Dear ones, I will share a pretty story with you. It is about a lotus in a lotus pond. When you stand next to a pond full of flowering lotuses, the fragrance wafts across. Standing next to the pond, one sees the clean leaves, and the blooming Lotuses.

This is an ancient story, and it is narrated by the Buddha. A monk was walking past the Lotus Pond. The fragrance was wafted by the breeze to him. One must remember that in the time of the Buddha, there was no pollution. The monk inhaled the exquisite fragrance by raising his head and closed his eyes for a moment. He felt a gentle tap on his shoulder and he opened his eyes and saw a forest sprite. The sprite accused him of smelling the Lotus flower and therefore he was stealing the perfume.

The monk returned to the monastery, unnerved by the rebuke. When the Master saw his frightened face, he asked him where he had been? The Master after hearing his story said that this was not the first time that a monk or nun had been petrified by a fairy.

The monk and the fairy

The Master narrated a story about the Buddha-to-be, to illustrate this experience. The Buddha-to-be was born in a brahmin family and studied in Taxila. He then renounced everything and became an ascetic. He lived near a Lotus Pond. One day when he was smelling a Lotus bloom, a fairy spoke to him from a hollow in a tree trunk. She said, “You were never given that bloom you are smelling, and it is a single bloom. This is serious theft Sir and you are stealing its perfume.”

The ascetic answered, “I neither take nor pluck the flower, I smell the fragrance from afar.”

Some time later he saw a man plucking the Lotus flowers, and he said to the fairy, “Why are you not scolding him”?

She replied, “I do not speak to a man, who behaves in an uncouth way. I have no conversation with him. When a man is free from evil, his heart is pure, I speak to him. Any sin shows on him like a hair tip, like a dark cloud in the sky.”

The ascetic answered, “You know me, fairy well enough to feel pity for me. If you see me repeat a similar offence, speak to me again.”

The ascetic had not understood what the fairy has said. She rebuked him again.

She said, “I am not here to serve you. We do not teach. Seek the truth and the path to real joy.”

The Master then said that he was the ascetic.

Dear ones, what do you make of this story. The fragrance belonged to the Lotus and we can only pass it and not take ownership.

Aim Hrim Klim