The Monk Whose Body Stunk
ONCE WHEN THE BUDDHA was
wandering about teaching and preaching, he came upon a community of his monks in which one of them was suffering from a debilitating skin
disease. Sores that continually oozed blood and pus covered his body from head
to foot. Too weak to wash himself or his stained robes, a nauseating stench had
sett led about him which none of his brother monks could bear. And so he was
left alone, unable to fend for himself. It was in this pitiful state that the
Buddha found him and immediately proceeded to look after him.
First, the Buddha went to boil some water and brought it back
to bathe the monk. Then, as he was trying to carry the monk outside to bathe
him, the other monks saw him and came to help. They all took hold of the couch
that the sick monk was lying on and carried him to a place where he was gently
scrubbed clean. In the meantime, his clothes were taken away and washed. When
they were dry, they dressed the sick monk in fresh clean robes, which made him
also feel clean and fresh.
The Buddha then admonished the bhikkhus present, saying, “Bhikkhus,
here you have no mother or father to take care of you when you are sick. Who
will take care of you then if you don’t take care of one another? Remember
whenever you look after a sick person, it is as if you were
looking after me myself.”
He then
followed with a small sermon in which he said that although it was true that the body would one day be as
useless as a fallen log, while it was still alive, it should be taken care of.
In the
state of heightened alertness in which the sick monk dwelled, brought on in
part by the fresh bath and fresh clothes, he attained enlightenment at the end of the sermon.
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