BEAUTIFUL LADY
Once upon a time a senior monk and a junior monk were travelling together. They came to the bank of a river and found the bridge was damaged. They had to wade across the river.
There was a beautiful lady who was stuck at the damaged bridge and couldn’t cross the river. The senior monk offered to carry the beautiful lady across the river on his back. The lady accepted.
The junior monk was shocked by the move of the senior monk. “How can big disciple brother carry a lady when we are supposed to avoid all intimacy with females,” thought the junior monk. But he kept quiet.
The senior monk carried the lady across the river and the junior monk followed, unhappily. When they crossed the river, the senior monk let the lady down and they parted ways with her. All along the way for several miles, the junior monk was very unhappy with the act of the senior monk. He was making up all kinds of accusations about the senior monk in his head.
This got him madder and madder. But he still kept quiet and the senior monk had no inclination to explain his situation.
Finally, at rest point many hours later, the junior monk could not stand it any further, he burst out angrily at the senior monk. “How can you claim yourself a devout monk, when you seize the first opportunity to touch a female, especially when she is very beautiful. All your teachings to me make you a big hypocrite.”
The senior monk looked surprised and said, “I had put down the beautiful lady at the river bank many hours ago, how come you are still carrying her along?” The junior monk was ashamed with himself.
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We encounter many unpleasant things in our life, they irritate us and they make us angry. Sometimes, they cause us a lot of hurt, sometimes they cause us to be bitter of jealous. But like the junior monk, we are not willing to let them go away. We keep on carrying the baggage of the beautiful lady with us. We let them keep on coming back to hurt us, make us angry, make us bitter and cause us a lot of agony. Why?
Simply because we are not willing to put down or let go of the baggage of the beautiful lady. We should let go of the baggage of the beautiful lady. We should let go of the baggage immediately after crossing the river, immediately after the unpleasant event is over. This will immediately remove all our agonies. There’s no need to be further hurt by the unpleasant event after it is over. It is just that simple, but how many have the wisdom to see within? This, we don’t know.
