by Ajahn Brahm.EXPERIENCED MEDITATION TEACHERS often have to deal with disciples who claim to be enlightened. One of the time-honored ways to test if their claims are true is to abuse the disciple so grossly that they end up getting angry. As all Buddhist monks and nuns know, the Buddha clearly stated that one who gets angry is certainly not enlightened.
A young Japanese monk, strenuously intent on reaching nirvana in this very life, was meditating in solitude in a secluded lake-island hermitage near a famous monastery. He wanted to get enlightenment out of the way early on in his life, so he could then attend to other things.
When the monastery attendant arrived in his small rowboat on his weekly visit to deliver supplies, the young monk left a note requesting some expensive parchment, a quill, and some fine-quality ink. He was soon to complete his third year in solitude and wanted to let his abbot know how well he had done.
The parchment, quill, and ink arrived the following week. In the next few days, after much meditating and pondering, the young monk wrote on the fine parchment in the most exquisite of calligraphy the following short poem:
The conscientious young monk
meditating three years alone
can no longer be moved
by the four worldly winds.
Surely, he thought, his wise old abbot would see in these words, and in the care by which they were written, that his disciple was now enlightened. He gently rolled up the parchment, carefully tied it with a ribbon, and then waited for the attendant to deliver it to his teacher. In the days that followed, he imagined his abbot’s pleasure at reading the brilliant poem so meticulously inscribed. He could see it being hung in a costly frame in the monastery’s main hall. No doubt they would press him to be an abbot now, maybe of a famous city monastery. How nice he felt to have made it at last!
When the attendant next rowed the small boat to the island to deliver the weekly supplies, the young monk was waiting for him. The attendant soon handed the monk a parchment similar to the one he had sent, but tied with a different colored ribbon. “From the abbot,” said the attendant tersely.
The monk excitedly tore off the ribbon and unfurled the scroll. As his eyes settled on the parchment, they grew as wide as the moon, and his face went just as white. It was his own parchment, but next to the first line of exquisite calligraphy, the abbot had carelessly scribbled in a red ballpoint pen a single word: “Fart!” To the right of the second line was another ugly smudge of red ink saying, “Fart!” The third line had another irreverent “Fart!” scrawled over it, and so did the fourth line of verse.
This was too much! Not only was the decrepit old abbot so stupid that he couldn’t recognize enlightenment when it was in front of his fat nose, but he was so uncouth and uncivilized that he had vandalized a work of art with indecent graffiti. The abbot was behaving like a punk, not a monk. It was an insult to art, to tradition and to truth.
The young monk’s eyes narrowed with indignation, his face flushed red with righteous anger, and he snorted as he insisted of the attendant, “Take me to the abbot! Immediately!”
It was the first time in three years that the young monk had left his island hermitage. In a rage, he stormed into the abbot’s office, slammed the parchment on the table, and demanded an explanation.
The experienced abbot slowly picked up the parchment, cleared his throat, and read out the poem:
The conscientious young monk
meditating three years alone
can no longer be moved
by the four worldly winds.
The he put down the parchment, stared at the young monk, and continued. “Hmm! So, young monk, you are no longer moved by the four worldly winds. Yet four little farts have blown you right across the lake!”
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