Zen Story: The humourless Zen Master, who none-the-less, died with a smile, on his dial

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The Zen master, Chirputz Seflezeke, was always very straight-laced, and serious, in his approach to Zen. Nobody had ever seen him smile. He would say that a stone is always a stone, but it is a part of the gravel path too. A fruit is just a fruit, but it too, belonged to a tree. The humble are not humbled by themselves, but by their acceptance of God in themselves. One day, when he was already very old, a new student came into his meeting hall, and he told the master that he had just seen something very funny outside. "What is the place of such humour on the path of Zen?", he asked of his new master. The master smiled widely, and then he simply fell down, and died. The master knew that humour was required to enter Heaven, and his smile took him immediately in there too. In the entrance lobby, of Heaven, though, God himself asked him why it was that he had only just finally smiled at the time of his own death? The master winked at God, and replied: "Well, death is the ultimate joke that you play on us all, is it not?", and so he smiled again, and was allowed to enter Heaven. Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com A smile will even get us into Heaven, as this story shows us.