A man once asked to visit heaven and hell.  When he reached hell he was amazed to find people seated around a huge banquet table.  The finest foods were piled high on the table.

what a feast! Perhaps hell was not so bad after all!

But when he looked closely at the diners he saw that they were all starving despite the food before them.  You see, each diner had been given chopsticks which were three feet long!

there was no way they could carry the food to their mouths with these long chopsticks.  no one could eat a bite.  What a hell indeed, to sit so close to a banquet and yet be unable to taste a morsel.

the man was then taken to heaven to observe life there.  To his surprise he saw people seated around a banquet table in exactly the same situation.  Each person had been given three-foot-long chopsticks in heaven too!

But here everyone was happily consuming the delicious food.  The residents of heaven . . . were using their yard-long chopsticks to feed each other.

A tale from China

A thief named willy, making his escape from a high-rise penthouse, falls from the fire escape towards certain death thirty-five floors below.  A moment later, it seems, he finds himself in a fancy pool hall, in perfect physical shape. 

Willy concludes that he has died and gone to heaven –because pool is his all time favorite hobby. With a sense of relief and joy, he racks up and discovers he has somehow become a master at the game.  His only regret is that no one else can see his triumph in this empty establishment as he sinks one shot after another.

Later that day as he explores his new environment, he visits a swimming pool and finds himself performing Olympic-caliber dives from the three-meter board, then cutting through the water in what must be record time. 

At a nearby casino, where he meets taciturn croupiers and silent dealers, he starts with a few dollars in his pocket and emerges a millionaire, the luckiest man alive.

He finds a hotel and pays for a month in the executive suite.  The next day is a blissful repeat of the day before.  He races cars, wins another fortune at video poker, and beds six gorgeous women, having discovered a profound new virility.

It’s an amazing week, and a pretty good month, but as time passes, Willy begins to tire of the constant winning and his mastery of everything and everyone.  Within six months he feels like he is going mad.  He undertakes a search for St. Peter or whoever’s in charge, so he can express his dissatisfaction.

After an exhausting search he finally reaches the main administration hall.  An efficient secretary waves him into a grand office, where he finds a well dressed man sitting behind a mahogany desk.

“May I help you?” asks the official.

With that, Willy begins a litany of complaints: the terrible boredom, the effortless success and victory at every turn, ending with,

” I never thought heaven would be anything like this.”

The official stands slowly, and his eyes reflect a reddish glow. 

“What,” he asks, “Makes you think that this is heaven?”

(-Dan Millman, from the book The Four Purposes in Life)  

Neither would admit he was wrong.

They were about to come to blows over this.

Their mother gave them three sticks: “These are special argument sticks.  They will solve the argument for you.  Set the sticks up in the woods, leaning one against the other so they all stand up.  Leave them there for one month.  If they fall over toward the north, the one who sets the northern stick is right in the matter.  If they fall to the south, the one who sets up the southern stick is right in the matter.”

The boys took their sticks into the woods and set them up.  They were satisfied that this would solve their argument.  A month later the boys remembered their argument sticks.  they went into the woods to find out who had won the argument.

the sticks had fallen in a heap and begun to rot.

There was no winner.

And the boys couldn’t remember what the argument had been about in the first place.

(An Iroquois Tale)

A farmer once lost his axe.

He felt certain that his neighbor had stolen the axe.

He watched that neighbor with suspicion.

He noticed that the neighbor’s son seemed as shifty as his father.

The boy looked just like a thief.

The farmer knew he could not trust either of them.

One day when he visited a distant field where he sometimes worked, the farmer discovered his axe.  He had left it behind the last time he worked in that field.

When the farmer returned home he noticed his

neighbor’s son at play.

The boy looked absolutely normal now.

There seemed nothing shifty or suspicious about him at all.

- a tale from China

An example of faith was found on the wall of a concentration camp.  On it a prisoner had written the words:

I believe in the sun, even though it does not shine,

I believe in love, even when it is not shown,

I believe in God, even when he doesn’t speak.

MILAREPA, who lived in the eleventh century, is one of the heroes of Tibetan Buddhism, one of the brave ones. He was also a rather unusual fellow. He was a loner who lived in caves by himself and meditated wholeheartedly for years. He was extremely stubborn and determined. If he
couldn’t find anything to eat for a couple of years, he just ate nettles and turned green, but he would never stop practicing.

