A Dead Heart

An old woman in a village had been supporting a monk’s spiritual practice for many years. She built a thatched hut for him to study and meditate, and had meals prepared for him every day. Recently, her neighbor, a young and beautiful woman, had been helping her everyday to carry the meals to the hut.

One day, the old lady decided to test the monk’s practice. She handed the meal basket to the young woman and instructed her, “Flirt with him a little when you walk in. Let’s see how he will react.”

When the girl stepped into the hut, the monk was chanting sutras. He sat in lotus and his eyes were closed. The girl had no sooner drop the food on the table than she wrapped her arms around the monk. She pressed her lips gently against his ear, and whispered playfully, “Does it feel good?”

The monk gave her a look of contempt, and replied in a cold voice: “It feel as if a dead and dry tree trunk is wrapping itself around a hard rock, in a freezing winter where there is not a trace of heat”

The old woman was furious when she heard the monk’s words. “For 20 years!” she exclaimed, “For twenty years I have been supporting a fool!” Immediately, she asked the monk to leave and had the hut burned down.

B: Whether a monk should practice celibacy is not the point of this story. The point is his had built his practice on a completely wrong path, by suppressing his feelings and shutting away his heart. The goal of spiritual practice is to open ourselves to lives of fuller passion and fulfillment, to embrace the fear and other hard-to-eat emotions, and to keep daring and loving anyway despite the unavoidable changing nature of life. I cannot find a positive example for such in the Chan book I was using, but I found it in Toy Stories II.

(Woody has to make a choice. He is currently in the hands of Al, a toy collector, and will soon be sent to a toy museum in Japan. Andy’s other toys just found Woody and are taking him back to Andy. Woody loves Andy, but he fears one day Andy will grow up, forget about him and throw him away.)

Buzz: Woody, you're not a collector's item. You're a child's plaything. You are a toy!

Andy: For how much longer? One more rip, and Andy's done with me. And what do I do then, Buzz? Huh? You tell me.

Buzz: Somewhere in that pad of stuffing is a toy who taught me... that life's only worth living if you're bein' loved by a kid. And I travelled all this way to rescue that toy… because I believed him.

Woody: Well, you wasted your time.

Buzz (to other toys): Let's go, everyone.

Woody: I don't have a choice, Buzz. This is my only chance.

Buzz: To do what, Woody? Watch kids from behind glass and never be loved again? Some life.

(Buzz and other toys leave)

Prospector: Good going, Woody! I thought they'd never leave.

(Woody stares at the TV. It is showing a commercial of Woody the Cowboy. “You’ve got a friend in me” is playing, and a boy hugs his cowboy toy into his chest.)

Woody: What am I doing?(Turning to the Door) Buzz! Wait! Wait!

Prospector: Woody, where are you going?

Woody: You're right, Prospector. I can't stop Andy from growing up. But I wouldn't miss it for the world.