(Photo source: Pexels)
Men are born kind. However, people tend to acquire bad habits that corrupt their minds along the way in their lives. Hence, the existence of different mentalities in people we see around us.
In a village, there lived a family with a grandmother, father, mother, and a young son. Their home was near a Buddhist temple. The young boy had an honest and frank character but was slow in response compared to others. Despite so, his mother still lovingly took care of him.
The boy was sent to school when he reached schooling age. However, he was bullied by some of his classmates and ridiculed with words like “The idiot is here! The idiot is here!” But no matter how much his classmates teased him, the boy never got angry. He only kept his distance from those classmates and played alone quietly.
The boy had a particular habit of picking things up and keeping them in his pocket to be brought home. Every day, his mother would wait by the door and ask him what he had in his pocket and get him to take it out. He would diligently take everything out each time and was only allowed to enter the house after his mother had cleaned his pocket. If his mother did not wait for him outside the house, he would then bring the items into his room and even sleep with them next to his pillow. This particular habit of his had troubled his mother badly.
One day, as usual, his mother asked, “What do you have in your pocket today?” As she reached out to empty his pocket, the boy retreated a few steps back and refused to let her empty it. The mother felt slightly angry and thought, “It is already annoying enough that I have to clean your pocket for you every day, and now you refuse to let me look at it!”
Hence, she pulled him towards her, but the boy immediately covered the pocket. Pulling apart his hands, she touched a ball of warm and fluffy thing in his pocket and got shocked. Immediately pulling her hand out, she asked the boy, “What is inside? Hurry up and take it out!”
With tears running down his face helplessly, the boy carefully took ‘it’ out with both hands. It turned out it was a small bird that had just broken out of its eggshell, with its eyes not fully open yet!
The mother hugged the boy and said, “Child, do you know what day is today? Today is Buddha’s birthday, an extremely auspicious day, we cannot kill living things! Don’t harm the bird, hurry, bring it to the backyard and set it free, let it find food to eat in the fields.”
Just as the boy was about to obediently follow his mother’s instructions, his mother noticed a hole in his shirt and hence said, “Hold on, take off your shirt. I’ll sew it up for you.” Truth be told, the mother felt that having to check the boy’s pockets every day was too troublesome. Therefore, she wanted to seal the pocket so that he would not be able to bring back anything in his pocket anymore.
After the boy took off his shirt, the mother sealed the pocket stitch by stitch. When she finished sewing, she called out for her son to return and wear his shirt. Yet, despite repeated calls, she could not find him. That made her very worried, and she pondered where he could have gone without wearing his shirt.
After a while, the boy’s grandmother came home. But before she even entered the door, she started calling furiously for her daughter-in-law. The daughter-in-law thought, “Didn’t mother just go to the temple for the Buddha bathing ceremony? Why is she so angry?”
The boy’s grandmother growled, “Why did you let your child go to the temple half-naked? It was so embarrassing for me!”
The daughter-in-law felt awkward and troubled upon hearing that, but the grandmother was so full of anger that she could only quietly listen to her scolding. She thought, “Why did this foolish son go to the temple half-naked? I better go and find him!”
As she walked to the backyard, the mother heard some noise from the warehouse. She then walked silently towards it and opened the door gently. There she saw her son holding a bottle of hay water he had collected from the temple.
While feeding water to the bird cautiously, the boy whispered to the bird, “Buddha will protect you. Open your eyes, grow up quickly so that you can fly and find your mother soon.” He continuously said those words while feeding water to the bird drop by drop.
Upon seeing this, his mother was both touched and delighted that her son knows how to treasure life. She then decided to reopen the sealed pocket because the boy had so much love that his pocket could also be used to save lives!
This is a true story. Even though the boy was not intelligent, he was extremely kind. Despite being frequently scolded and called an ‘idiot’ by others, he did not argue back. Instead, he knows how to respect life. As for his grandmother, who immediately blamed his mother without understanding the actual situation first, he had obviously been corrupted by indescribable bad influences of the world. Despite going to pray at the temple, the grandmother had an impatient and rash nature.
On the other hand, motherly love is human nature. Regardless of the boy’s level of intelligence, his mother still educated him with utmost care. Upon seeing her child’s compassionate heart, her decision to reopen the sealed pocket had allowed the child’s innocence and compassionate nature some room to grow and develop.
Men are born kind. However, people tend to acquire bad habits that corrupt their minds along the way in their lives. Hence, we must all be mindful and put in effort to remove our bad habits and return to our pure innate nature.
Share 
