Not a Buddha story

Buddha was sitting under a tree.

There was this rich man in town who came to see the Buddha.

The rich man bowed before the Buddha and said “O Buddha, I have come to seek your advise. I have worked all my life and accumulated enormous wealth. I can get whatever I want with the money I have. But I find that I am never happy. In fact, I am suffering more every passing moment.”

Buddha looked at him for a while. He then said “ Desire everything and go after whatever you desire”.

The man was perplexed. He thought Buddha will say ‘Don’t go after desires’. But he was hearing the opposite from Buddha. He bowed and left.

After sometime, a pundit and scholar came to see Buddha. He said “Everywhere I go I hear about your wisdom. I have spent all my life trying to know God. But I haven’t. I came to seek your knowledge on that”.

Buddha was silent. He then said “Go and meditate. Seek God more vigorously”.

The pundit was confused. “Was I not doing that all my life?’. He thanked Buddha and left.

The disciple of Buddha watching this could not understand why Buddha asked the rich man to follow his desires and the pundit to follow his seeking. He asked the Buddha “Buddha, why did you tell them to do what they were already doing? Wasn’t the rich man already pursuing his desires and the pundit already spent his life seeking God?”

Buddha smiled and said “The rich man has tried to not pursue his desires. That caused great difficulty for him. His nature is to make money. He cannot change himself to be a monk all of a sudden. He should pursue the path that is natural to him, which is making money more vigorously. That will give him more happiness. I just made him not feel guilty of following one’s desires”

“And the Pundit, he had doubts in his mind all the time if his seeking is yielding results or not. So he was not fully into it. I just made him confident of what he was doing. That should help him seek without doubts”.

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This is not a Buddha story.

I just made up one in the name of Buddha.