Digging Deep: Uncovering Resilience in Difficult Times

{ Helvetica; **Speaker A**: Hi, this is Margaret Meloni, and welcome to the Death Dhamma Podcast. In a series I used to read, occasionally one character would say to the other, may you live in interesting times. It was understood that this was a curse, where interesting times meant chaos and difficulty. Well, we do live in interesting times. I mean, don't we always? So this season together, we will explore equanimity and chaos. Recognizing that many aspects of life are beyond our control. Let's find a sense of balance and peace amid external chaos.

Hello, my friends. And something that we know we need during times of chaos, aside from equanimity, of course, is resilience. And also we'll call some of that perseverance. And today, I am reading you a story I came across from a Buddhist publication. And this is a story about perseverance. And the story is called Finding a New Spring. And if you want to know where this story comes from, it is from a ebook called Buddhist Tales for Young and Old, Volume one, Prince Goodspeaker. And this particular story, again, is called Finding a New Spring.

And like many stories, it begins with once upon a time. So here we go. Once upon a time, a certain tradesman was leading a caravan to another country to sell his goods. Along the way, they came to the edge of a severe hot sand desert. They asked and found that during the daytime, the sun heats up the sand so much that it's hot like charcoal, so no one can walk on it. The bulls can't walk on it, camels can't walk on it, and of course, people can't walk on it. So the caravan leader hired a guide, someone who could follow the stars so that they could travel at night when the sand cools down.

And that way no one's going to be burning their feet off or melting, right? They began the dangerous nighttime journey across the desert. After a couple of nights, after eating their evening meal and waiting for the sand to cool, they started out again. And later that night, the desert guide who was driving the first car saw from the stars that they were getting close to the other side of the desert. Okay. That evening also, he had had a really large dinner. And what happened then? You know what happens sometimes after you sleep, right?

He relaxed and he fell asleep. Now, the bulls who were pulling all the carts kept going, but bulls don't know how to tell direction by reading the stars. And they basically kind of started turning to one side and went in a big circle, which means that they all wound up where they had started. And by this time, it's morning and people are waking up and they're realizing that they're back where they started. They're back at the same place they had camped the day before. And people were really upset, disheartened, right, Losing hope and, you know, lots of crying lamentation about their condition.

The desert crossing was, you know, supposed to be over by now, and they were also out of water, and so they were afraid they were going to die of thirst. They began to blame the caravan leader and the desert guide, of course. Right. How dare you fall asleep. What did you do? We paid you to take care of us. And of course, the logical thing they said is, like, well, we can't really function without water. Which is true. Now, the tradesman who this was overall his caravan, and these were his people, and he had hired the guides, he said to himself, well, if I lose courage now in the middle of this disastrous situation, then my leadership has no meaning.

So if I, you know, fall to complaining and whining and regret and I don't do anything, then all these items and the bulls and the lives of my people, including my own, all may be lost. I need to be energetic and I need to face this situation. So he began walking back and forth, trying to think right what to do. And out of the corner of his eye, he saw a little clump of grass. And he thought, well, no plant can live in the desert without water. So he called over his fellow travelers, the ones who had the most energy and who were in the best spirits and who would probably be the most helpful to him.

And he asked them to dig up the ground. And they dug and they dug, and they found a big rock, and they stopped, and they turned on the leader and said, look, we're just wasting our time here. This is exhausting. We're wasting our time. But he said, no, you, you're not. If we give up, we're going to be ruined. Our animals are going to die. We may die, too. Keep going. Let's have some encouragement here. And he got down into the hole and he put his ear to the stone, and he could swear that he could hear the sound of water underneath the stone.

So he called over someone who had been digging and said, you know, if we give up, if you give up, we're all going to die. So take this hammer. They had a heavy hammer and hit the rock. And so this worker lifted the hammer and hit the rock as hard as he could, and the rock split in two. And out from underneath the rock, a bunch of water came up, gushing up. Turns out he wasn't making things up. He wasn't imagining things. He did hear water underneath the rock. And, of course, everyone was then, you know, happy.

And they drank and they washed themselves off and they gave the bulls water and washed the bowls and they cooked their food and they ate. And before they left, they raised a big banner up into the sky so that other travelers could see from a distance and come to this spring, which was now exposed in the middle of the hot sand desert. They continued on. No more falling asleep, no more bulls going in circles, and they made it to the end of their journey. And so, as you would guess, the moral of this story is don't give up too easily.

Keep on trying until you reach the goal. And that is a good lesson for all of us throughout our lives. And thank you for listening to that story. Remember to take care of yourselves, take care of your loved ones, and protect the unprotected. You've been listening to the Death Dhamma podcast with your host, Margaret Maloney. Thank you so much for being here. Come find me on margaretmaloni.com m a r g-a r e t m e l o n I.com and until we meet again, may you be well, may you be happy, may you be at ease, and may you be free from suffering.

Bye for now.

Game plan