The beauty of honesty

Honesty is a virtue, and often will bring you unexpected results.

There once was a very honest shopkeeper whose day to day business was to provide goods to the local people. He would open his shop at 8:00 a.m. after having his breakfast and at 1:00 p.m. he would go for lunch. In the evening at 8:30 p.m. he closed his shop to complete his daily routine.

However, to get time for lunch was really difficult because he didn’t have anybody to help him at that time. Therefore, it was his daily practice that whichever customer was shopping at 1:00 p.m. would be asked to oversee the shop until the shopkeeper returned from lunch.

This system of having the new customer oversee the shop at lunchtime quickly became known to thieves of the area. One day, a group of four thieves planned to steal from his shop while he was gone for lunch. One of the thieves went at 1:00 p.m. to be the customer that would be asked to oversee the shop.

The thief, pretending to be a customer, went in at 1:00 p.m. and started purchasing several items. As planned, the shopkeeper asked the thief to sit on the shopkeeper chair for thirty minutes until the shopkeeper returned from lunch. The thief agreed and sat on the chair, and the shopkeeper left.

Then, the other three thieves quickly came in to steal as much as they could. They told the pretend customer to also help them steal everything, but something had changed within him and he no longer wanted to participate in the stealing with his fellow thieves.

When he sat on the chair of the shopkeeper, he was transformed by the magic impression of the shopkeeper’s honesty. The thief was now converted to an honest person and his attitude of stealing was completely transformed. He knew deeply in his heart that if he was given responsibility for the shop, he should not perform any dishonest acts during that time.

His friends did not agree, and so they forcefully began stealing things. As the now honest man tried to stop them, they resisted and a fight started. Other customers noticed the disturbance and came to ask what was going on, and at the same time the shopkeeper returned and also asked to know why there was fighting in his shop. The now honest man explained the entire plan, including his experience of transformation and how that led to the fight.

The shopkeeper, now 60 years old, had been searching for an honest man who could take ownership of the shop and run it. The shopkeeper felt that he had found the right man, so after the other three thieves were arrested he gave the keys to the now honest man and departed for his journey into retired life.

Honesty is a virtue, and often will bring you unexpected results.

Two Drops of Oil- Secret of happiness

Two Drops of Oil

Secret of happiness is to enjoy to enjoy the wonders of the world, but do not forget the spoon in the two drop of oil.

A merchant sent his son to learn the Secret of Happiness from the wisest of men. The young man wandered through the desert for forty days until he reached a beautiful castle at the top of a mountain. There lived the sage that the young man was looking for.

However, instead of finding a holy man, our hero entered a room and saw a great deal of activity; merchants coming and going, people chatting in the corners, a small orchestra playing sweet melodies, and there was a table laden with the most delectable dishes of that part of the world.

The wise man talked to everybody, and the young man had to wait for two hours until it was time for his audience.

With considerable patience, the Sage listened attentively to the reason for the boy’s visit, but told him that at that moment he did not have the time to explain to him the Secret of Happiness.

He suggested that the young man take a stroll around his palace and come back in two hours’ time.

“However, I want to ask you a favor,” he added, handling the boy a teaspoon, in which he poured two drops of oil. “While you walk, carry this spoon and don’t let the oil spill.”

The young man began to climb up and down the palace staircases, always keeping his eyes fixed on the spoon. At the end of two hours he returned to the presence of the wise man.

“So,” asked the sage, “did you see the Persian tapestries hanging in my dining room? Did you see the garden that the Master of Gardeners took ten years to create? Did you notice the beautiful parchments in my library?”

Embarrassed, the young man confessed that he had seen nothing. His only concern was not to spill the drops of oil that the wise man had entrusted to him.

“So, go back and see the wonders of my world,” said the wise man. “You can’t trust a man if you don’t know his house.”

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A gift of love

The passengers on the bus watched sympathetically as the attractive young woman with the white cane made her way carefully up the steps. She paid the driver and, using her hands to feel the location of the seats, walked down the aisle and found the seat he’d told her was empty. Then she settled in, placed her briefcase on her lap and rested her cane against her leg.

