Mahatma Gandhi's Funeral: A very touching moment

On Friday 30 January 1948, Gandhi woke up at his usual hour, 3:30 a.m. After the morning prayer he put the final touches to the new constitution for Congress which he had been unable to finish the previous night. The rest of the morning was spent answering letters. Someone mentioned the fact that despite his poor health he was working incessantly. 

'Tomorrow', he explained, 'I may not be here'. Gandhi would not permit those who attended the prayer meetings: 'If I have to die I should like to die at the prayer meeting. You are wrong in believing that you can protect me from harm. God is my protector.' 

Mahatma Gandhi's body lay on the pyre with his head to the north. In that position Buddha met his end. At 4:45 p.m., Ramdas, the third son of the Mahatma, set fire to the funeral pyre. The logs burst into flames. The vast assemblage groaned. Women wailed; men wept. The wood crackled and seethed and the flames united into a single fire. Now there was silence. Gandhi's body was being reduced to ashes and cinders. 

A nation's father was dead.

Forgive and Forget?

Forgive and Forget?

The stupid neither forgive nor forget;

the naive forgive and forget;

the wise forgive but do not forget.

Thomas Szasz

Words of Inspiration to Live by...

I Believe...

This is Your Life...

Mutual Respect

 

"The more contact we have with one another and the more we come to understand each other’s values, the greater will be our mutual respect."
 

— Dalai Lama

A Mother's Love

This is a true story of a Mother’s sacrifice during the China Earthquake.

After the earthquake had subsided, when the rescuers reached the ruins of a young woman’s house, they saw her dead body through the cracks. 

But her pose was somehow strange - she knelt on her knees like a person worshipping; her body was leaning forward, and her two hands were supporting an object. The collapsed house had crashed her back and her head.

With so many difficulties, the leader of the rescuer team put his hand through a narrow gap on the wall to reach the woman’s body. 

He was hoping that this woman could be still alive. However, the cold and stiff body told him that she had passed away for sure. He and the rest of the team left this house and were going to search the next collapsed building. 

For some reason, the team leader was driven by a compelling force to go back to the ruin house of the dead woman.  Again, he knelt down and used his hand through the narrow cracks to search the little space under the dead body.

Suddenly, he screamed with excitement,  "A child! There is a child!"

The whole team worked together; carefully they removed the piles of ruined objects around the dead woman. 

There was a 3 months old little boy wrapped in a flowery blanket under his mother’s dead body. 

Obviously, the woman had made an ultimate sacrifice to save her son. 

When her house was falling, she used her body to make a cover to protect her son. The little boy was still sleeping peacefully when the team leader picked him up.

The medical doctor came quickly to examine the little boy. 

After he opened the blanket, he saw a cell phone inside the blanket. 

There was a text message on the screen. 

It said, "If you can survive, you must remember that I love you." 

This cell phone was passed around from one hand to another. 

Everyone that read the message wept. 

"If you can survive, you must remember that I love you." 

Such was the mother’s love for her child!

The Scorpion and the Frog

Once upon a time a scorpion wanted to cross a brook. On the bank he saw a frog and asked if the frog would give him a ride to the other side.

"Oh no," said the frog. "If I carry you on my back you will sting me."

"But why would I sting you when we would both surely perish?" replied the scorpion.

The frog eventually conceded that the scorpion had a point and agreed to the request.

Half way across, the scorpion stung the frog. Both began to drown.

"Why did you break your word and sting me, knowing it would be certain death for us both?" cried the frog.

"Because it is in my nature," replied the scorpion.

Life's #1 Rule

I grew up in Trenton, a west Tennessee town of five thousand people. I have wonderful memories of those first eighteen years, and many people in Trenton influenced my life in very positive ways. My football coach, Walter Kilzer, taught me the importance of hard work, discipline, and believing in myself. My history teacher, Fred Culp, is still the funniest person I've ever met. He taught me that a sense of humor, and especially laughing at yourself, can be one of life's greatest blessings. 

