The monk who forgot his left arm

Within a hundred years after The Buddha’s departure with the burning last message, ‘Be a lamp unto yourselves’, a number of young people had become monks inspired by the message.

One among them was the monk with a good right arm. He was a monk who was always right which in itself was very irritating for others because people always wanted something to be ‘left’ but he left no room for that. He could also prove that he was right. So people who knew about him talked with him for he was good company too but skillfully left him when he would be very near establishing that he was right. Earlier he used to require about an hour to establish his rightness when wise people left him after fifty minutes. He then started wrapping up his arguments within fifty minutes upon which his listeners left him in forty minutes. This process finally reached the stage of ‘five minutes for right and four minutes for left’. The monk became tired with so much running with his words. He paused. He took a good look at this impossible situation.

Then he noticed that he had not been watching what his left arm was doing and that most people noticed only that. Looking only at his right arm he had been haranguing people about his rightness. He decided to bring his left arm out into conversations now and then. It started paying dividends. People who noticed their left arm more started feeling more comfortable with him.

He marched on, left, right, looking more often and wistfully at his right arm and warily at his left arm.

Arogya Bhavan Room 303
12 Jan 2009