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Showing posts from November, 2020

The Empty Boat and Young Monk

Introduction A long time ago, a young Zen monk lived in a little monastery in the forest by a small lake. The monastery was occupied by a few older monks, but the remainder were beginners who still needed to learn. The monks had numerous tasks at the monastery, but one of the most essential was their daily routine, which required them to sit down, close their eyes, and meditate. The monk struggled to focus during his meditation practice for several reasons, which irritated him. After that, I concentrated in quiet for hours at a time. After each meditation, they were to report back to their mentor on their development.  Anger of a Young Monk When the young monk reported his progress, or lack thereof, to his mentor, the senior monk asked him a simple question with a hidden lesson: "Do you know what is making you angry?" The young monk responded, "Well, normally, as soon as I close my eyes and begin to meditate, someone moves around and I lose focus. I am angry when someone

The Danger of Anger: Possible Solutions

Introduction The word anger is one short of danger and we must understand that whenever we get angry then a dangerous situation awaits us. We can understand this analogy with a short story. There was a child in a village who used to get angry about very small things. One day his father decided to teach him a lesson. Father had provided a bunch of nails to his son and ordered him to pierce those nails on a wooden boundary of their farm. That child followed the instructions of his father and started piercing those nails. When the son had completed the task then his father instructed him to remove those nails one by one. On this, his son became angry but followed the instructions and completed the second task as well. Father asked his son to observe learnings from this task but his son was not able to grab the lesson. On this, his father explained that when the nails were removed from the boundary then those nails left the scar on the boundary. He further explained that the results of ang