The story goes that one evening Milarepa returned to his cave after gathering firewood, only to find it filled with demons. They were cooking his food, reading his books, sleeping in his bed. They had taken over the joint. He knew about the teaching of the nonduality of self and other, but he still didn’t quite know how to get these guys out of his cave. Even though he had the sense that they were just a projection of his own mind—all the unwanted parts of himself—he didn’t know how to get rid of them.

So first he taught them the dharma. He sat on this seat that was higher than they were and said things to them about how we are all one. He talked about compassion and emptiness and other key Buddhist teachings. Nothing happened. The demons were still there. Then he lost his patience and got angry and ran at them. They just laughed at him. Finally, he gave up and just sat down on the floor, saying, “I’m not going away and it looks like you’re not either, so let’s just live here together.”

At that point, all of them left except one. Milarepa said, “This one is particularly vicious.” (We all know that one. Sometimes we have lots of them like that. Sometimes we feel that’s all we’ve got.) He didn’t know what to do, so he surrendered himself even further. He walked over and put himself right into the mouth of the demon and said, “Just eat me up if you want to.” Then that demon left too. The moral of the story is, when the resistance is gone, so are the demons.

Chodron, Pema (2010). The Pocket Pema Chodron (pp. 50-51). Shambhala Publications. 

The Story of Walter Ciszek, S.J. ( adapted from Caroline Myss www.Myss.com)

Walter Ciszek was born in Philadelphia in 1906. He was ordained a Jesuit around 1938. What makes his life so surreal is that he ended up spending 23 years in a Soviet prison camp, the gulag, as it was known.

Through the most bizarre and unusual series of spiritually-driven choices, Ciszek felt compelled to go to the Jesuit House in Rome after his ordination and study in the Jesuit Russian program. At the time, the Jesuits were looking for volunteers to enter into Russia secretly to assess the spirit of the Catholic population and to be present as priests. He felt called to this mission.

Hitler was more than just on the rise by the late 1930’s and Ciszek was now being discouraged from heading into Russia. Instead, he opted for Poland. He was already fluent in Polish, having grown up in a Polish-speaking American home. Hitler invaded Poland’s western end and the
Russians invaded the eastern end, where Ciszek, now using an alias, was living. He saw this as an opportunity to enter Russia as a regular laborer and he took it.

Eventually the Soviet authorities came upon the Jesuit House in Poland, where they found his American passport. They tortured the head priest into finally revealing that Ciszek and one other Jesuit had entered into Russia using false identification papers. Within a few months, both these men were arrested and their nightmare journey began. Ciszek’s companion priest died
early on, but he went on to experience brutal interrogations, starvation, and eventually years in Siberia. He was released in 1963, thanks to the efforts of the U.S. State Department, his sister, and President John F. Kennedy, who held the Jesuits in high regard.

Walter wrote a book entitled With God in Russia, in which he recounted his 23 years of having been imprisoned under false charges of spying. Instead of saying something like, “I couldn’t get out of Russia fast enough,” or “I left with a bitter taste in my mouth for all the wasted years of my
life,” he noted that as his plane took flight, he could see the spirals of the Kremlin in the distance. And with that image in his view, “Slowly, carefully, I made the sign of the cross over the land I was leaving.”

He blessed the hell from which he was being released.

Slowly, carefully, he blessed the land that had held him prisoner and had brutalized him for more than two decades. He had found a way to love greater than and through the labyrinth of his own personal sufferings. His grace and goodness were unimaginable.

When your hand has moved in my life

I have seem a glimpse of heaven on earth.

Forgive me for my independent attitude

of believing I have the power to do Your work.

I beseech You to reach down from the heavens

and put Your mighty hand on me.

I need and earnestly desire Your strength

working in me, through me,

and around me to do your work.

So I empty myself and ask you to lavishly fill me

with the full power of Your spirit

and the glory of your presence.

By Your hand, I will walk boldly today,

Carrying Your light in this dark world .

Amen.

I pray that you…..may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Consider this…

Anything that annoys you is “for” teaching you patience.

Anyone who abandons you is “for” teaching you how to stand up on your own two feet.

Anything that angers you is “for” teaching you forgiveness and compassion.

Anything that has power over you is “for” teaching you how to take your power back.

Anything you hate is “for” teaching you unconditional love.

Anything you fear is “for” teaching you courage to overcome your fear.

Anything you can’t control is “for” teaching you how to let go and trust the Universe.”

- Mastin Kipp