Accepting the way it comes! 3 Buddha Stories

01

Once it happened, a man was very angry with Buddha. He was angry because Buddha appears to have asserted something which was against his creed on a earlier day. He came to Buddha and shouted aloud with abusing language.

Buddha listened to him very quietly, but with due compassion, and asked him, if he has more to say. 

The man shouted further more at Buddha, and even went to the extent of spatting on his face!

Buddha wiping his face, asked the man again, if he has more to say or do to show his point of view.

The man could not believe the action of Buddha, as he expected some reaction or reply from Buddha justifying the assertion on the earlier day. He went away confused with Buddha's way of action.

The whole night, he thought about his own action.  He felt that he might have over reacted to Buddha, as he might have misunderstood  Buddha's assertion of that earlier day. He also felt guilty. 

Next day, the man came again to Buddha. And said sorry to Buddha. 

Buddha listened to him carefully, with compassion, and asked him, if he has more to say. 

The man fell down at Buddha's feet and started crying, with tears flowing down his eyes to Buddha's feet. 

Buddha again again asked the man if he has more to say or do to show his point of view.

The man requested Buddha to forgive him for the wrong act of the previous day. 

Buddha said that he is only compassionate about his genuine feelings of yesterday and hence never felt any wrong in what he did in the previous day and as such there is nothing to forgive. 

Buddha went on saying that he is a man of body-language when he showed his anger genuinely yesterday and he showed his sorry genuinely this day! Buddha appreciated his authentic honest!!

Can I be a Buddha? I can. Will I be? 

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02
The Buddha was sitting under a tree talking to his disciples when a man came and spat in his face.

Buddha wiped it off and asked the man, “What next? What do you want to say next?” The man was a little puzzled because he himself never expected that when you spit on somebody’s face they would ask, “What next?”  He had insulted people and they had become angry and they had reacted. Or if they were cowards and weaklings, they had smiled, trying to bribe the man. But Buddha was like neither, he was not angry nor in any way offended, nor in any way cowardly. But matter-of-factly he said, “What next?” There was no reaction on his part.

But Buddha’s disciples became angry, and they reacted. His closest disciple, Ananda, said, “This is too much. We cannot tolerate it. He has to be punished for it, otherwise everybody will start doing things like this!”

Buddha said, “You keep silent. He has not offended me, but you are offending me. He is new, a stranger. He must have heard from people something about me. That I am an atheist, a dangerous man who is throwing people off their track, a revolutionary, a corrupter. And he may have formed some idea, a notion of me. He has not spit on me, he has spit on his notion of me. He has spit on his idea of me because he does not know me at all.

“If you think on it deeply,” Buddha said, “he has spit on his own mind. I am not part of it, and I can see that this poor man must have something else to say because this is a way of saying something. Spitting is a way of saying something. There are moments when you feel that language is impotent: in deep love, in intense anger, in hate, in prayer. There are intense moments when language is impotent. Then you have to do something. When you are angry, intensely angry, you hit the person, you spit on him, you are saying something. I can understand him. He must have something more to say, that’s why I’m asking, “What next?”

The man was even more puzzled! And Buddha said to his disciples, “I am more offended by you because you know me, and you have lived for years with me, and still you react.”

Puzzled, confused, the man returned home. He could not sleep the whole night. When you see a Buddha, it is difficult, impossible to sleep anymore the way you used to sleep before. Again and again he was haunted by the experience. He could not explain it to himself, what had happened. He was trembling all over, sweating and soaking the sheets. He had never come across such a man; the Buddha had shattered his whole mind and his whole pattern, his whole past.

The next morning he went back. He threw himself at Buddha’s feet. Buddha asked him again, “What next? This, too, is a way of saying something that cannot be said in language. When you come and touch my feet, you are saying something that cannot be said ordinarily, for which all words are too narrow; it cannot be contained in them.” Buddha said, “Look, Ananda, this man is again here, he is saying something. This man is a man of deep emotions.”

The man looked at Buddha and said, “Forgive me for what I did yesterday.”

Buddha said, “Forgive? But I am not the same man to whom you did it. The Ganges goes on flowing, it is never the same Ganges again. Every man is a river. The man you spit upon is no longer here. I look just like him, but I am not the same, much has happened in these twenty-four hours! The river has flowed so much. So I cannot forgive you because I have no grudge against you.

“And you also are new. I can see you are not the same man who came yesterday because that man was angry and he spit, whereas you are bowing at my feet, touching my feet. How can you be the same man? You are not the same man, so let us forget about it. Those two people, the man who spit and the man on whom he spit, both are no more. Come closer. Let us talk of something else.”

03

One day Buddha was walking through a village. A very angry and rude young man came up and began insulting him. “You have no right teaching others,” he shouted. “You are as stupid as everyone else. You are nothing but a fake.”

Buddha was not upset by these insults. Instead he asked the young man “Tell me, if you buy a gift for someone, and that person does not take it, to whom does the gift belong?”

The man was surprised to be asked such a strange question and answered, “It would belong to me, because I bought the gift.”

The Buddha smiled and said, “That is correct. And it is exactly the same with your anger.

If you become angry with me and I do not get insulted, then the anger does not affect me but will falls back on you. Is it not?