An Outsider

“The Baggage…” On a particular day, the Buddha and a large following of monks and nuns were passing through a village. The Buddha chose a large shade tree to sit beneath so the group could rest awhile out of the heat. He often chose times like these to teach, and so he began to speak. Soon, villagers heard about the visiting teacher and many gathered around to hear him. One rude young man stood to the side, watching, as the crowd grew larger and larger. To him, it seemed that there were too many people traveling from the city to his village, and each had something to sell or teach. Impatient with the bulging crowd of monks and villagers, he shouted at the Buddha, "Go away! You just want to take advantage of us! You teachers come here to say a few pretty words and then ask for food and money!" But the Buddha was unruffled by these insults. He remained calm, exuding a feeling of loving-kindness. He politely requested that the man come forward. Then he asked, ...

Let the Hope Sprouts… On a certain day the devil decided to retire. Because he is retiring, he decided to put all the tools of his trade for a garage sale, so he opened up ‘discount sale all the devil’s tools’. There is a huge rush. There are all kinds of things; anger, hatred, jealousy, this one, that one, everything on the table. All the people went and bought it up in no time. Everything was sold out in the first hour; all his tools. The whole humanity has bought it, isn’t it? But he had still one more bag, and a boy went and asked the devil, “What’s in that bag?” “Isn’t that for a sale?” He said, “No, no. These are the priced tools, just a souvenirs I want to keep them, because they have worked best to do my job. Boy said, “No, I want it, please. Won’t you sale that?” Devil said, “No, no, no. These two tools I have in my bag, they worked so wonderfully well in my whole career that I would like to keep them as my souvenirs.” Once boy said, many other peopl...

"Ice cubes" Once we come out of our comfort zone, everything in our surrounding seem so new to us. It might have happened earlier as well but still we observe it so intensively that we find that all new for us. It's been 2 years now, she had moved to this new city of her dreams. Still she needs to get many more experiences, slowly she is coming out of the cocoon. Now she is acquainted with the harmony of this new city, actually now it is no more new to her. This one was not so special but certainly different experience for her that changed her typical thinking about boys as community. It was early days of summer, she went to the University to submit her exam form. As it was university annual exam, students from different colleges also came there. Moreover, it was the last day to submit the exam form, from the very next day the penalty charges will be applied along with actual fees. She was standing in a queue since long and it was noon time. No shad...