It had been a year since Susan, 34, became blind. Due to a medical misdiagnosis she had been rendered sightless, and she was suddenly thrown into a world of darkness, anger, frustration and self-pity. And all she had to cling to was her husband, Mark.

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Nature’s beauty

A monk was in charge of the garden within a famous Zen temple. He had been given the job because he loved the flowers and trees. Next to the temple there was another smaller temple where there lived a very old Zen master.

One day, when the monk was expecting some special guests, he took extra care in tending to the garden. He pulled the weeds, trimmed the shrubs, and spent a long time meticulously raking up and carefully arranging all the dry autumn leaves. As he worked, the old master watched him with interest from across the wall that separated the temples.

When he had finished, the monk stood back to admire his work. “Isn’t it beautiful,” he called out to the old master. “Yes,” replied the old man, “but there is something missing. Help me over this wall and I’ll put it right for you.”

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Beauty Within

Be a virtuous person, it will make you happy.

John Blanchard stood up from the bench, straightened his Army uniform, and studied the crowd of people making their way through the Grand Central Station. He was looking for the girl whose heart he knew, but whose face he didn’t, the girl with rose in her lapel.

His interest in her had begun 13 months before in a Florida library. Taking a book off the shelf he found himself excited, not with the words of the book, but with the notes penciled in the margin. The soft handwriting reflected a thoughtful soul and insightful mind. In the front of the book he found the previous owner’s name-Miss Hollis May Nell. With time and effort he locates her address and she now lived in New York City.

He wrote her a letter introducing him and asking her to write back. The next day he was sent to Europe to take part in World War Ⅱ. But during the next year, John at last received the letter from Now York. The tow began to know each other through the letters. Each letter was a hot heart. A romance was budding. John requested a picture of her, but she refused, saying if he really cared, it wouldn’t matter what she looked like.

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Life is like a cup of coffee

Life is like a cup of coffee and enjoy the taste of coffee, do not care about the cup is gorgeous.

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups – porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite – telling them to help themselves to the coffee.

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The Trouble Tree

Trouble should not back home, hanging to a tree it, then take off when the trouble will become less.

The carpenter I hired to help me restore an old farmhouse had just finished a rough first day on the job. A flat tire made him lose an hour of work, his electric saw quit, and now his ancient pickup truck refused to start. While I drove him home, he sat in stony silence.

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I can sleep when the wind blows

Fully prepared for life, so even if the storm coming, you can still sleep at.

Years ago a farmer owned land along the Atlantic seacoast. He constantly advertised for hired hands. Most people were reluctant to work on farms along the Atlantic. They dreaded the awful storms that raged across the Atlantic，wreaking havoc on the buildings and crops. As the farmer interviewed applicants for the job，he received a steady stream of refusals.

Finally，a short，thin man，well past middle age，approached the farmer. “Are you a good farmhand？”The farmer asked him.

“Well，I can sleep when the wind blows，” answered the little man.

Although puzzled by this answer，the farmer，desperate for help，hired him. The little man worked well around the farm，busy from dawn to dusk，and the farmer felt satisfied with the man’s work.

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Struggle

Overcome obstacles in life, we will become stronger, we will fluttering.

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through the little hole at the end.

Eventually, the butterfly stopped making progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no farther. The man decided to help the butterfly, so he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily, but it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings.

The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time.

Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly.

What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were nature’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.

Benefits of struggling

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If nature allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. And we could never fly…

Footprints

Deep in his slumber, one night a man had a very real, yet surreal dream. He dreamt that he was walking along the beach with God. As he looked up at the sky, he saw all the scenes of his life flash by along with two sets of footprints: one set for himself and another for God.

After all the scenes had flashed before him, he looked back at those footprints and noticed something quite disturbing: At the most difficult times in his life, he saw only one set of footprints.

This deeply troubled the man, so he turned and said to God: “You said that if I followed you, then you would always walk with me through thick and thin. In looking back, I see that during the most painful times there is only one set of footprints. Why did you leave me when I needed you the most?”

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