But my father was my hero. He taught me many things, but at the top of the list, he taught me to treat people with love and respect...to live the Golden Rule. I remember one particular instance of him teaching this "life lesson" as if it were yesterday. Dad owned a furniture store, and I used to dust the furniture every Wednesday after school to earn my allowance. One afternoon I observed my Dad talking to all the customers as they came in...the hardware store owner, the banker, a farmer, a doctor. At the end of the day, just as Dad was closing, the garbage collector came in.

I was ready to go home, and I thought that surely Dad wouldn't spend too much time with him. But I was wrong. Dad greeted him at the door with a big hug and talked with him about his wife and son who had been in a car accident the month before. He empathized, he asked questions, he listened, and he listened some more. I kept looking at the clock, and when the man finally left, I asked, "Dad, why did you spend so much time with him? He's just the garbage collector." Dad then looked at me, locked the front door to the store, and said, "Son, let's talk."

He said, "I'm your father and I tell you lots of stuff as all fathers should, but if you remember nothing else I ever tell you, remember this...treat every human being just the way that you would want to be treated." He said, "I know this is not the first time you've heard it, but I want to make sure it's the first time you truly understand it, because if you had understood, you would never have said what you said." We sat there and talked for another hour about the meaning and the power of the Golden Rule. Dad said, "If you live the Golden Rule everything else in life will usually work itself out, but if you don't, your life probably will be very unhappy and without meaning."

I recently heard someone say, "If you teach your child the Golden Rule, you will have left them an estate of incalculable value." Truer words were never spoken.

What We Own

In the last century, a tourist from the States visited the famous Polish rabbi Hafez Hayyim. He was astonished to see that the rabbi's home was only a simple room filled with books. The only furniture was a table and a bench.

"Rabbi, where is your furniture?" asked the tourist.

"Where is yours?" replied Hafez.

"Mine? But I'm only a visitor here."

"So am I," said the rabbi.

- Anthony De Mello, SJ in The Song of the Bird.

The Peacock and the Crane

One day a peacock met a crane and said, "I am so sorry for you. You have such dull feathers. Look at the fine colours of my feathers!"

The crane replied, "Your looks are certainly brighter than mine. But while I can fly high up into the sky, all you can do is strut about on the ground."

Moral: Any fool can criticise, condemn and complain - and most fools do!

Two Boys and a Nut

Two little boys were playing together. One little boy saw a nut on the ground. Before he could pick it up, the other boy took it.

The first boy demanded, "Give me the nut. It's mine. I saw it first."

The other boy replied, "It's mine. I picked it up first.."

A quarrel then ensued between both of them.

Just then a tall boy came along. Seeing the quarrel between the boys, he said, "Give me the nut and I'll settle your quarrel."

He split the nut into two and took out the fruit seed. He gave one half-shell to one boy and the other half-shell to the other. Then he put the fruit seed into his mouth and said, "This is for settling your quarrel."

Moral: When two people quarrel, someone else gains.

Bell the Cat

There was a grocery shop where food was aplenty, which many mice have made into a home. They ate everything and spoiled all the food bags and wrappers. They also littered the shop with wasted bread, biscuits and fruits.

Worried, the grocer thought of a plan. "I should buy a cat and let it stay at the grocery. Only then can I save my things and my business."

And so he bought a nice, big fat cat and let it stay at the grocery. The cat had a great time hunting the mice and killing them. The mice could not move freely now. They were afraid that anytime the cat would catch them and eat them up.

Then the mice decided to do something about the situation. They held a meeting and many of them asked, "We must get rid of the cat. Can someone offer a good suggestion?"

All the mice sat and pondered over this difficult problem. Suddenly a smart looking mouse stood up and said, "The cat moves softly. If we can tie a bell around her neck, then things will be fine. We can then know the movements of the cat."

"Yes, that's the answer!" all the mice exclaimed.

An old mouse slowly stood up and asked, "Who among you would be the one to tie the bell?"

There was a long silence.

Moral: "An angry man opens his mouth and shuts his eyes." - Cato

The Blunt Axe

A strong woodcutter asked for a job with a timber merchant and he was offered one. The pay was good and so were the work conditions. For that reason, the woodcutter was determined to do his best.

