The Zen Master and the Christian

A Christian once visited a Zen master and said, "Allow me to read you some sentences from the Sermon on the Mount."

"I shall listen to them with pleasure," said the master.

The Christian read a few sentences and looked up. The master smiled and said, "Whoever said those words was truly enlightened."

This pleased the Christian. He read on. The master interrupted and said, "Those words come from a savior of mankind."

The Christian was thrilled. He continued to read to the end. The master then said, "That sermon was pronounced by someone who was radiant with divinity."

The Christian's joy knew no bounds. He left, determined to return and persuade the master to become a Christian.

On the way back home he found Jesus standing by the roadside. "Lord," he said enthusiastically, "I got that man to confess that you are divine!"
Jesus smiled and said, "And what good did it do you except to inflate your Christian ego?"

The Talkative Lover

A lover pressed his suit unsuccessfully for many months, suffering the atrocious pains of rejection. Finally his sweetheart yielded. "Come to such and such a place, at such and such an hour," she said to him.

At that time and place the lover finally found himself seated beside his beloved. He then reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheaf of love letters that he had written to her over the past months.
They were passionate letters, expressing the pain he felt and his burning desire to experience the delights of love and union. He began to read them to his beloved. The hours passed by but still he read on and on.

Finally the woman said, "What kind of a fool are you? These letters are all about me and your longing for me. Well, here I am sitting with you at last and you are lost in your stupid letters."

"Here I am with you," says God, "and you keep reflecting about me in the head, talking about me with your tongue, and searching for me in you books. When will you shut up and see?"

The Salt Doll

A salt doll journeyed for thousands of miles over land, until it finally came to the sea.

It was fascinated by this strange moving mass, quite unlike anything it had ever seen before.

"Who are you?" said the salt doll to the sea.

The sea smilingly replied, "Come in and see."

So the doll waded in. The farther it walked into the sea the more it dissolved, until there was only very little of it left. Before that last bit dissolved, the doll exclaimed in wonder, "Now I know what I am!"

The Duckling

The Sufi saint Shams of Tabriz tells the following story about himself:

I have been considered a misfit since my childhood. No one seemed to understand me. My own father once said to me, "You are not mad enough to be put in a madhouse, and not withdrawn enough to be put in a monastery. I don't know what to do with you."

I replied, "A duck's egg was once put under a hen. When the egg hatched the duckling walked about with the mother hen until they came to a pond. The duckling went straight into the water. The hen stayed clucking anxiously on land. Now, dear father, I have walked into the ocean and find in it my home. You can hardly blame me if you choose to stay on the shore."

The Golden Eagle

A man found an eagle's egg and put it in the nest of a backyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.

All his life the eagle did what the backyard chickens did, thinking he was a backyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.

Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird far above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.

The old eagle looked up in awe. "Who's that?" he asked.

"That's the eagle, the king of the birds," said his neighbor. "He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth - we're chickens."

So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that's what he thought he was.