Master Hsin Ends A Drought
Master Hsin
was a monk with the deep wisdom and great powers that can be earned
only by carefully developing your behavior. He was merciful and
lenient.
Once he saw an old fisherman with a basket. He looked in the basket
and saw that it was full of turtles. He knew that whoever bought the
turtles would eat them. “Poor turtles,” he thought, “You wouldn’t
like to die, would you?” So he got out his wallet and bought the
whole basketful, and let them go in a Free Life Pond.
A few years later, there was a terrible drought. All the farmers
were worried, because if it didn’t rain, their crops wouldn’t grow,
and they might starve to death. People then knew all about starving
to death, because it happened so often. When there was a drought,
there would be so many hungry people that they couldn’t all be fed.
People would eat weeds and bark to stay alive, and many people would
die.
Sometimes when a drought began, the farmers would sacrifice cows and
goats for rain, but that usually didn’t do much good.
This time, one of the farmers first had a good idea. “Let’s ask
Master Hsin for help. He’s so powerful,
he ought to be able to do something!”
A whole crowd went to the temple and asked Master Hsin to bring
rain. He smiled quietly, and told them, “Sure, no problem. I"ll pray
for rain for you, but you have to help. first.
From now until our ceremony, none of you can kill anything. Until
then, all of you have to eat only vegetarian food. Otherwise, it
won’t work.”
Well, even for some selfish people who can’t go without meat,
vegetarian food beats no food at all, and everybody respected Master
Hsin anyway, so they all promised they wouldn’t kill anything or eat
any meat or animal products.
On the day of the ceremony, all the local people came to the temple
with offerings of fruit and incense. Master Hsin was waiting for
them. When everybody was ready, he lit some incense and began to
pray: “Om! Dajrta salo salo...”
“I can’t understand a word he’s saying,” someone said.
“Do you really think this is going to work?” some of the people
asked their neighbors.
Many people said, “If he really pulls this one off, I’m going to
become a vegetarian from now on.”
The Master kept praying, and before the first stick of incense had
burned down, the clouds opened up and poured rain on the thirsty
earth. All the people knelt in respect, and you couldn’t tell if
their faces were wet from the rain or from their tears of gratitude.