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cheesegrits
Stranger
Registered: 06/19/06
Posts: 5
Last seen: 20 days, 11 hours
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It simply is
#5787333 - 06/24/06 07:22 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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hey people....I thought that this was a cool story. I found it at http://www.zenguide.com/zenmedia/index.cfm?id=24, and it's also pasted below. It's about a coffin maker who won't change his coffin to fit varying sizes of customers because his coffin simply is.
MY COFFIN SIMPLY IS Once upon a time, in a certain town there was a coffin maker who opened and was running a store where he sold the coffins he made himself to the customers in the neighborhood. The population in the town increased day-by-day.
The more crowded the population, the harder the making living. The harder the making living, the more serious and intensive the struggles and fights for foods, clothes, and medicine. The number of the dead also increased fast.
The more the people were dead the more coffins were made and sold, and of course, the more works to do and the coffin maker got to hire other people to help him in selling and delivering coffins to customers.
Among the number of employees, there were two young men who were muscle and strong handled the deliver coffins to the families of the dead and they wanted to make some more extra money, therefore, they helped the relatives of the dead to put the corpses into the coffins which they sold to them.
Their jobs became more complicated. They both wanted to make it easy for themselves but each of them followed two different ways.
One realized that the sizes of the dead varied and requested his boss - the coffin maker - make coffins in different sizes from which he could select the one which fitted best the corpse in each case. Therefore, his relationship to the customers was good.
Unlike this salesman, the other one requested the coffin maker make one-size coffins for him. He did not care the sizes of the dead varied at all.
When the coffin maker heard the request of the man, he was very surprised and asked the man: -How could you make the long and the short fit into the one-size coffins? -It's very simple, sir. If I got some dead body whose legs are longer than my coffin length, I would cut them short to fit it. When I got a dead body whose legs are shorter than it, I would use my hands, one holds and one pulls, making them longer to fit the coffin and my clients should be satisfied. Do you understand what I mean, sir? - I am sorry I do not know what you mean, my young man. Can you explain it to me? - Oh! It's very simple, sir! My coffin simply is, but the dead bodies are complicated. I am trying to make it simple. Do you understand, sir? - I am sorry again, I still don't get it.
Although the owner said that to the man but he made one-size coffins for him and the salesman kept selling and delivering the one-size coffins to his customers for a while until no one bought his one-size coffins anymore with the reason: His coffin simply is!
Told by Ouranus
My interpretation of this is that acceptance shouldn't be blind. Accepting things without expectations can be helpful and can generate peace. However, misinterpreting the ideal of constant acceptance or taking acceptance to the extreme can lead to apathy or it can be a cop-out that someone uses when they're afraid to act. It's all about taking acceptance in the proper context and adapting it to your life situation.
Chinese Proverb: A wise man adapts himself to circumstances just as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it.
Peace Out
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TheGus
The Walrus

Registered: 09/07/05
Posts: 387
Last seen: 15 years, 11 months
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amazing
-------------------- "It is easier to teach a computer to play chess than to build a mudpie."Sherry Turkle Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts"-Einstein
I pity the fool who break traffic laws with $870,000 of drugs in the car. -mo0nlite_sonata Psythos
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Panoramix
Getafix


Registered: 11/26/03
Posts: 634
Loc: Everywhere else
Last seen: 11 years, 3 months
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Ehn, I'm with the leg-chopping coffin-toter, myself. He's just got a coffin. And a body. It's way easier to alter the body than the coffin. So why shouldn't he take the path of least resistance? Sure, the corpses' families might object to his methods, but they should realize that the corpse doesn't mind, so why should they?
That other guy is measuring corpses, going back to the coffin-maker, giving him the specifications for the required coffin, lugging the coffin back to corpse and for what? The coffin just gets tossed in the ground to rot away anyway.
I can't speak for the original author of the story, but I'm fairly sure you took from it the opposite meaning he intended you to.
-------------------- Don't worry, I'm wrong.
Edited by Panoramix (06/24/06 09:29 PM)
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Veritas

Registered: 04/15/05
Posts: 11,089
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Re: It simply is [Re: Panoramix]
#5787863 - 06/24/06 10:27 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Cremation.
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BlueCoyote
Beyond


Registered: 05/07/04
Posts: 6,697
Loc: Between
Last seen: 3 years, 16 days
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Who needs a coffin ? The relatives. The living.

Why is the burring ritus concerned as landmark in the evolution of mankind...
Is it the evolving part of human imagination which is celebrated as an abstract ?
So burrying rituals are more for the living than for the dead.
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niteowl
GrandPaw


Registered: 07/01/03
Posts: 16,291
Loc:
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So burrying rituals are more for the living than for the dead.
Yep.
-------------------- Live for the moment you are in nowDon't be bogged down by your pastDon't be afraid of what lies in your future
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Panoramix
Getafix


Registered: 11/26/03
Posts: 634
Loc: Everywhere else
Last seen: 11 years, 3 months
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Re: It simply is [Re: niteowl]
#5789437 - 06/25/06 01:39 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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"So burrying rituals are more for the living than for the dead."
Indeed so. I suspect that as a crotchety old man, I'll request to be stuffed in a big burlap sack and dumped in the ground upon my death with as minimal a ceremony as any living friends or relatives I might have can handle. The idea being once I die, get me in worms' bellies, and that right soon.
Cremation would release all the toxins I've accrued throughout my lifetime into the atmosphere, where they have the potential to cause greater environmental damage than if I were a couple feet underground. I'd want to avoid that.
-------------------- Don't worry, I'm wrong.
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