The Black Stones and the Sifu Tale - Revenge or a Choice?

[Avi Liran]

In life it is almost impossible not to get hurt by others. The wisdom of this tale and the morales might serve you to help yourself and others. 

A Kung-Fu Sifu (Chinese martial arts master) and his devoted disciples walked into the centre of the village. A scamp warrior wearing the uniform of the rival clan stood in the way of the sifu and spit on his feet. The outraged followers wanted to jump and kill the rude warier for his derogatory action to avenge the shame.

"Stop!", whispered the skilful teacher in a harsh authoritarian and non-compromising tone. "We will all run away NOW in zigzag directions. Each one will run in a different direction and all of you will meet me at the clearing of the forest" 

Catching their breaths, the enraged students gasped: "Master, why didn't you allow us to kill the hooligan? Why did you made us flee like cowards? Now the whole town will gossip that we are afraid of them. Our reputation is ruined and our rivals will attempt to challenge us." 

"Silence," commanded the sifu. "From now until the monastery you will not utter even one word. You will bend down and pick up every black stone you see on ground and put it in your haversack until it is full" . Obeying unwillingly with contempt expressions in their eyes the young warriors did as they were told. Each student gathered about 20kg of black stones. After the long day walk to their temple, the sifu commanded "You will carry this sack full of stones for the next three weeks 24 hours a day. You will eat with it, practice with it and even sleep with it. You will not talk until we meet again"

After 21 days, the teacher ordered his fighters to take off the haversack. The silence was cut like a knife by their gasps of relief. The old man spoke:

"We were provoked and ambushed. While you were busy in rage, your vision narrowed. All your energy and attention was consumed by your ego and your focus was locked on impulsive retaliation. I have looked around and saw that on every roof top, there were a few archers awaiting for us to fall into the trap and kill the instigator. They were ready to release their arrows with a good chance to hurt most of us. Hence my command to spread and run.

You need to learn the following lessons if you want to stay and learn in my temple:

1. When we are angry or frustrated, there are physical signs to warn us that our mind is hijacked by our ego. To survive we must let go of the rage, take a deep breath, forego our ego and expand our vision to capture the full picture. In most cases jumping to conclusions and haste to react will be regrettable. 

2. Reality is the Event + your Reaction. You always have a choice. A life taken cannot be brought back. The bigger the stakes are, the more cautious you need to be. Your reaction will change reality. Most of the time, the universe respond differently to different reactions. Change your reaction and you change your karma. 

3. Always be suspicious of the unreasonable. If it is too good to be true it is. In our case, the rascal was no match for my skills. Evidently he wanted me to use my power to give them excuse to fight with us. 

4. Never allow your enemy to chose your reaction for you. If you must fight, do it on your terms, be prepared, surprise with your timing, and your choice of a favourable terrain. Above all, before you go into a fight, make sure that you have great intelligence and all that is needed in order to win.

5. In life you will come across many "black stones" that symbolize the bad things along your life path. You can choose to leave them or to pick them up and carry them with you 24/7. A choice to carry the stones will make you heavy, slow and miserable. It will drain you physically and emotionally. It will consume your energy and distract you away from your goals.

6. The most valuable resource in life is time and our energy for the day is finite. Thinking and executing revenge will suck your energy and time. What good could you do for your life with that energy and time?

7. Our enemies will fear us now, knowing that we found out about the plot, were wise enough not to fall for it. Sometime in the near future, we could retaliate on our own terms."

A note from Avi:  I was personally hurt myself when I got caught up with some challenging nasty people and events by taking them to heart instead of working with my heart to shield myself. I will write about forgiveness and sadness in the near future.

And on a lighter note: http://youtu.be/40DykbPa4Lc 

Remarks: I did not invent this tale. I heard a very short version of it long ago and I added in some spice and my own conclusions. If you happen to know who wrote the original tale and find links, please share it with me. Thank you!