Do you know any good Parables?

[Stigweard]

I would love to gather a collection of parables on virtue. A parable is a brief, succinct story, in prose or verse, that illustrates a moral or religious lesson.

 

Preferably I would like to draw these parables from:

 

~ Taoist, Budhist, Confucius teachings

~ Stories from and about prominent and well know figures both Western and Eastern in origin.

 

Here is one originally shared by mYTHmAKER:

 

Dr. Arun Gandhi, gandson of Mahatma Gandhi and founder of the M.K.Gandhi

Institute for Nonviolence, in his June 9 lecture at the University of

Puerto Rico, shared the following story:

 

I was 16 years old and living with my parents at the institute my

grandfather had founded 18 miles outside of Durban, South Africa, in the

middle of the sugar plantations. We were deep in the country and had no

neighbours, so my two sisters and I would always look forward to going

to town to visit friends or go to the movies.

 

One day, my father asked me to drive him to town for an all-day

conference, and I jumped at the chance. Since I was going to town, my

mother gave me a list of groceries she needed and, since I had all day

in town, my father asked me to take care of several pending chores, such

as getting the car serviced.

 

When I dropped my father off that morning, he said, "I will meet you

here at 5:00 p.m. , and we will go home together." After hurriedly

completing my chores, I went straight to the nearest movie theatre. I

got so engrossed in a John Wayne double-feature that I forgot the time.

It was 5:30 before I remembered. By the time I ran to the garage and got

the car and hurried to where my father was waiting for me, it was

almost 6:00.

 

He anxiously asked me, "Why were you late? "I was so ashamed of telling

him I was watching a John Wayne western movie that I said, "The car

wasn't ready, so I had to wait," not realizing that he had already

called the garage.

 

When he caught me in the lie, he said: "There's something wrong in the

way I brought you up that didn't give you the confidence to tell me the

truth. In order to figure out where I went wrong with you, I'm going to

walk home 18 miles and think about it.

 

" So, dressed in his suit and dress shoes, he began to walk home in the

dark on mostly unpaved, unlit roads.

 

I couldn't leave him, so for five-and-a-half hours I drove behind him,

watching my father go through this agony for a stupid lie that I uttered.

 

I decided then and there that I was never going to lie again. I often

think about that episode and wonder, if he had punished me the way we

punish our children, whether I would have learned a lesson at all. I

don't think so.

 

I would have suffered the punishment and gone on doing the same thing.

But this single non-violent action was so powerful that it is still as

if it happened yesterday.

 

That is the power of non-violence.

 

by Dr. Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi

[ThisLife]

.

 

This is an anecdotal experience Kurt Vonnegut had when he was a young man trying to earn a living as a carpenter. I've always loved his sparkling combination of humour with a deep and profound relevance to life :

 

 

 

I once knew an Episcopalian lady in Newport, Rhode Island, who asked me to design and build a doghouse for her Great Dane. The lady claimed to understand God and His Ways of Working perfectly. She could not understand why anyone should be puzzled about what had been or about what was going to be.

 

And yet, when I showed her a blueprint of the doghouse I proposed to build, she said to me, "I'm sorry, but I never could read one of those things."

 

"Give it to your husband or your minister to pass on to God, "I said, "and, when God finds a minute, I'm sure he'll explain this doghouse of mine in a way that even you can understand."

 

She fired me. I shall never forget her. She believed that God liked people in sailboats much better than He liked people in motorboats. She could not bear to look at a worm. When she saw a worm, she screamed.

 

She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is doing.

 

 

.

[Mal]

[ThisLife]

This post asked for parable illustrating virtue,... but since virtue cannot exist without its complimentary 'non-virtue', (as the Taoist Yin-Yang symbol clearly illustrates), I thought I would give a modern day parable of 'non-virtue' by my well-loved Kurt Vonnegut :

 

 

"Here's the news: I am going to sue the Brown and Williamson

Tobacco Company, manufacturers of Pall Mall cigarettes, for a million bucks ! Starting when I was only twelve years old. I have never chain-smoked anything but unfiltered Pall Malls. And for many years now, right on the package, Brown and Williamson have promised to kill me.

 

But I am eighty-two. Thanks a lot, you dirty rats. The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon."

 

 

ThisLife .

[Ya Mu]

I don't know if this is what you are looking for but here is a story from my personal experience about Listening and following the Tao.

 

A Lesson On Listening

Follow the NOW, Follow the Tao

Copyright 2009, Spirit Way Publishing

All rights reserved, Excerpt from the book, Sacred Vibrations of Ascension Chi Kung ISBN 0-9674742-5-7

 

I had a day off from my medical qigong clinic and drove to the nearest city to go to a bookstore. It is always fun for me to browse and see which books "jump out" to me.

 

After browsing, and purchasing a book, I decided to go on back home as I had already spent some time in the store. As I was driving I got the distinct feeling/message that I should not leave right now, so I dropped by a sandwich shop and had a sandwich and iced tea. There was a newspaper stand so I bought one and casually browsed the paper as I slowly finished my tea. As I was swallowing the last bit of tea, I got the distinct feeling/message, "OK, go now". I have learned through the school of hard knocks not to ignore these perceptions so I immediately got up and left.

 

As I was driving home, a distance of about 30 miles, I felt an intense burst of energy. I rounded a curve and there was a car wreck on my side of the road (it was a 4 lane hwy). The wreck appeared to have just happened and two people were trapped in one car and the other car still had one person it it. The wreck was horrible appearing, a mash of metal that intensely demonstrated the frail nature of man and his machines. As I was running from my vehicle to the first car I saw another car stopping in the opposite lane and a man was running toward me.

