Laughing Buddha

He was still a boy when he left his family. He was an innocent boy. His only blemish but which hung around him like a large visible facial mole, was his proclivity to fly into a rage. He ran away from home and his destiny took him to a monastery.

He worked at his mole and soon it became a large beauty spot. His rage became a nagging. People’s reactive anger at him became irritation. People close to him learnt to ignore it. He too learnt to pull his claws in. He gradually managed to work his claw in when it most mattered. He used to hurt himself in his early years. But now that happened rarely.

He thought he had found his vocation in the monastery. He grew into adulthood here. He had to learn life and know things of the world from here. It was hardly surprising that he had a warped view on many things. He not only avoided women but hated them. Hated novels, films and almost everything else of the world around him. His religious scruples dictated everything in his life. He held to his views ferociously and snapped at others who had a different outlook.

Then his old father fell ill. He went to his bedside as was the practice in his monastery. He just went without much heart in it.

First he was like a fish out of water. Women were around him. The world with all its paraphernalia swung around him.

He staggered but suddenly the spring which had been for long kept pressed, burst.

Dead-weight gone, the monk laughed. The world laughed with him.

Swami Sampurnananda, 26 October 2003, Genre 273 – No. 15.