RACHEL HELMS

Forgiveness

I once heard a Buddhist story about a monk in a temple who was cleaning one day when a beautiful young girl, carrying a child in swaddling clothes, shoved the child into the monk's arms in front of the monks and said, "This is your child. Said without looking back and fled away. The monk was dumbfounded with the child in his arms, and the other monks also looked at each other, and then whispered. The monk carried the child to the meditation room, boiling rice soup to feed the child. The child, under the monk's careful feeding, grew white and fat and very cute.