Taming the Ghost - A Baiji Story

The baiji (nun) said: "Once there was a man who was very angry because he had too much work to do at home, too many chores for just one person. He always fell behind and never got any help, and this made him very frustrated.

So one day, he prayed to the gods for help.

And his prayer was answered, but in a way he did not expect:

A ghost appeared, ready to do his bidding. He was a working ghost, because he asked, 'What should I do?'

'Clean my house," the man said, and the ghost cleaned the house. This pleased the man.

'What should I do now?' the ghost asked.

'Plow my field and plant my crops!'

So the ghost did that, and he was soon asking the man for his next duty.

'Milk the cows and feed all the animals.' On and on, the ghost asked and did as he was told.

Too well. Soon, there was nothing left to do, but the ghost kept coming.

'What should I do now?!'

'Um, clean the house again.' The ghost did that, and continued haunting the man night and day for more chores. He was unrelenting, and the man was being driven crazy.

So he ran to his guru for advice.

The guru nodded and gave his best counsel: 'In front of your house, tell him to build a larger pillar. When that is complete, tell the ghost to climb up and down the pillar.'

'For how long?'

'Until you give him new instructions.'

The man saw the genius in this and went right home to build the pillar, solving the problem of the nagging ghost.

The same is true with our minds. For us to get any true freedom, the mind and all of its energy and drive must be tamed and set to the side through simple meditation. It can be done with practice.

If we do not do this and allow our 'monkey mind' to rule - we will not know true peace. We will even think that we 'are' our minds when who we are is so much more vast.

Have You Checked to See If You're Truly Free?

A cliche? Perhaps. But still, many of us won't fully embrace our true selves and live a life of joy and freedom.

We're crippled by the fear of being seen as dumb, weird, or stupid, which we're afraid will lead to being ridiculed, humiliated, unaccepted, unloved and ostracized, which would be hell for most of us.

Just for being who we want to be, and doing what we want to do.

So instead, we do what we think we're supposed to do. And we're unhappy.

We could change overnight, but it can be difficult to overcome years of conditioning.

Yoga and meditation helps immensely, and fairly quickly. Counseling and workshops help also.

Being in an inquiry about it is a great open-ended way to approach it. It means that "even if there are no easy or immediate answers, I will continue to inquire and focus on it until I'm healed."

As long as we acknowledge it's there in the first place.

It helps to have a little support.

To sum it up, we pleased X people by doing X things, then later realized we liked Y things. We knew X people didn't like Y things, so we buried it and kept doing X things unhappily, not realizing the Y people were waiting for us to be Y with them.

Then we couldn't bear it anymore and starting doing Y things. X people got confused and went away, but we found Y people and that was good. You can't get mad at X people for not liking Y because they're X people. To them we changed. To us we took off a costume we didn't know we were wearing. Now we feel freer.

The end? No. The beginning.