The story is from one of Confucius' philosophical stories regarding "Usefulness vs. Uselessness".
Title & Author are unknown.
Part of my "Core Stories" collection.
In my version, it simply symbolizes a good sense of Flexibility.
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Flexibility. (Unknown)
The story goes like this:
"...Once upon a time, there was the state of Song in China, there lived a family who knew how to make a certain kind of
medicine. This medicine could protect the skin from cracking and chaffing during the dry winter.
Keeping this medicine to themselves, generation after generation, the Song family did a business in cloth bleaching.
Then one day, a traveler found out about the formula for the medicine and bought it for one hundred gold pieces.
Of course that was worth a fortune for the Song family. The traveler then presented the secret formula to the king of
Wu and explained how it could be used in a military campaign.
At that time, the states of Wu and Yue were bitter enemies. After getting the secret formula for this medicine,
the king of Wu launched a winter offensive on water. The Wu army relied on this medicine not to get frostbite, but the
Yue soldiers were unprotected. As a result, the Yue army was terribly defeated.
After the defeat of the Yue kingdom, the traveler who presented the secret formula to the king of Wu was presented
with a large estate and lived the life of a nobleman thereafter.
Although it was the same formula, some people didn't know how to use it, they spend their lives bleaching cloths.
But when a flexible person who could think of new ideas came along, ended up living the wealthy life.
Moral of the Story:
How things turn out depends on how they are looked at. God's (or Buddhahood's) nature, whatever you call it,
mistically exists in all things. It is just a matter of time when one realizes and unlocks the original meanning of
things. Do not lose your sense of flexibility.
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