Everything was great in the first few weeks until one day, three naughty boys came to play nearby and started to kick the trash cans around and making a lot of noise. The old man couldn’t stand the noise so he negotiated with the kids.
He said, “Kids, I love what you did with the trash cans and I’d be happy to pay you a dollar per day per person if you come over here and do this every day.” The kids were happy with the arrangement and tried even harder to kick the cans.
Three days past, the old man went up to the kids and said with disappointment, “Kids, the inflation shrank my income by half and I can only pay you 50 cents from tomorrow on.” The kids were reluctant but eventually agreed to the new arrangement and kept on with their can kicking performance after school every day.
A week later, the old man walked up to them with even more disappointment, “Kids, I didn’t get my pension wire lately so I’m sorry I can only pay you 20 cents going forward.” “20 cents?!” The kids were quite grumpy about the news and said “No way we are wasting our precious time to perform for you for this little money! We are quitting!”
They left and the old man returned to his peaceful retirement.
Takeaway from Master Lu
We need to apply wisdom to everything we do and try to do things in a clever way. Not everything can be done with the conventional way but can be solved in a clever way. True Buddhists understand that everything has two sides and nothing exists independently from others. The old man wants to write his memoir in peace but got his life disrupted by the naughty kids but he achieved his goal by taking advantage of the kids’ rebellious nature.
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