Grass Cutting Story: The True Cause of Our Suffering
Let’s begin our examination of the Buddha’s approach to understanding suffering by looking at a story from Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn. In Korea, people use grass cuttings to make compost. Cutting the grass with a sickle was a job for children. When I was eight years old I liked the job, so one day my friends and I went out and I cut a lot of grass. Then we gathered it all in a bag, and we all went to school together…very happy… I had already walked half a mile [when]… one of my friends said to me, "You cut your leg!" Then I looked at my leg and saw the blood. I was bleeding very badly, and blood was making squishing sounds in my rubber shoe as I walked. As soon as I saw this, I fell to the ground in great pain and couldn’t move. The other students all came around to see what had happened, and they ran to get my mother and helped me to the hospital. ...
