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Parable: To Ask For Nothing

From Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia
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Hundred Parables Sutra
Parable: To Ask For Nothing



Once there were two men walking together, and they saw another person staining in vain to pull his cart of sesame out of a rut in the road. The person pulling the cart said to the two men, “Please give me a hand, so as to get this cart out of the rut.”

The two men asked, “What will you give us in return?”

The person said, “Nothing.” The two men managed to pull the cart out anyway, and then to the cart owner they demanded, “Now give us something.”

He said, “I have nothing to give you.”

The two men asked, “Give us ‘nothing’ then!”

Then one of the two men smiled and said, “He doesn’t want to give us anything. There’s no use getting upset.”

The other man said, “He said he’d give us ‘nothing’. But that ‘nothing’ must be something.”

The word “nothing” that the first man spoke is a compound of two words that compose a false name. If common people of the world became attached to that “nothing”, they would be born in the Realm of Nothing Whatsoever. The “nothing” spoken of by the second man refers to “no marks, nothing wished for, and nothing done.”


Source

cttbusa.org