The Long Path to Wisdom

by Jan-Philipp Sendker

  “Please forgive me, Mother,” said the little one. “Now I know what trouble is and from now on I will always listen to you.”

  Long ago there lived in Burma a merchant who frequently traveled. He wandered from village to village, mostly in the mountains, buying and selling at the markets. On one of these expeditions he contracted a terrible case of malaria. A friendly farmer took him in and tended to him in his own bed. The merchant spent several days in a twilit delirium before the farmer and his family were finally able to nurse him back to health. When he had fully recovered and was taking leave of his newfound friends, he warmly encouraged the farmer to visit him in his village on the Irrawaddy River. It would be his privilege, nay, his duty, to welcome this man as an honored guest in his home. After all, the farmer had saved his life!

  The following summer the farmer decided to visit the merchant. It was not an easy journey, but the farmer rode his best and dearest horse. Slowly they made their way down out of the mountains onto the wide plain and from there swiftly on to the merchant’s house.

  “My savior, my friend, my brother, all that I have is yours. Stay as long as you like!” cried the overjoyed merchant at their reunion.

  The farmer was introduced around the village, and the neighbors took such a liking to him that he had to spend most of his time visiting new acquaintances and keeping up with all the villagers’ invitations. They would drink tea, chat about this and that, and invariably the stranger would be treated to a delicious meal.

  After a few days, however, it appeared that the host was disappointed by his guest’s frequent absences. “You’re spending all your time with the neighbors,” he gently rebuked the farmer. “I’m feeling a bit neglected, and I wonder if I might borrow your grand horse to go visit my relatives in the neighboring villages. Will you lend it to me for a few days?”

  Without hesitation the farmer permitted his friend to use his horse. Impatient and rash, the merchant rode the horse for three days from sunrise till sunset so that in the end it returned drained, weakened, and of little further use to the famer.

  The farmer, meanwhile, had been enjoying himself immensely among his new friends, and he was bitterly enraged by the careless mishandling of his favorite horse. He swore to get revenge. With suppressed rage and a feigned smile he asked to borrow the merchant’s boat. Permission was granted, and the farmer marched grimly to the dock. “Since he abused my horse, I will abuse his boat,” he grumbled.

  For three days from sunrise till sunset the farmer rowed the boat hither and yon on the Irrawaddy. But at the end of that time the sturdy wooden boat showed nary a sign of wear while the farmer’s hands were riddled with blisters, not to mention how swollen they were!

  Revenge had utterly lost its appeal. The farmer bid his host a hasty farewell and set off on the long journey home holding the reins of his enfeebled horse, who now barely managed to plod along beside him.

  There was once a young but very poor fisherman who lived in a village by the sea. He longed to find a wife, but the search was proving exceedingly difficult. None of the desirable young women wanted the poor fisherman for a husband. After a long time, he finally found himself a bride who, though not the most beautiful, was the cleverest in the village.

  The first time the two of them went down to fish together, the young man saw a crow sitting atop a stupa. “Look at that crow!” he cried. “How white it is!”

  “Indeed,” replied his wife. “It is truly astonishingly white.”

  The two reached the beach, where a gull stood in the sand.

  “Look at that gull!” the man called anew. “How black its plumage!”

  “Indeed,” replied his wife. “It is truly astonishingly black.”

  They went out to sea, and although the work was arduous and wearisome, they dispatched it with ease and returned with a net full of fish.

  From that day on the couple always fished together, and they worked in such harmony that they soon became wealthy.

  Their good fortune did not go unnoticed, and one day a neighbor decided to follow them with his own wife and to copy everything they did.

  As this other couple passed the stupa on their way down to the sea, they saw the crow perched upon it, and the man cried: “There’s a crow. It’s completely white.”

  “It’s black,” contradicted his wife.

  A little later they came to the beach, where a gull was strutting across the sand.

  “A black gull,” the man said. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”

  “Are you blind? It’s white, not black, you numbskull!”

  The couple fell to quarreling and trading unkind words. They spent the whole day bickering until in the evening they returned to the village without a single fish.

  Once there was a king and queen who loved each other very much and who lived happily together in their palace. It was the king’s greatest pleasure to spend the entire day with his wife. The queen, however, divided her devotion between her husband and the teachings of the Buddha. In fact, she was unable to find sufficient time in her daily routine to meditate and to study the scriptures, so she asked her husband for permission to spend four weeks living modestly with nothing to distract her from the words of the Enlightened One.

  The king cared so much for his wife that he consented, albeit with a heavy heart, and not without asking her to arrange in advance for some suitable companionship during her absence.

  And so the queen undertook to find for her husband a woman who would attend to him for a month. She sent forth the ladies of the court, who soon returned with a suitable young woman who was more than delighted when she learned what was asked of her.

