SANDALWOOD BUDDHA

This is a beautiful story,

A Buddhist nun had a statue of Buddha made of Sandalwood. She loved the statue and always kept it with her. Being a nun she traveled from place to place, where she mostly stayed in Buddhist temples and monastries. And wherever she lived she worshipped her own statue of Buddha.

Once she happened to be a guest at the famous temple of a thousand Buddhas. This temple was known for its thousand statues of Buddha; it was filled with statues and statues. The nun, as usual, sat for her evening worship, and she burned incense before her statue of Buddha. But with the passing breeze the perfume of the incense strayed to other statues of Buddhas which filled that temple.

The nun was distressed to see that while her own Buddha was deprived of the perfume, others had it plenty. so she devised a funnel through which the smoke would ascend to her statue only. But this device, although successful, blackened the face of her Buddha and made it especially ugly. Of course the nun was exceedingly miserable, because it was a rare statue of sandalwood, and she loved it. She went to the chief priest of the temple and said, "My statue of Buddha has been ruined. What am I to do?"

The priest said, "Such an accident, Such an ugliness is bound to happen whenever someone tries to block the movement of truth and possess it for oneself. Truth by its nature has to be everywhere, it cannot be personalized and possesed."

Simple story which conveys a beautiful message. It is true that we also do such things in our life and end up in misery. But the truth is that the more love is shared, the more it grows. And when we try to restrict it, to control it-which is utterly unnatural and arbitrary-it dries up and eventually dies.