Sujatha Weragoda

 A long time ago, at the beginning of the world, birds didn't have feathers. Instead, they had two legs and two hands. One day, a parrot saw a ripened mango on the top of a tree; it was unable to reach it but wanted to eat it. Because of that, it was sad; then, a powerful god appeared in front of the parrot and asked the reason for its sadness.  "Oh, my dear don't worry! I could make two feathers for you out of your hands. So you could fly to the Mango," said the god.  "Oh god, your are so nice, thank you for helping me" replied the parrot. "But you have to agree on one condition; I cannot redo what I did. In other words, you will not have hands any longer" the god warned. Since the parrot want the mango very badly, it said, "It's totally fine. I do not need hands if I could fly." Then the god created feathers out of its hands. The parrot was excited and flew to the mango. It wanted to take the mango by hand, but unfortunately, it did...

 Things happen without stopping. Some occurrences generate happiness and joy; some circumstances generate unhappiness and sorrow. That's how we see and think; however, the reality is things happen as they are. They do not want to create happiness or unhappiness. We ourselves generate happiness or sadness according to how we see it.  In Kassapa Buddha's time, there lived a merchant who was devoted to the Buddha. In the same city, there lived a man who was not happy with that merchant and wanted to make harm to the merchant. Then, he robbed two-three times the merchant's shop and destroyed his palace and garden. He did so many things to harm the merchant, but nothing worked well. Then, that man learned that the merchant was devoted to the Buddha, and if he made any harm to the Buddha's vihar, it would change the merchant's mind. Then he gave fire to the Buddha's kuti while the Buddha was out of it.  After hearing this incident, the merchant clapped and jumped with...