Holy Books & Blind Faith [A Zen Story]

All over the world, people are struggling to adopt family planning, and some religions object to it. They say that children are a gift of god and if god gives, we must accept. Why is it necessary to drag religion into this family planning problem? Religion has nothing to do with this social activity. If we depend on our holy books for everything without using our commonsense, we may get into trouble. Let me tell you a story to illustrate this.

There was a religious teacher who had a few thousand followers. He was very strict and insisted that his word was law. He had written down all the instructions in his holy book and he warned his followers not to do anything without referring to his holy book. One day when this guru and the followers were crossing a narrow bridge, the guru slipped and fell down into the river. The followers remembered the instructions and wanted to read the holy book to determine what he had decreed and what to do when the guru fell into the river. The guru was shouting for help, but the followers said, "Wait, wait, we want to see what you have written in our holy book about a situation like this." Of course the guru drowned, before they found the instruction.

This text was extracted from an article written by ven Kiribathgoda Ñānānanda