Zen Tale: The murdering Zen master (A fiction piece)

Tweet

The old Zen master, Renaldo Ripocske, was being annoyed every night, for the last week, by a chirping cricket, that had somehow gotten into his bedroom, at the monastery. Its incessantly loud continuous, chirping all night, was causing him to lose his normal sense of calm. One night, at 3 am, in the morning, he got out of his bed, hoping to pinpoint where its exact location might be. He moved closer to where he thought that the noise was coming from the loudest. He determined that this was from within his walk-in wardrobe. He tested this assumption by closing the door of the wardrobe, and sure enough, the sound was then quietened a bit, by the closed door. He went inside his wardrobe, put the light on, and closed the door behind him. He moved some bags on the floor, placed under his hanging clothes above. Sure, enough, he saw the cricket there. Surprised to find its location so quickly, his reaction was a bit slower than the cricket's was, and the cricket scurried away again, along the wall, behind his dressing table in there. He moved the dressing table, and it moved again, now under the shoe rack there. He moved the shoe rack, and it run ahead of him, once more, this time it went under his large filing cabinet, alongside the back wall of his walk-in robe room. With a bit of push and shove, he moved the filing cabinet too, and the cricket moved then under his heating column, placed there in the summer, as it was not being used at that time. He pulled out the column heater, and with no more wall to scurry along, the cricket run out sillily towards the waiting master. With one swell swipe with his trusty sandal, he killed that cricket dead. The old master was rather pleased with himself. He had a peaceful, well-earned sleep for the rest of that night. In the morning, though, he told the head monk about his nightly exploits, and adventure, chasing that cricket down. The head monk said to the other Zen master. "You, of course, know, that we monks never kill anything?" The Zen master replied, "Well, that cricket was killing my silence, so I merely killed his noise." The head monk laughed. "You sure did," he said, "but even so, we Zen monks kill nothing, not even time." "Go, and meditate on your action, and come back to me with what comes to you then." The Zen master grimaced, and answered. "Love is being killed by you right now. Cut the chase, with me, and give me some slack, an annoying cricket like that, his time was surely up." As the Zen master thought about what he had just said to his head monk, the shock of his talking back like that to the head honcho, woke him up. He had been dreaming the whole thing. But, from this dream, he did realise the true value of our being ourselves, and not even following the dictates of our head honchos, and nor should we ever kowtow enough to bow down low enough to lick their boots for them either. We should always be ourselves, even if it involves our killing an insect right now, as we evolve through these types of experiences of ours too. Is killing things, like insects here, against love, or not, then? Love allows all things into its mix, but wilful killing is never love, and yet killing of life is love, when you allow it to be done for the betterment of that life too, but how do you judge that it is for the betterment of life? Only perhaps, God can do that. Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com The cricket got the better of the Zen master, or did it?