{"id":255,"date":"2008-08-05T08:59:49","date_gmt":"2008-08-05T15:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.srichinmoybio.co.uk\/blog\/?p=255"},"modified":"2011-12-13T17:23:43","modified_gmt":"2011-12-14T00:23:43","slug":"is-that-so-zen-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.srichinmoybio.co.uk\/blog\/life\/is-that-so-zen-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Is That So? &#8211; Zen Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.srichinmoybio.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/japanese-garden.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-51\" title=\"Japanese Garden\" src=\"http:\/\/www.srichinmoybio.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/japanese-garden.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"293\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>A traditional Zen Story &#8211; Is That So?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There was a Zen Master who was very pure, very illumined. Near the place where he lived there happened to be a food store. The owner of the food store had a beautiful unmarried daughter. One day she was found with child. Her parents flew into a rage. They wanted to know the father, but she would not give them the name. After repeated scolding and harassment, she gave up and told them it was the Zen Master. The parents believed her. When the child was born they ran to the Zen Master, scolding him with foul tongue, and they left the infant with him. The Zen Master (1) said, &#8220;<span class=\"highlightedSearchTerm\">Is<\/span> <span class=\"highlightedSearchTerm\">that<\/span> <span class=\"highlightedSearchTerm\">so<\/span>.&#8221; Th<span class=\"highlightedSearchTerm\">is<\/span> was h<span class=\"highlightedSearchTerm\">is<\/span> only comment.<\/p>\n<p>continued&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!-- More -->He accepted the child. He started nour<span class=\"highlightedSearchTerm\">is<\/span>hing and taking care of the child. By th<span class=\"highlightedSearchTerm\">is<\/span> time h<span class=\"highlightedSearchTerm\">is<\/span> reputation had come to an end, and he was an object of mockery. Days ran into weeks, weeks into months and months into years. But there <span class=\"highlightedSearchTerm\">is<\/span> <span class=\"highlightedSearchTerm\">so<\/span>mething called conscience in our human life, and the young girl was tortured by her conscience. One day she finally d<span class=\"highlightedSearchTerm\">is<\/span>closed to her parents the name of the child&#8217;s real father, a man who worked in a f<span class=\"highlightedSearchTerm\">is<\/span>h market. The parents again flew into a rage. At the same time, <span class=\"highlightedSearchTerm\">so<\/span>rrow and humiliation tortured the household. They came running to the spiritual Master, begged h<span class=\"highlightedSearchTerm\">is<\/span> pardon, narrated the whole story and then took the child back.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>H<span class=\"highlightedSearchTerm\">is<\/span> only comment: &#8220;<span class=\"highlightedSearchTerm\">Is<\/span> <span class=\"highlightedSearchTerm\">that<\/span> <span class=\"highlightedSearchTerm\">so<\/span>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Version of Story by Sri Chinmoy from: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.poetseers.org\/spiritual_and_devotional_poets\/zen\/stories\/1\">Is That So?<\/a><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;\"><\/span><\/p>\n<h3>What Can We Learn From This Story?<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Equanimity.<\/strong> True inner peace comes when we can respond to success and failure, praise and criticism in the same detached way. The Zen Master did not allow the unexpected event to disturb his inner peace and inner happiness. It shows that real happiness does not depend on the opinions of others.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Acceptance.<\/strong> Whatever life throws at us, we need to accept the external influences we have no control over. The only thing we are responsible for is our own inner attitude.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Character.<\/strong> True character depends on how we respond to difficult challenges.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Judging Others<\/strong>. We should avoid making jumping to conclusions on people&#8217;s character.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Conscience<\/strong>. We can never be happy when we ignore our conscience.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Language.<\/strong> Language is very revealing. We can speak with anger and rage or we can speak peacefully.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Related<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.srichinmoybio.co.uk\/blog\/inspiration\/the-wisdom-of-the-zen-haiku-masters\/\">Wisdom of Zen Haiku Masters<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.srichinmoybio.co.uk\/blog\/story\/lending-money-with-wisdom\/\">Lending Money with wisdom<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.srichinmoybio.co.uk\/blog\/life\/avoiding-misunderstanding\/\">Avoiding Misunderstanding<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(1) I believe the Zen Master was Hakuin (1686 &#8211; 1768). He helped revitalised Zen Buddhism encouraging zazen meditation and the use of Zen Koans such as <span style=\"font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;\">&#8220;What is the sound of one hand clapping?&#8221; <\/span><\/p>\n<p>Picture by: Kedar, Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A traditional Zen Story &#8211; Is That So? &#8220;There was a Zen Master who was very pure, very illumined. Near the place where he lived there happened to be a food store. The owner of the food store had a beautiful unmarried daughter. One day she was found with child. Her parents flew into a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.srichinmoybio.co.uk\/blog\/life\/is-that-so-zen-story\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Is That So? &#8211; Zen Story&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.srichinmoybio.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.srichinmoybio.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.srichinmoybio.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.srichinmoybio.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.srichinmoybio.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.srichinmoybio.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":783,"href":"https:\/\/www.srichinmoybio.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions\/783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.srichinmoybio.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.srichinmoybio.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.srichinmoybio.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}