On a cold winter night a wandering ascetic asked for shelter in a temple. The poor man stood shivering there in the falling snow so the temple priest, reluctant though he was to let the man in, said. “Very well, you can stay but only for the night. This is a temple, not a hospice. In the morning you will have to go.”
At dead of night the priest heard a strange crackling sound. He rushed to the
temple and saw an incredible sight. There was the stranger warming himself at a fire he had lit in the temple. A wooden Buddha was missing. The priest asked,
“Where is the Buddha?”
The wanderer pointed to the fire, then said. “I thought this cold would kill me.”
The priest shouted, “Are you out of your mind? Do you know what you have done?
That was a Buddha statue. You have burnt the Buddha!”
The fire was slowly dying out. The ascetic gazed into it and began to poke it with his stick. “What are you doing now?” the priest yelled.
“I am searching for the bones of the Buddha whom you say I burnt.”
The priest later reported the incident to a Zen Master who said, “You must be a bad priest because you valued a dead Buddha over a living man. “
Measured with this yardstick many of us would be found to be ‘bad Christian,’ ‘bad Hindu,’ ‘bad Muslim,’ etc.
Indian Thoughts Archives
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