 

We arrived at the first car at the same time. The other fellow that had stopped to help shouted, "I am an EMT (emergency medical technician)". We quick checked both vehicles to see which one needed assistance first. The car with the two people in it had gas pouring out, the other did not, so we prioritized these folk as our 1st concern. The woman inside was shouting and crying incoherently and the guy driving was sitting still, looking straight ahead. After evaluating, we decided to pull the woman out first. We set her on the ground a good ways from the car as it could have burst into flames at any second, and went back to the man who had been driving. We could get no response and determined he had a severe neck injury and was in shock.

 

It was judgement call time - wait on the ambulance with neck brace or go ahead and pull him out? With the gas pouring out and because there was no way, due to the wreckage, of disconnecting the battery, we made the decision to pull him out. The EMT stabilized his neck and I carried him and we set him on the ground, with the EMT continuing to stabilize his neck. I was projecting qi to the emergency rescue pt that we use in medical qigong as we were carrying him and as we set him down. He stopped shaking as I was projecting so I did the same for the woman. At this point two ambulances pulled up. The EMT and I faded away and left the rest to the professionals.

 

Now, what is the chance of an EMT and a qigong healer coming up to an accident at the same time? The Tao works in an extreme densely layered and deep manner. Always practice Listening and you will follow the Tao.

[lino]

This post asked for parable illustrating virtue,... but since virtue cannot exist without its complimentary 'non-virtue', (as the Taoist Yin-Yang symbol clearly illustrates), I thought I would give a modern day parable of 'non-virtue' by my well-loved Kurt Vonnegut :

"Here's the news: I am going to sue the Brown and Williamson

Tobacco Company, manufacturers of Pall Mall cigarettes, for a million bucks ! Starting when I was only twelve years old. I have never chain-smoked anything but unfiltered Pall Malls. And for many years now, right on the package, Brown and Williamson have promised to kill me.

 

But I am eighty-two. Thanks a lot, you dirty rats. The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon."

ThisLife .

 

Sue Brown and Williamson in court for not doing the job.

[Stigweard]

Here's one of my life parables...

 

Treasure in the Wilderness

 

Have you ever wanted something so much that you would have done anything to get it but you just didn't know how to get it? My son found himself in exactly that situation.

 

Did any of you ever go camping when you were young? Do you remember going camping? Maybe it was only in your own back yard, that was the best that some of us could do. But if you were fortunate then you were taken out into the bush if you were lucky.

 

I took my young son, Jesse and one of his buddies, Patrick, camping as a sort of "Father & Son meets the wild" weekend. I had planned a whole bunch of activities for them, we learned how to pitch a tent, light a fire safely, cook spuds in the coals, roast marshmallows and I even taught them how to catch fresh water lobsters.

 

But out of the whole weekend the activity that we all remember and laugh about the most is when I put a $50 note in the billy can (an aussie tea kettle made of metal) and I set that billy can on top a rock in the middle of the stream. Now I told them that, for the sake of fun, they couldn't touch the water because it was full of pirahnas, but if they could get that billy off the rock and onto shore then that $50 note was theirs.

 

Now put yourself in the place of my thirteen year old son, how badly would you have wanted that $50 note?

 

So these two young boys became obsessed over how on earth they were going to get that $50 note. They tried everything that they could think of, they got the longest branch they could possibly find and they reached and they streched but that billy can was just out of reach. They tried to hang upside down from overhanging trees without success. For nearly two hours these young lads nearly turned themselves inside out in their attempts to get to that $50 note. I tell you it was the easiest parenting supervision I've ever done.

 

But after 2 hours or so of them trying this idea and that idea and then trying the same ideas all over again, their ideas began to dry up, their enthusiasm lagged, and eventually they gave up. They collapsed defeated on the creek bank and resorted to throwing pebbles at the billy can that had defied all their best efforts.

 

We have all felt like that at one stage or another haven't we?

 

It was about this time that I wandered over to them and said, "What's up lads?"

 

With a grumpy look Jesse said, "Its no use, we can't do it!"

 

"Is that so," I said "Sometimes if what we are doing isn't working then we have to change our approach."

 

"What do you mean?" he said.

 

"Well," I answered,"We can't expect a different result if we just keep repeating the same thing over and over again can we?"

 

"But we have tried everything and nothing works," Jesse protested. "Its impossible!"

 

"Are you sure about that?" I said, "Have you really tried everything?" As I said this I gave a very meaningful look back toward our campsite.

 

Jesse got the hint and, with a glimmer of hope in his eyes he scampered over to our tents and proceeded to turn everything upside down. After a couple of minutes of crashing and banging we heard a cry of victory and Jesse came running back to us with a roll of camping twine in one hand and a set of cooking tongs in the other.

 

Jesse tied one arm of the cooking tongs to the middle of the length of twine, he sent Patrick scuttling across to the other side of the creek via a fallen tree. And with Patrick holding one end of the twine on his side of the creek and Jesse holding the other they hooked the tongs through the handle of the billy, lifted it free from the rock and brought it and their $50 note safely to the bank.

 

Well cries of joy and victory echoed through the bush that day. Jesse and Patrick spent the rest of the camping trip working out how they were going to spend their bounty. And needless to say the first thing we did when we got back to town was to find the biggest and best ice-cream that we possibly could.

 

[ThisLife]

Edited February 6, 2009 by ThisLife

[thelerner]

Here's one of my favorite Zen tales:

 

One of the guilty pleasures at a Zen Monastery was listening to a Master's dying Haiku. For years they would be retold, compared and discussed. Nearing death one of the oldest and most esteemed Monks Banqui was asked, what are you final words? He said, "I am afraid to die" and was dead.

 

This disturbed the younger monks greatly. One asked a Master "If master Banqui was enlightened how could he give such an anwer?"

 

The master replied, "Banqui was indeed enlightened. Above all Zen is honest"

[Stigweard]