A youngster, filled with pain at the loss of his father, implored the Buddha to bless his father. The Buddha told the youngster to carry two earthen pots to the riverbank and place them in the water...

When the Buddha asked him what had happened, the young man said, "I'm sad because my father fell sick and died. He was such a good person. Why couldn't he live longer?"

The Buddha said to him kindly, "Don't you often come and listen to my lectures?"

"Yes, I come whenever you lecture here."

"If this is so, you must have heard me talk about the principles of birth, aging, sickness and death. When a person comes into this world, he only has a limited number of years to live here."

"I know all that! But I don't feel my father was old at all!"

"You do not judge whether a person has lived long enough by the number of years. The length of one's life in the human world depends entirely on the time allotted by one's karma."

The youngster asked again, "After passing away, will my father go up to heaven or down to hell? Please bless him so that he may go up to heaven. Otherwise, as his son, I won't be at peace."

The Buddha felt that there was no point in trying to explain more, because the young man's heart was filled with worries and doubts. "Since you are so respectful to your father and sincere in your wish to obtain blessings for him, I will bless him. But you must do what I tell you." The young man agreed happily.

The Buddha told him to bring two earthen pots and fill one of them with oil and the other with stones, "Come, let's go to the bank of the river. Hurry and ask your relatives and neighbors to come along."

The youngster happily gathered his relatives and friends at the riverbank. Then the Buddha instructed him to place the two pots in the water and break them. When the pot filled with stones was broken, the stones sank. As for the pot filled with oil, even though the broken pieces sank, the oil floated on the surface of the water.

The Buddha then told the young man and the others to pray sincerely for the oil to sink and the stones to float. All of those gathered looked at each other doubtfully. They knew no matter how hard they prayed, the stones would never float and the oil would never sink.

On seeing their suspicions, the Buddha smiled. "Doing good deeds is just like putting oil in the pot, and doing bad deeds is like putting stones in it. When life comes to an end, good karma will move up and float while bad karma will sink to the bottom. This is a fact that will never change. One cannot move to a good realm of reincarnation even if one is blessed by somebody else, just as these stones could never float no matter how much we pray."

"So, where a person goes after death is determined by the deeds he has done in life. We must face all things in the world with the right attitude. In our thoughts, words and deeds, we should follow what is good and eliminate all evil."

Everything we do in our lives is inseparable from the cycle of cause and effect. Even something as small as carelessly trampling the flowers and grass on the roadside plants a seed of bad karma, let alone the dreadful things we do out of personal desire!

Whether life is prosperous or not is determined by the way we think. The roots of all the natural calamities and man-made disasters in this world lie in the thoughts in people's minds. Since we live together with all other living beings on this vast earth, we must have a caring attitude and spread our compassion and wisdom so that we can increase the harmony and prosperity in this world.

Everything in our lives is a part of our lives and also a part of the entire world, so we must be careful at every moment lest we blindly collect a lot of stones in the pots of our lives.