Speaking Tree - Three gifts from a Father to his Daughter

Speaking Tree - Three gifts from a Father to his Daughter:

Often gifts come to us in ways we may not appreciate or even like. Or we realise they are gifts only through hindsight or deep reflection. There is a story from China about the handing over of the gift of wisdom – a gift that need not come wrapped in lengthy sermons or heavy tomes. Once, there lived a sage. A man of very few words, he taught through stories or gestures. The day came when his beloved daughter celebrated her twentieth birthday. According to the customs of her people, this marked the end of her youth and the beginning of adulthood.

The young woman received many beautiful gifts, among them an exquisitely carved casket from her father who instructed her that she should only open it when she was alone, just before she slept and after she had done her evening meditation.

Preparing to go to bed, she picked up her father’s gift and opening it, she found three equally beautiful smaller caskets within, with a note from the sage that invited her to open the red one first, the white one next, and the gold one last. Opening the red one, she found a beautiful mirror with a silver frame.

She looked at her reflection and her smiling, delighted face smiled back at her. Then she noticed some words carved on the handle. ‘The Present You’ it read, and she nodded, pleased, and set it carefully aside. Eagerly she opened the white box, and recoiled, startled. It contained a skull carved in crystal. Wondering why her father had chosen this symbol of death, she hesitantly reached out to take it out of the box and examine it, and noticed some words etched into the base: ‘The Future You’, it read.

Still shaken, she waited a long while before reaching for the gold box. She wondered whether it contained something beautiful and pleasing like the mirror or something puzzling and distressing like the crystal skull. Finally, overcome by curiosity, she opened it. In it was a wooden figurine of the Buddha. Lifting it out, the burnished wood exuded a warm glow. The expression of serenity on the face calmed her. By now she knew she should look for some words, and found an inscription on the base of the statue.

‘The Eternal You’, it read. The daughter understood her father’s precious teachings. The mirror not only reflected her physical self to her each time, over the years she would look into it; it invited her to the lesson of self-reflection. She was to regularly ask herself if she acted in accordance with the highest teachings, what the possible consequences of her decisions and actions might be, and what more she needed to learn to lead a good life. Though she had just turned twenty, the second gift was a reminder of human mortality, and she was being asked to live as if each moment could be her last, appreciating every small thing in her life.

The third gift and message was the sage’s most important one to his daughter. It instructed her that the Buddha is not just someone to revere, or someone to become – it was what deep down she already was. Each of us has been given the same three gifts, even if we have no mirror, skull or Buddha statue. We can examine and influence the direction of our ‘present’ self; we can live with the awareness that each moment is precious, and with the knowledge that we are all Buddhas, only perhaps for now ‘densely clouded’.