His boss gave him an axe and showed him the area where he was supposed to work. The first day, the woodcutter brought 18 trees. 

"Congratulations!" the boss told him. "Keep up with the good work!"

Motivated by the encouragement given by his boss, the woodcutter tried harder the next day but he could bring in only 15 trees. 

The third day he worked even harder and yet he could bring in only 10 trees.

Day after day he was bringing less and less trees. "I must be losing my strength," the woodcutter thought."

He went to his boss and apologised, saying that he could not understand what was going on.

"When was the last time you sharpened your axe?" the boss asked.

"Sharpen? I had no time to sharpen the axe. I have been very busy trying to cut more trees..."

Filled to the Brim

An American professor who had made a lifetime's study of the Japanese tea ceremony heard about an old man living in Japan who was a master of the tea ceremony. He decided to make a special trip to Japan to meet up with the tea expert.

He found the master living in a small house on the outskirts of Tokyo and they sat down to have tea together. The professor immediately started talking about the tea ceremony, his studies, all he knew about it and how he was looking forward to sharing his learning with the old man.

The old man said nothing and started to pour tea into the professor's cup. While the professor talked, the old man continued to pour the tea. The cup was filled to the brim but the old man kept pouring. The tea overflowed and spilled down the sides of the cup in a stream onto the floor. 

"Stop!" yelled the professor. "You are crazy. You can't fit any more tea in that cup. It's full!"

"I was just practising," replied the old man, "for the task of attempting to pass learning to a mind that is already full."

Lessons from Noah's Ark

Everything I need to know about life, I learned from Noah's Ark.

1. Don't miss the boat.

2. Remember that we are all in the same boat.

3. Plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah built the boat. 

4. Stay fit. When you are 600 years old, someone might ask you to do something really important.

5. Don't listen to the critics; just get on with the job that needs to be done.

6. Build your future on high ground.

7. For safety's sake, travel in pairs.

8. Speed isn't always an advantage. The snails were on board with the cheetahs.

9. When you are stressed out, float a while.

10. Remember that the Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.

11. No matter the storm, when you are with God, there is always a rainbow waiting.

Life's Paradox

Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you, because you think that your feelings were wrong, and it makes you feel so small because it’s so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn’t come back. You’re left so alone that you can’t explain.

 

— Henry Rollins

The Paradox of Life

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but
shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but
have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller
families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less
sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems,
more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little,
drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too
little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too
much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a
living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've
been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street
to meet a new neighbour. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've
done larger things, but not better things. We've cleaned up the air, but
polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write
more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to
rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to
produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods, and slow digestion, big men and small
character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of
two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are
days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night
stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to
quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and
nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to
you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just
hit delete.

Remember, spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going
to be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to
you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your
side. Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is
the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.

Remember, to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones, but
most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from
deep inside of you. Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for
someday that person will not be there again. Give time to love, give time to
speak, and give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

The Carpenter

 

Once upon a time, two brothers who lived on adjoining farms fell into conflict. It was the first serious rift in 40 years of farming side-by-side, sharing machinery and trading labor and goods as needed without a hitch.

Then the long collaboration fell apart. It began with a small misunderstanding and it grew into a major difference and finally, it exploded into an exchange of bitter words followed by weeks of silence.

One morning there was a knock on John's door. He opened it to find a man with a carpenter's toolbox.

"I 'm looking for a few days' work," he said. 

"Perhaps you would have a few small jobs here and there I could help with? Could I help you?"

"Yes," said the older brother. "I do have a job for you. Look across the creek at that farm. That's my neighbor. In fact, it's my younger brother! Last week there was a meadow between us. He recently took his bulldozer to the river levee and now there is a creek between us. Well, he may have done this to spite me, but I'll do him one better. See that pile of lumber by the barn? I want you to build me a fence an 8-foot fence -- so I won't need to see his place or his face anymore."

The carpenter said, "I think I understand the situation. Show me the nails and the post-hole digger and I'll be able to do a job that pleases you."

The older brother had to go to town, so he helped the carpenter get the materials ready and then he was off for the day. The carpenter worked hard all that day -- measuring, sawing and nailing. About sunset when the farmer returned, the carpenter had just finished his job.

