Two monks were on the road. They came from a very chaste Order, which was strictly forbidden to deal with women. One day they came to a river. There stood a beautiful woman who wanted to cross the river. Because the water was very deep, she could not do that without damaging her clothes. Then one of the monks took the woman on his shoulders, waded with her through the water, and set them dry on the other side of the river. Then the monks continued their hike. After four hours, the one monk began to criticize the other: "What you did was not right. You know we must not have any close contact with women. "The monk, who had carried the woman through the river, listened to the allegations calmly and patiently. Then he replied to his brother, "This is the difference between us: I dropped the woman at the river four hours ago, but you still carry her with you."
Translatet from a German parable.
Comments
Evangelina, thanks for your comment. I always appreciate your opinion.
My best regards and a hug for you from here.
Dear Luci, thanks for your comment ... as you can imagine ... I carry already many kilos more in my head than you ... means in terms of my age. (LOL)
We can clean up the mess everywhere ... only in our mind we are unable to do it.That is the first side of the coin. But there is also the second side and for that should we be very gratful because nothing can be as free as our thoughts.
We have a German folk song with the title "The thoughts are free". First was this song published as text like a poem ... already in 1780.
It's based on written texts from the early 13th Century but the basic philosophy is already known from ancient times.
The last version of that poem got a melody and became a folk song with the time.
Just some lines from the early text from 1229:
The band can not find anyone,
Which binds my thoughts.
One catches woman and man,
Thoughts nobody can catch.
I will publish the text of the song as a blog on my page as so as I know it as folk song and how it is sung until now. While I was reading your comment, I got this idea.
I just must translate the lyric ... I think it can be a good material for some discussions.
Human are able to fly to the moon and we are able to construct artificial intelligence but nothing is so complex as our mind... nothing can replace it. Our mind is that what makes us to human.
Thanks for the hint, Fr@nk.
I read it once but it was some shorten version :) I just think that sometimes this what we carry in our heads might be heavier than 100 human bodies :D I carry there so many kilos of bullshits - guess I need to format my processor :D Nice deep post, thanx for sharing ;)
Thanks for your comment and to draw my attention to the time contradiction. I had a mistake in the second of the sentences.
Yes, sometimes negative thoughts occupy our mind even if we don't want it at all.
Thanks Fr@nk for your comment, I agree with everything.
hahaha, I am really sorry for the strange behaviour of this my blog. I don't know why it happens.
Hahaha, dear Risty, don't say you are so slow. You aren't. Yo have found the answer already... read your words in your second part of your comment.
Let me still say something:
The first monk carried the woman though his strict religious Order forbids to deal with woman. He wanted just help her to cross the river and that was not this kind of dealing what the Order forbids. (I think it's forbidden to have body contact in sexual manner... or to marry.) He did not think about, he just carried her to help her.
After that he did no longer think about the woman.... so he let go his thoughts.
The second monk carried his thoughts about four hours in his mind. He took the prohibition literally. Then he criticized the first monk... so he didn't let go.
How often does it happen to us like this monk? A trifle happens and through our thoughts we nourish the negative energy of this situation and our body is flooded by negative chemical messengers. How often do we create a problem in the head at first, which may not even have occurred, but could possibly occur? But thinking about a possible problem is highly likely to address this problem and we are often unaware of it.
"Let it go" ( to think about problems they don't really exist ) is the key to inner freedom.
So I would say is the moral of this parable.
Dear Miss Rose, is it literal that the second monk carried the woman with him or only on his thoughts? Because he still remembers even though they already went on for an hour. Hmmmm…. Maybe that’s why the art of letting go.
The other monk can’t let go the thought of the other monk carried the woman and had a body contact, he can’t let go without saying anything. Gosh! I’m so slow.
A nice moral story.
"I dropped the woman at the river an hour ago, but you still carry her with you."
This is the gist of the morality of the story.
Thank rose.
And thanks again for the link. I enjoyed to see it.
Hi Fr@nk, maybe I should have written: "I found in German written parable" but you know the most of parables had not been written in the modern time. Many parables had been written in religios books ... just for example about Salomo.
But for your information .... even nowadays live and work monks and nuns here in Germany in cloisters. You can even live with them for a while in their cloisters to see how they live and work.
Have a look if you are interested.
http://www.germany.travel/en/specials/spiritual-travel/abbeys/abbey...