2 Stories with Life Lessons to Reflect upon to develop Compassion and Wisdom.

1. Story To Reflect
Upon 9
A Useless Life
A farmer got so old that he couldn't work the fields anymore. So
he would spend the day just sitting on the porch. His son, still
working the farm, would look up from time to time and see his
father sitting there. "He's of no use any more," the son thought to
himself, "he doesn't do anything!" One day the son got so
frustrated by this, that he built a wood coffin, dragged it over to
the porch, and told his father to get in. Without saying anything,
the father climbed inside. After closing the lid, the son dragged
the coffin to the edge of the farm where there was a high cliff. As
he approached the drop, he heard a light tapping on the lid from
inside the coffin. He opened it up. Still lying there peacefully, the
father looked up at his son. "I know you are going to throw me
over the cliff, but before you do, may I suggest something?"
"What is it?" replied the son. "Throw me over the cliff, if you
like," said the father, "but save this good wood coffin. Your
children might need to use it."
Reflection
* "It's so easy to forget what knowledge and experience any one person
has, especially older people who have been around for a long time. Our
society tends to define a person's usefulness in terms of their physical
capabilities and what they can DO. We tend to forget that human worth
is in the mind and heart."
* "Be careful! Your children someday may do to you exactly what you
did to your parents. All bad things that you do will eventually come
back to haunt you. It's karma."
* "Materialistic greed, ill-will, aversion, hatred and delusion can make
a person do the most cruel and horrifying thing. Such a person needs to
see the 'cause and effect' of his unwholesome action."

2. STORY TO
REFLECT UPON
10
Ritual Cat
When the spiritual teacher and his disciples began their evening
meditation, the cat who lived in the monastery made such noise
that it distracted them. So the teacher ordered that the cat be tied
up during the evening practice. Years later, when the teacher
died, the cat continued to be tied up during the meditation
session. And when the cat eventually died, another cat was
brought to the monastery and tied up. Centuries later, learned
descendants of the spiritual teacher wrote scholarly treatises
about the religious significance of tying up a cat for meditation
practice.
Reflections From People's Comments On Story
* "People don't think about what they're doing. They just do
it because it's always been done that way, or because
everyone else is doing it. Kind of scary!"
* "This reminds me of the game kids play when they whisper
something into someone's ear, and then the message is
passed along from one kid to the next. By the time it gets to
the last kid, the message isn't anything like the way it was
when it started."
* "This must be similar to how superstitions develop. There
once may have been a logical reason for them, but
eventually people just do it because they believe they
should."
* "It's like people being afraid to walk under a ladder, or to
have a black cat walk in front of them. It makes no sense.
It's an irrational fear of some taboo that they don't fully
understand."
* "I think a lot of us live our whole lives like this. We do this
and that, over and over again, without really thinking about
the significance or meaning of it."
* "Scholars can make even stupidity sound intelligent."