The farmer's eyes opened wide, his jaw dropped. There was no fence there at all.

 

It was a bridge! A bridge that stretched from one side of the creek to the other! A fine piece of work, handrails and all! And the neighbor, his younger brother, was coming toward them, his hand outstretched.

"You are quite a fellow to build this bridge after all I've said and done."

The two brothers stood at each end of the bridge, and then they met in middle, taking each other's hand. They turned to see the carpenter hoist his toolbox onto his shoulder.

"No, wait! Stay a few days. I've a lot of other projects for you," said the older brother. 

"I'd love to stay on," the carpenter said, "but I have many more bridges to build."

Why are they called apartments if they are joined together?

An archaeologist is a best husband a woman can get. As older she grows, the more interested he is in her.

A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.

If moths are attracted to bright lights, how come they sleep during the day?

I love being married. It's so great to find that special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.

Anyone who thinks he is too small to make a difference has never been in bed with a mosquito.

I wear my wife's glasses because she wants me to see things her way.

Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and the world laughs louder.

 

The Mousetrap

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package. The mouse wondered, "What food might this contain?" He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed this warning: "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, "Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is of grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it." You are on your own.

The mouse turned to the goat and told him, "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!" The goat sympathized, but said, "I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured you are in my prayers."

The mouse turned to the cow and said, "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!" The cow said, "Wow, Mr. Mouse. I'm sorry for you, but it's no skin off my nose." Just too bad for you.

So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer's mousetrap . . . . . . Alone. Abandoned by his friends. No way out.

That very night, a sound was heard throughout the house - the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey.

The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it. It was a venomous snake whose tail was caught in the trap.

The snake bit the farmer's wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital. When she returned home she still had a fever. Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup. So the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient.

But his wife's sickness continued. Friends and neighbours came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the goat. But, alas, the farmer's wife did not get well... She died.

So many people came for her funeral that the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them for the funeral luncheon.

And the mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.

The next time you hear someone is facing a problem and you think it doesn't concern you.

True Love

It was a gloomy Saturday afternoon. A flock of birds was spending great time searching for food and playing on the main road. Out of the sudden, a big truck sped through...obviously a sad thing had happened again. 

Birds can feel too. Although this bird had already died, another bird flew over to her immediately, just like a family member, unable to accept the truth.

Not long after that, another car stormed in causing the dead bird's body to whirl with the wind. The spouse noticed the movement. As if she was still alive, he quickly flew beside her again.

He stayed beside her and yelled ... "WHY ARE YOU NOT GETTING UP!?"He stayed beside her and yelled ... "WHY ARE YOU NOT GETTING UP!?"

Unfortunately, she's no longer able to hear him. In the meantime, he's trying to lift her up.

He, of course, was unable to bear the burden. Another car soon passed by. He quickly flew off. Once the car had gone, he came down again.

Although other birds told him its useles, he never gave up. He was trying his best to lift her up to see her flying again. Another car passed by, her dead body whirled again as if still alive and trying to fly.

He had used all of his energy, however...

The photographer said he couldn't shoot any longer. The photographer was so worried that the living bird was going to get hurt by passing cars. So he picked up the dead bird and left it at the roadside. The live one still lingered at a nearby tree as if crying with his singing and refused to leave.

The Story in Pictures

A female mate was hit by a car as she swooped low across the road, and the condition was soon fatal.

 

Her male mate brought her food and attended her with love and compassion.

 

He brought her food again, but was shocked to find her dead.

 

He tried to move her - a rarely seen effort.

 

Aware that his mate was dead and would never come back to him again, he cried with adoring love...

 

...and stood beside her with sadness and sorrow.

 

Millions of people were touched after seeing these photos in America , Europe, Australia , and even India .  The photographer sold these pictures for a nominal fee to the most famous newspaper in France .  All copies of that edition were sold out on the day these pictures were published.

 

And many people think animals and birds don't have brains or feelings.  You have just witnessed love and sorrow felt by God's creatures. 

 

Live simply, love generously, care deeply, and speak kindly.