THREE LAUGHING MONKS
Once upon a time in ancient China, there lived three old monks. The monks never revealed their names to anybody and remained anonymous. So, they were simply known as the three laughing monks. They always travelled together. Their main objective was to do nothing but laugh.
One day they entered a village and stood in the center of its main area and started laughing. Slowly but surely the people who lived and worked there and the passers by couldn’t resist and started laughing as well, until a small laughing crowd had formed and eventually the laughing had spread to the entire village.
Now the three old monks moved on to the next village. Their laughter was their only prayer, all of their teaching, because they never spoke to anyone. Because of this attitude, people from all over China loved and respected them. The people weren’t aware of such spiritual teachers before that. They believed in the philosophy that life should be taken only as an opportunity to laugh, as if they had discovered some kind of cosmic joke. So they travelled and laughed for many years, spreading joy and happiness throughout China. There then came a day, while they were in a village in the north province, one of them died. The people were shocked and came running from afar, leaving the fields unattended for the day, only to witness the other two monks’ reaction on this dramatic event. They were expecting them to show sorrow. People from allover the village came to see the three monks- two alive and one dead. When people reached them, they noticed the two monks laughing only harder. They were laughing and laughing and could not seem to stop. One of the group in disbelieve approached them and asked them why weren’t they mourning for their deceased friend. Finally, for the first time the monks responded by saying, ‘because yesterday on our way to your village, he proposed a bet on who would beat the other two and die first and now he won, the old rogue. He even had a testament prepared. A tradition required washing the dead and changing his clothes before performing the funeral rites, but the old monk had explicitly asked to leave the old clothes on him since he had never been filthy for one day. He said, ‘I never allowed any of the filth of this world to reach me, through my laughter.’ So the old mans body was placed on the pyre with the garments he was already wearing when he had arrived. As soon as the fire was lit and the clothes caught fire, to everyone’s astonishment, suddenly colourful fireworks went exploding to different directions. Finally the people who gathered there also joined the laughter of the two wise men.?
In life, maybe the only reason that we are here on this earth is to spread laughter and happiness and never stop experiencing joy and laughter. So next time you face a problem, look in the mirror and just laugh the problem away. Because your joy is what makes you alive.