  For the next month, life in the royal palace played out thus: The king and his attendant occupied the upper story, where by all accounts she tended to him well and lovingly. The queen, meanwhile, lived on the lower floor, cleaning and cooking, showing generosity to the monks on their thrice-daily alms rounds, meditating, reading Buddhist scriptures, and attending sermons at nearby monasteries.

  As the month drew to a close, however, the king’s young attendant felt disinclined to depart. During those weeks she had grown quite accustomed to the luxurious palace life. Faced with the prospect of leaving the king and the grand house, her mind turned to wicked thoughts, and she devised a scheme to do away with her rival.

  One morning, knowing the queen’s daily routines, she prepared a pot of boiling oil. From a staircase high above she then took aim at her adversary, who was busily sweeping the landing below. At the critical moment, however, the queen moved forward in order to clean the next step, and the oil splashed behind her on the floor. The queen looked serenely up at the young woman while a servant raced up the stairs with a loud cry and tore furiously at the attacker’s hair.

  To the astonishment of everyone present, the queen broke up this tussle, and even pacified the king, who was beside himself with rage when he heard the news. The queen calmly led the young woman into the courtyard and even sent her off with something to eat and a bit of gold.

  The young woman slunk away in tears, head bowed in shame.

  There was once a beautiful young villager named Nan Kyar Hae whose charm attracted the attention of King Theikthadharma Thiriraza. She had traveled with her parents from their small village to a place near the palace to help construct a new pagoda, and when the king laid eyes on her, he burned with love for her and resolved to make her his queen. Nan Kyar Hae’s mother and father were overjoyed that fortune had smiled upon their daughter. Now, the king had only recently assumed the throne, thus in addition to the completion of a shrine there were many other duties to be attended to, so the wedding ceremony was arranged in great haste. They were so pressed for time that the young woman’s family completely forgot to ask the village’s guardian spirit to bless the marriage, as was the custom in their small community. The villagers warned the bride and her parents against spurning the nat in this manner, but
their concerns fell on deaf ears.

  After the wedding, the king, who was unaware that a custom had been broken, led his wife home. Life in the extravagant castle, though it offered every imaginable comfort, brought the new queen no joy. She fell ill, and her condition worsened with each passing day. The king’s personal doctors did their utmost to restore the queen’s health but every effort proved futile.

  Eventually the king summoned a fortune-teller, who explained that the illness was the work of the nat from the queen’s village. He explained that the spirit was resentful because he had not been asked to bless the marriage. In order to appease him, the queen’s mother and father were called to the palace to take their daughter back to their village to perform the task they had neglected. The illness was too advanced, however, and their belated attempt at reparations was to no avail: When the family arrived in the village, the spirit transformed into a tiger and rushed at the failing young queen, who died instantly of a heart attack.

  In a monastery in a Burmese village there lived a big-hearted abbot who was admired and beloved by all. Not long before his eightieth birthday, the villagers pooled together a significant sum of money in order to build a pagoda in the abbot’s honor and dedicate it to him on his birthday.

  Construction progressed quickly and the work was done with weeks to spare. Only then did the crestfallen villagers realize that they did not have enough money to commission the obligatory statue of the Buddha for the main altar. It occurred to them, however, that two particularly pious monks from their very own monastery were also talented sculptors. One of them worked primarily in stone, the other in wood. The villagers approached the monks and asked them for help. “We don’t know yet whether it should be a stone or wooden statue,” they said. “Would you each be willing to make one so that we can decide?”

  The monks agreed, and side by side they started to chisel. After a few days the pieces began to take shape, and the villagers came in growing numbers to view the work and to offer their opinions on which of the two figures should occupy the place of honor in the pagoda. Almost from the start there were two parties embroiled in a boisterous debate, and soon enough the monks found themselves swept along by the spirit of competition and rivalry. They glared at one another and labored to exhaustion on their pieces.

  When they were finished, the two artists anxiously presented their work. The crowd was amazed, for both of the works were truly extraordinary. Yet even now that they were complete, the villagers could not agree on which to choose. Arguments and scuffles broke out.

  “This is all your fault!” one of the monks shouted. “This is an outrage!” growled the other in reply, and it quickly came to blows between them. They beat one another with their bare fists, but their anger grew, fanned by the rowdy mob, until they began striking one another with their completed masterpieces. When the dust finally settled, the two monks lay dead on the floor, their skulls staved in, broken Buddhas in their hands.

  In the northern region of Burma was a mountain village with a dubious reputation: The villagers were all so pious that they demanded especially long sermons. The monks were expected to preach for hours and hours!

  This was hard on the monks, since the villagers refused to give alms or food to those who did not live up to their expectations. Many of the monks simply left. The length of the sermons so adversely affected the health of those who tried to stay that they, too, eventually fled out of fear for their lives. Consequently the village monastery was soon completely uninhabited. “The Village of Endless Sermons” it was called, and everyone steered clear of it.

