Buhay Bahay-Bahayan

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Sharing this wonderful and insightful thought on praying written by Paulo Coelho.

A farm labourer with a sick wife, asked a Buddhist monk to say a series of prayers. The priest began to pray, asking God to cure all those who were ill.

“Just a moment,” said the farm labourer. “I asked you to pray for my wife and there you are praying for everyone who’s ill.”

“I’m praying for her too.”

“Yes, but you’re praying for everyone. You might end up helping my neighbour, who’s also ill, and I don’t even like him.”

“You understand nothing about healing,” said the monk, moving off. “By praying for everyone, I am adding my prayers to those of the millions of people who are also praying for their sick. Added together, those voices reach God and benefit everyone. Separately, they lose their strength and go nowhere.”

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This is one of my favorite little thoughts I read long ago.

A member of a certain church, who previously had been attending services regularly, stopped going.  After a few weeks, the pastor decided to visit him.

It was a chilly evening.  The pastor found the man at home alone, sitting before a blazing fire.  Guessing the reason for his pastor’s visit, the man welcomed him, led him to a comfortable chair near the fireplace and waited.

The pastor made himself at home but said nothing.  In the grave silence, he contemplated the dance of the flames around the burning logs.  After some minutes, the pastor took the fire tongs, carefully picked up a brightly burning ember and placed it one side of the hearth, all alone.  Then he sat back in his chair, still silent.  The host watched all this in quiet contemplation.  As the one lone ember’s flame flickered and diminished, there was a momentary glow and then its fire was no more.  Soon it was cold and dead.

Not a word had been spoken since the initial greeting.  The pastor glanced at his watch and realized it was time to leave.  He slowly stood up, picked up the cold, dead ember and placed it back in the middle of the fire.  Immediately it began to glow, once more with the light and warmth of the burning coals around it.

As the pastor reached the door to leave, his host said with a tear running down his cheek, “Thank you so much for your visit and especially for the fiery sermon.”

A young couple moves into a new neighborhood. The next morning, while they are eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hang the wash outside.

That laundry is not very clean, she said, she doesn’t know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap.

Her husband looked on, but remained silent. Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the young woman would make the same comments.

About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband: “Look! She has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this.”

The husband said: “I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows!”

And so it is with life: “What we see when watching others depends on the purity of the window through which we look. Before we give any criticism, it might be a good idea to check our state of mind and ask ourselves if we are ready to see the good rather than to be looking for something in the person we are about to judge.”