Opening the door to your heart......

Ajahn Brahm is a Buddhist monk.

In the first chapter of the book, called ‘Two bad bricks’, Ajahn talks about how he built his first wall. It is very difficult, of course, for one with no bricklaying experience, Ajahn lamented, and he challenged the readers to try building one. Nevertheless, he finally completed the wall and stepped back to admire his handiwork.

To his horror he noticed that two of the bricks were crooked and he felt these two ‘bad bricks’ spoiled the appearance of the wall. He then asked the abbot for permission to tear the wall down and to start all over again. The abbot, however, told him to leave it as it is. Since then Ajahn felt ashamed of his shoddy workmanship.

One day, a visitor visited their monastery and expressed admiration for how the monks had built it from scratch with their own hands and without any outside expert help. Ajahn pointed out that the monastery was actually far from perfect because one of the walls had two bad bricks.

The visitor replied that he did not notice it because all he saw was the 998 good bricks, not the two bad ones.It suddenly dawned upon Ajahn that all this while he was upset about the two bad bricks without noticing the 998 good ones. And to think he actually wanted to tear the wall down because of these two bad bricks while not realising he would be destroying 998 good bricks in the process.

Yes, many see half a glass of water as being half empty rather than half full. And that is also how we see people and situations.

Sometimes one can only see a few good deeds a person did and be easily fooled by him. Yup... I was one of them.. Then again, there are times when one can only see the bad things he did and forget the good ones he did.

So, let's us not judge a person at all for the things he did because we are not judges.....

Namoamitofu......