Short Stories

"Buddha Is Abused"

Buddha seemed quite unruffled by the insults hurled at him by a visitor. When his disciples later asked him what the secret of his serenity was, he said:

"Imagine what would happen if someone placed an offering before you and you did not pick it up. Or someone sent you a letter that you refused to open; you would be unaffected by its contents, would you not?

Do this each time you are abused and you will not lose your serenity."

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"Losing Everything"

Mulla came upon a frowning man walking along the road to town. "What's wrong?" he asked. The man held up a tattered bag and moaned, "All that I own in this wide world barely fills this miserable, wretched sack."

"Too bad," said Mulla, and with that, he snatched the bag from the man's hands and ran down the road with it.

Having lost everything, the man burst into tears and, more miserable than before, continued walking. Meanwhile, Mulla quickly ran around the bend and placed the man's sack in the middle of the road where he would have to come upon it.

When the man saw his bag sitting in the road before him, he laughed with joy, and shouted, "My sack! I thought I'd lost you!"

Watching through the bushes, Mulla chuckled. "Well, that's one way to make someone happy!"

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"Realism"

A gambler once said to the Master, "I was caught cheating at cards yesterday, so my partners beat me up and threw me out of the window. What would you advise me to do?"

The Master looked straight through the man and said, "If I were you, from now on I would play on the ground floor."

This startled the disciples. "Why didn't you tell him to stop gambling?" they demanded.

"Because I knew he wouldn't."

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"Porcupines And The Coldest Winter Ever"

It was the coldest winter ever, and many animals died because of the cold. The porcupines, realizing the situation, decided to group together. This way they covered and protected themselves.

But the quills of each one wounded their closest companions even though they shared their heat with each other. After awhile, they decided to distance themselves one from the other to stop being wounded.

As they did this, they began to die... alone and frozen.

So they had to make a choice: either accept the quills of their companions or disappear from the Earth. Wisely, they decided to go back to being together.

This way they learned to live with the little wounds that were caused by the close relationship with their companion, but the most important part of it, was the heat that came from the others that enabled them to survive the coldest winter ever.