It’s about a past, means a Buddhist past. “Long, long, long, long time ago, there were four people who were Buddhist and very, very faithful and very, very diligent in their practice. That is, day and night, they tried very hard to recite the Buddha’s teaching and recite the Buddha’s names in the determination to become Buddhas.”
Hi, lovely people, all of you in the whole wide world. My greetings and best wishes to you. Here is another story to cheer you up, perhaps. This is from an Aulacese (Vietnamese) folklore.
We thank Lữ Huy Nguyên, Đặng Văn Lung, who have selected and compiled the book of the Aulacese (Vietnamese) folklore. And we thank “Hợp Tuyển Truyện Cổ Tích Việt Nam” (Collection of Vietnamese Fairy Tales) team for these beautiful stories. We thank also all the collectors, compilers, and writers who have contributed to this work. May you be blessed. We wish you the best. God bless.
Please ask somebody to contact them for the permission to read the stories, all the stories, now and in the future, and compensate their cost of printing and all the involved costs for this. Thank you.
It’s about a past, means a Buddhist past. “Long, long, long, long time ago, there were four people who were Buddhist and very, very faithful and very, very diligent in their practice. That is, day and night, they tried very hard to recite the Buddha’s teaching and recite the Buddha’s names in the determination to become Buddhas.” All four of them have different names, of course. But one of them is a lady, a nun.
“After many decades of reading Buddha’s sutras and reciting Buddha’s names and prayers, and being vegans, and just, truly, staying in the temple and practicing hard, whatever they think they should, so all of them have become kind of well-versed in Buddhism and have reached some kind of decently high level.
One day, they chose a very auspicious date to go together all the way up to a mountain, very far. The name of the mountain is God’s Mountain. So that they will become a Buddha. They think their time has come and they should become Buddhas already, so they went together to that mountain. If you are high-level already, if you go to that mountain, you will become a Buddha.
It’s a very, very faraway place. So, many, many years of hardship and traveling long distance. One day, they arrived at a mountain and were so tired. There’s no way to describe how tired they are. But all of them are determined in their goal and thinking, ‘Ah, we’re already here at the foot of the God’s Mountain and we cannot just give up.’ Thus, even though the evening is already there and the Sun has set behind the mountain, they still tried very hard to follow the little path, a dirt path, to go all the way up to the mountain top. When they were on top of the mountain, the night already late, and the whole sky and the surroundings were as dark as the black ink. All of them are very, very hungry and exhausted. They can no longer continue.
The hunger and the exhaustion forces them to stop and take a rest, but none of them can sleep. Suddenly, one of them said, ‘Oh, my God. If right now we have like a magic wand so that we can wish for something, wouldn’t that be good?’ So, the other said, ‘Yeah! Suppose we have that magic wand, a wish-fulling wand, what would you like to eat then?’ So, one of them, too hungry and too tired, cannot even control his mind or speech. Oh, not just one of them, all of them are like that.
So, no matter what they like, even though they are monks and nuns, they just like blurt it all out, what they want, without any caution anymore, because they are too tired and too exhausted. One of them said, ‘Oh! I wish I had some dog meat now to eat.’” Oh, God! “‘But along with the dog meat, there should be sufficient and proper condiments.’” Like all kinds of herbs, etc.
“And the second one just cut him off and said, ‘Oh! I would like to have a meal with beefsteak. Even if the ox or the cow is already old, it’s even better, so I can chew longer.’ And the third one said, ‘Oh, I would just like to have a chicken with lemon leaves.’ Finally, the nun said to them, ‘No. I would like to have just a meal with boiled vegetables! And then I can drink the boiled water. That would be good enough for me. It will quench my thirst as well as my hunger.’ So they all laid down without anything, just imagined that, had nothing to eat.
In the morning, they all woke up and then prepared to continue to go. Then, suddenly there was an old man with very white hair and a white beard, with a walking stick, coming from the middle of the mountain. He looked very tired. But his voice was very, very crispy and clear still. ‘Hey, where have all of you come from?’ So, one of them said, ‘Ah. Elderly, we, the monks and nuns, we want to come up to the God’s Mountain so that we can become Buddhas. Could you please show us the way, if you know?’ So, the old man said, ‘Of course, I can, I can. I can bring all of you to the God’s Mountain. But now you have to spit onto these leaves.’ After that, the old man took out from his shoulder bag four Bodhi leaves.” The Bodhi leaves are supposed to come from the Bodhi tree. The Bodhi tree is one of the trees that the Buddha sat (under), before, He sat to meditate non-stop until He became Buddha.
“So, they spit onto these leaves. And all of them, after they spit onto the leaves, they feel nauseated, and their stomach and their liver and everything became very, very funny. And then just, in a blink of an eye, all of them vomited out. But the strange thing is that whatever they wished to eat last evening, they just vomited out that. Exactly that. So, all three monks vomited out all kinds of meat, like chicken meat, cow meat, you know, beef, and then dog meat. Only the nun, she vomited vegetables. So, the old man said to them, ‘This is already the top of the God’s Mountain. You are already in the Buddha’s Land. But here you vomited out all the animal meats which are forbidden. So, how can you call yourself a real practitioner? You cannot become a Buddha!’”
