Happy Easter 2020. !!!
For your - and our - consolation in front of the sad arriving of an Easter in confinement, without mutual visits to familiy and friends, we send you here-under this old Chinese tale ...
May this story encourage you, and bring confidence in the future :
----- The three Chinese mystics----
I have heard about three monks. No name is mentioned, because they never told their names to anybody, they never answered anything. So in China they are only known simply as “the three laughing monks.”
They did only one thing: they would enter a village, stand in the marketplace, and start laughing.
Suddenly people would become aware and they would laugh with their whole being. Then others would also get the infection, and then a crowd would gather, and just looking at them the whole crowd would start laughing. What is happening? Then the whole town would get involved, and they would move to another town. They were loved very much. That was their only sermon, the only message — that laugh. And they would not teach, they would simply create the situation.
Then it happened they became famous all over the country — the three laughing monks. The whole of China loved them, respected them. Nobody had preached that way — that life must be just a laughter and nothing else. And they were not laughing at anybody in particular, but simply laughing as if they had understood the cosmic joke. They spread so much joy all over China without using a single word. People would ask their names but they would simply laugh, so that became their name, the three laughing monks.
Then they became old, and in one village one of the three monks died. The whole village was very expectant, filled with expectations, because now at least when one of them had died they must weep. This would be something worth seeing, because no one could even conceive of these people weeping.
The whole village gathered. The two monks were standing by the side of the corpse of the third and laughing such a belly laugh. So the villagers asked, “At least explain this!”
So for the first time they spoke, and they said : “We are laughing because this man has won. We were always wondering who would die first, and this man has defeated us. We are laughing at our defeat, at his victory. He lived with us for many years, and we laughed together and we enjoyed each other’s togetherness, presence. There can be no other way of giving him the last send-off, we can only laugh.”
The whole village was sad, but when the dead monk’s body was put on the funeral pyre, then the village realized that not only were these two joking — the third who was dead was also laughing… because the third man who was dead had told his companions, “Don’t change my dress!” It was conventional that when a man died they changed the dress and gave a bath to the body, so he had said, “Don’t give me a bath because I have never been unclean. So much laughter has been in my life that no impurity can accumulate near me, can even come to me. I have not gathered any dust, laughter is always young and fresh. So don’t give me a bath and don’t change my clothes.”
So just to pay him respect they had not changed his clothes. And when the body was put on the fire, suddenly they became aware that he had hidden many things under his clothes and those things started… Chinese fireworks ! So the whole village laughed, and those two said, “You rascal! You have died, but again you have defeated us. Your laughter is the last.”
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An Indian Sage gave following comment to this tale:
The laugh is eternal, life is eternal, life continues. Other actors make thier appearance, but the play goes on. You laugh, and after you somebody else laughs, but the laughter is not silenced. You celebrate a feast, after you somebody else celebrates a feast, but the feast is going on. - Existence is never-ending , it is a continuum; there is no interruption in it. No death is "THE" death, because every death opens a new door : it is a beginning. There is no end to life, always there is a new beginning, a resurrection.If you know how to transform your sadness and distress into festive joy, you will also be able to transform your death into resurrection. Learn this art, now that you still have time.
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