  At long last, to the delighted surprise of the villagers, a monk finally came to them. He was short and stout, and as they would soon discover, he ate astonishing amounts of food. The monk defended himself saying, “If you want to hear my sermon, I must have my strength, and to be strong I need fortification!”

  The new monk seemed very knowledgeable, devout, and learned, however, and so the village provided him with everything he desired and eagerly awaited his first sermon, which was set to be held on the day of the next full moon. As no one else was available to fill the position, they even made him the abbot of their monastery.

  The day of the full moon came and at midday the entire village assembled at the monastery—even the children were present. The abbot rose and began his sermon. An hour passed, yet each and every member of the audience sat still as a mouse and listened attentively. Another hour passed and not even any of the children had made a peep. After four hours, however, a few of the children began to yawn, and after five hours the women slowly stole out of the room, taking the children with them. The monk kept on talking. More hours passed, the sun went down, and one after another the men slipped away. When the first cock crowed only the village elder remained before the abbot, who still gave no sign of quitting. The old man, almost overpowered by sleep, tried to creep backwards away from the monk toward the door through which he hoped to escape this torture. But to his horror he realized that the monk was following him step for step into the courtyard. The elder stood up and ran but he failed to see the well and tumbled head over heels into it.

  Luckily the well was not very deep and the elder was not seriously hurt, but now he was trapped in the cold water at the bottom. Above him stood the abbot, carrying steadfastly on with his litany. After an hour of this, compassion overcame the monk and he asked the man in the well, “Shall I continue until the sun is up, or have you had enough?”

  The miserably freezing village elder said weakly: “That was enough, Your Holiness. I can assure you that our village will never again demand long sermons from our monks.”

  In the Irrawaddy delta lived a young rice farmer with his mother and father. He was industrious, honest, and well-liked by everyone who knew him. One morning he did not feel well. His mother cooked him a strong curry to pep him up, but his discomfort persisted. The next day he felt so poorly that he could not even go out to work his field. By the third day, he was unable to leave the hut. His mother sought the village healer’s help, but his herbs, salves, and teas offered no relief. The concerned father hurried to other nearby villages and asked their healers and women for help, but none of their advice had any effect; the young farmer’s condition worsened by the day. When the local astrologer heard of this, he went to the family and consulted the stars for them. His horoscope revealed that in a kingdom far to the east, there lived a famous astrologer who could help the ailing farmer.

  The mother and father were sure that such a long journey would be too much for their son and begged him not to go, but fearing he would die if he stayed in the village, the young man set out on his way.

  At the end of his first day of travel he reached a banyan tree under which he set up camp for the night. No sooner had he lain down than the nat appeared, the tree’s guardian spirit.

  “Where are you headed, traveler?” he asked curiously.

  “I am journeying to seek a famous astrologer.”

  “An astrologer!” cried the spirit joyfully. “Could you please do me a favor?”

  “It would be my pleasure,” the young man replied. “How can I help you?”

  “I have been living in this old tree now for so long, and I would very much like to go somewhere else. But whatever I do, I can’t manage to leave it. Can you please ask the astrologer why I am bound to this tree?”

  “I would be glad to,” he promised, tired from the arduous trek.

  The next day he started out before the sun was even in the sky. After a few hours he came to a small hill, at the foot of which lay a large snake.

  “Where are you headed, traveler?” she asked.

  “I am journeying to seek a famous astrologer.”

  “An astrologer!” the snake cried with glee. “Will you please ask him for me why it is that I can’t leave this accursed hill no matter how hard I try?”

  “It would be my pleasure,” replied the sick young man. “I will come
by on my way back and give you his answer.”

  On he traveled until he came to a wide, raging river. He searched for a bridge or a ferry but found no way across. Exhausted, he sank to his knees in the sand at the river’s edge. Was this the end of the road? Would he ever get well again?

  All of a sudden a crocodile swam up to him. “Where are you headed, traveler?” he asked curiously.

  “I am journeying to seek a famous astrologer,” the young man replied in a despondent voice. “But I am afraid that my journey ends here; I cannot swim a river with such a strong current.”

  “An astrologer!” cried the crocodile happily. “Don’t worry about the river. I will bring you to the other side, but you must first promise me something.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “Please ask him why I can’t dive underwater. I am a crocodile, after all!”

  “I’ll ask him for you. I promise.”

  The reptile slid to the edge of the river, the young man clambered onto his back, and the crocodile delivered him safely to the opposite shore.

  Still weak from his illness but in good spirits, he continued on his way. After many hours he reached a kingdom at the borders of which were posted signs warning strangers not to enter. Trespassers faced the death penalty. The young man had no other choice, however, and so he walked on. It was not long before a palace guard discovered him, arrested him, and brought him before the king.

  “How dare you enter my realm!” cried the monarch angrily. “Are you not aware that the punishment for this is death?”