Spoken By Supreme
Master Ching Hai,
Taichung, Formosa, October 15, 1990 (Originally In Chinese)
There
once was a king from a very rich and powerful country who had everything
he needed. One day he became bored because there was nothing that he
didn't have. So he and one of his most trusted advisors disguised themselves
as ordinary citizens and left the palace to mingle among the people
in order to understand more about his subjects, just like what was done
by Emperor Chien Long of the Ching Dynasty in China. The king also wanted
to be free of his royal responsibilities and to relax and enjoy a carefree
life for a while.
After a long walk,
the king became hungry. So he said to his advisor: "I'm hungry.
Can you go find something to eat?" The advisor set out to look
for food right away. He found a mango tree nearby, picked some mangoes,
washed them, and offered them to the king. He also offered the king
a knife to peel the fruit. As the king was peeling a mango, he accidentally
cut his finger and cried out, "Oh, it's bleeding!"
The advisor replied,
"God's arrangements are always the very best. Hes always arranges
the best for us." The king became very upset and said, "I'm
hurting terribly from the bleeding, and here you are talking about God
arranging the best. I've had enough of your theories every day! I can
stand it no longer! Go away!" He then beat his advisor, threw stones
at him, and drove him away. The advisor became so afraid that he fled.
After the advisor
was gone, the king tore a piece of cloth from his clothes and bandaged
his wound. He cried, pitied himself, and ate mangoes at the same time.
Then, all of a sudden, two strong men rushed up to him, pushed him down
and tied him up. The king asked, "What are you doing? Why are you
doing this to me?" The men answered, "Today we will offer
a sacrifice to the sacred mother Kali."
In India, the people
worship a sacred goddess called Kali. She's the goddess of negativity,
of destruction and killing, who supposedly destroys the bad people in
the world. So some people are afraid of her. However, those who are
good aren't afraid, and they respect her. But of course, there are always
those who are superstitious and worship her as a threatening deity.
The people often made sacrificial offerings of living creatures to her
as part of a barbaric tradition passed down from ancient times.
The two men said,
"Today we're making offerings to our sacred mother Kali. We're
looking for a good man to offer her as food." She certainly doesn't
eat it. All that the believers do is kill people and throw them away,
all the while saying that the deities ate them. There are other countries
that have similar traditions. We kill cows and pigs and say that they're
to be offered to the gods. But who really eats them? We, ourselves!
That's lying to the gods. But it's all right! I don't want to criticize.
I'm just telling a story. You'll understand.
The king said, "No! I'm the king of your neighboring country. You
can't do this." Upon hearing his words, the two men were even more
delighted, and said, "The sacred mother will be even happier today
because of this special gift. Let's take you to her quickly."
So the two strong
men carried the king away. At the ceremony, while music was playing
and offerings were being prepared, the king, all tied up, was carried
up the altar to be burned as an offering. The high priest came up to
inspect his body, and when he saw the wounded finger, he said, "No!
He's not perfect. His finger is wounded. We can't use him as an offering!
Let him go and find someone else."
The king was very
happy! He quickly ran away, and remembered what his advisor had said,
"God always arranges the best for us." He felt ashamed, and
regretted having driven his advisor away so badly. He made his way back
to the forest to look for him, calling his name over and over again.
Finally, he found the advisor. Then the king hugged him and said, "I'm
so sorry. You're a good person. All that you said was true. I not only
didn't thank you, but I even beat you, scolded you, and drove you away.
It was all my fault.
When you said God's
arrangements are the very best, I didn't understand then that it was
good for me. If I hadn't cut myself, I would have been dead by now."
So he told the advisor the story, and the advisor said, "Yes! It's
the same for me too. God's arrangements are always the best. If you
hadn't hit me and driven me away, I would have been captured as well.
And when they found that your body wasn't perfect, they would have sacrificed
me instead, and I would have been dead by now."
If we believe in God,
we shouldn't complain under any circumstances. For instance, sometimes
after I scold you and send you home, when you reach home, you find out,
"It's good that I came home, or else this or that might have happened!"
Right? (Someone answered: 'Yes') Or when you were sent away, you made
a phone call, and found out it might have been too late otherwise. Or
you found out you avoided an incident, such as a car accident or explosion.
There's another mysterious
story about an experience of a spiritual practitioner. This story is
set in France. In a village, there was an old lady who had become hunched
with the years. She had great faith in God, and no matter what happened,
she would say it was God's arrangement. Even when it was an unpleasant
situation, she would say it was God's test or arrangement. No one ever
heard her complain. But they didn't know about all this until later.
This is the background of the story.
Once some people passed
by the village, looked down from a bridge, and saw no one there, not
even a dog or cat. They wondered why. The reason was that a war had
broken out, and most people had fled the village. These passersby wanted
to find out if anyone had remained behind. They were hungry and wanted
to find a place where they could get some food. If they could see that
there was no one in the village, they would not bother coming down from
the bridge.
As they looked down,
they saw an old lady come out of a house and walk into another one.
Just then, the house that the old lady had just left exploded. A bomb
had dropped on the first house. She came out of the second house to
see what had happened to her home, and stood there, shaking her head,
"Why?! It was there a few minutes ago, but now it's gone! Just
then, the second house which she had just left also blew up! She stood
there, speechless. All she felt was that something strange was going
on, and she knew that everything had been arranged by God.
The people up on the
bridge came down to talk to her. They asked, "Why are you here
all by yourself? Where are the others?" The old lady answered,
"They have no faith in God. I told them that it was all right and
that no matter where we were, God would protect us and we would be safe.
Did you see how strange that was? As soon as I came out of one house,
that house exploded. And when I came out of another one, it blew up
as well. Don't you see that all these things are God's arrangement?
Otherwise, it could not be such a coincidence. Because I believe in
God, I won't run away. If I die here, then I die. I won't leave. My
children, grandchildren and the rest of the people in the village have
left. Only I have stayed."
The people told her
they were hungry, so she began to prepare a meal for them. While waiting
for the meal to be ready, the visitors went outside for a walk. They
walked a bit further away to another house and found a woman and child.
The child was still clinging to his mother. Both had been killed by
a bomb. When they returned to the old lady's house, they told her of
the two people who had been killed there. When she heard about it, she
stopped cooking, and rushed out to see. Then the house she had just
left suddenly exploded!
With this happening
for the third time, she again thought that it could not just be a coincidence.
It must be that God didn't want her to die, so that she could tell others
of her faith and conviction. She just shook her head, not knowing what
to do. She then went over to take a look at the two bodies. When she
saw them, she knelt down and began to cry. They were her daughter and
grandson. They didn't listen to her and were leaving the village when
they were killed. But still, she just shook her head and said it was
all God's arrangement. It was nothing! She went back and looked for
another house to cook some food for those people. This time, the house
didn't explode. Three explosions one after another were enough.
Both of these stories
about God's arrangements inspire and encourage us to have faith in God.