and said, "God is the healer, my friend. Come in."
The doctor then issued this challenge: "Let us examine each other. Whoever
best diagnoses the sickness of the other will be proved the better doctor."
"The Baal Shem Tov agreed and the doctor began his examination. For an hour
the doctor poked the rabbi, pinched him, gazed in his ears and tapped on
his knees and then concluded, "You have no sickness that I can find." "I am
not surprised that you could not find my pain," said the Baal Shem Tov. "I
so desire the presence of God that my heart cries out in pain when I cannot
feel it. My sickness is this constant yearning for God." The Baal Shem Tov
looked at the doctor for a long while. "Let me now examine you." He took
the doctor's hands and for a long time gazed into his eyes. At last the
rabbi said, "Have you ever lost something very valuable?" The doctor
thought a moment and replied, "I once had a large jewel, but it was stolen
from me." "Ah, that is your sickness," said the Baal Shem Tov. "What? My
missing diamond?" snickered the doctor. "No," said the rabbi. My sickness
is yearning after God. Your sickness is that you have forgotten that you
ever had that desire." The doctor took a deep breath and, in a moment, a
tear flowed down his cheek. One tear turned to many. Still holding the
hands of Baal Shem Tov, he began to sob. "Please," he said, "teach me how
to yearn." "With God's help," said the Baal Shem Tov, "your healing has
already begun."
Mulla Nasruddin went to China. There he gathered a group of disciples whom
he was preparing for enlightenment. As soon as they became enlightened, the
disciples stopped attending his lectures!
A man who took great pride in his lawn found himself with a large crop of
dandelions. He tried every method he knew to get rid of them. Still they
plagued him. Finally he wrote the Department of Agriculture. He enumerated
all the things he had tried and closed his letter with the question, "What
shall I do now?" In due course the reply came: "We suggest you learn to
love them.
I had just one desire—to give myself completely to God. So I headed for the
monastery. An old monk asked me, "What is it you want?" I said, "I just
want to give myself to God." I expected him to be gentle, fatherly, but he
shouted at me. I was stunned. He shouted again, "NOW!" Then he reached for
a club and came after me. I turned and ran. He kept coming after me,
brandishing his club and shouting, "NOW, NOW!" That was years ago. He still
follows me wherever I go. Always that stick, always that "NOW!"
---Theophane the Monk - Tales of a Magic Monastery
Reb Chaim was lame. His right leg was of almost no use to him. Yet, when he
prayed he did so with such fervor that he would leap up on his right leg
and dance, totally absorbed in union with God. One day he visited the
community of Reb Naftali and there he cleaved so tightly to God that he
hopped and danced and spun on his bad leg over and over again. The rabbi's
wife happened by and said to her husband, "Why do you let him dance like
that on his bad leg? Tell him to dance on his good leg." Reb Naftali said,
"My dear wife, if Reb Chaim knew on which leg he was dancing, I promise you
I would speak to him as you have suggested. But what am I to do if in his
passionate love of God he no longer remembers he is lame?"
Hasidic Tales - by Rabbi Rami Shapiro
An aged woman had a camel. It was her only source of income. But then it
was stolen. Near to her lived a rich man who had thirty camels. The woman
visited him and among his herd she found her camel. Everyone was amazed.
Would a rich man steal a poor woman's only camel? And how was it possible
for her to know that a certain camel was hers? She insisted it was hers.
"But how can you prove it?" the rich man asked. The woman answered, "I can
prove it. Kill her and open her chest. On her heart you will find a scar."
The camel was killed and there on the heart was a scar. It could be easily
seen. Everyone was astonished. The rich man was ordered to give her two
camels as restitution. "How," he asked, "could you know there was a scar on
her heart?" "It was simple," she said. "Two years ago the son of the camel
was killed by a wolf. The camel was so sad that I knew it must have left a
mark on her heart." --Muslim story
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