Buddhist Stories: “The Monk With The Golden Coin” (Part 1 of 2) August 26, 2015

“Ananda, you should know,” the Buddha said, “In the past life, from this life, counted backward, it’s 91…” “Not 91 lives, but 91 eons ago. There was a Buddha who came into the world, descending to the world, named Vipasyin. He used the Truth teaching, the merciful Dharma, to guide all the people on the planet, and liberate them. The number is impossible to count. At one time, this Buddha Vipasyin and his monks, were traveling around the country.” “At that time there was a person who was very, very poor. Every day he had to go and chop the wood, the dry wood and bring it to the city to sell it to make money, so that he could survive. At that time, when the Buddha was passing his village, he just sold his burden of wood, and he earned two coins, two coins, not two gold coins, two coins at that time.” “So he came in front of the Buddha, prostrated to him, and knelt there and offered with all his heart his two coins that he had at that day.” “The Buddha felt compassionate for him, knowing his situation. So he accepted it, not because the Buddha needed these two aluminum coins, or brass coins, or whatever. And then he also blessed him. ‘Ananda, you should know, that poor person at that time, who sincerely offered me two coins, and since that day, it is this person now. It is the bhiksu now, bhiksu Golden Coin now. Since that life until now, 91 eons have passed. Everywhere, every world that he has been born in, he always has been born in a rich, powerful family, and always has two coins in his hands all the time, 91 eons. Because of that, today he also has the fortune to meet the Truth Dharma, and then he attained Arhat. Even today, suppose this lifetime, he didn’t meet me, or he didn’t want to become a renunciate, and study and practice meditation under my guidance, then in the future, he’d have even more and more merit all the time, more richness, more power. Never finished. Ananda, all the beings should take the offering action very seriously as if it’s a job, as if for survival, because to be a human is difficult, to attain a human body is difficult. And you don’t know when you’ll get the human body again, next life. If you do not sow the seed of merit in this lifetime, then in the future life you’ll also have nothing.’”