..续本文上一页blood came out. So he went to the back yard and took three or four leaves, and put them into his mouth and chewed them, and then used a kind of plaster, and put it on the wound of the dog. After just one hour the dog could stand up and run again. So he became a healer. If there was someone in the village who was sick, he would go to the house and offer to heal that person. In the beginning, no one believed in him, because he was not used to telling the truth. But finally, people said, "Oh, there is no harm; he does not charge anything." He said that he had a medicine that can heal in one or two hours, and so they let him try. And he helped so many people in the village, so he began to get a reputation as a good healer. But he kept his therapy very secret.

　　One day the daughter of the village head, the mayor, was very sick, and no doctor could help. The daughter was about to die. So the mayor announced that whomever could heal his daughter would get her as a wife. He would marry his daughter to anyone who could heal her sickness. Cuoi thought that this was his chance, so he came and offered his help. Of course, with that kind of medicinal tree, he could heal the daughter of the mayor, and finally he got permission to marry that beautiful lady.

　　You know already what happened—that beautiful lady was not happy, because Cuoi was not very kind, and he did not always tell the truth. I don”t think that Cuoi practiced the Fourth Mindfulness Training. I don”t think that Cuoi practiced the First Mindfulness Training very well. That is why he was not a happy person, he was grouchy, he was irritable; so the lady suffered quite a lot. Cuoi did not take good care of his wife, and he did not want to take care of anything in his home, except for one thing: the tree. He was very careful with the tree. He did not want any one, any animal, anything to come close to the tree. He told his wife never to throw anything dirty near the tree, and especially not to pour the dishwashing water close to the roots of the tree.

　　Cuoi”s wife was intelligent, and she understood. She knew that she should not throw garbage or dirty water close to the tree; but he kept saying that almost every day, and that irritated her very much. One day, when he was hardly gone, she wanted to retaliate. She went into the back yard, and do you know what she did

　　 She tried to pee on the tree. Out of anger, out of frustration with her husband. You know, things like that do happen from time to time. She was pouring all her anger and frustration on the tree by peeing on its roots.

　　Unfortunately, that day Cuoi forgot something, so he came back to his home, and he went to the back yard. He saw that the tree was becoming uprooted. The tree had shaken violently after the act committed by Cuoi”s wife; the tree did not want to stay there anymore, and it began to fly up. Cuoi saw that! He did not want to lose the tree, as it was his only means of survival. He screamed, and he jumped up and clung to the tree, trying to pull it down. But the tree was stronger than Cuoi. He had been a logger, and was very strong, but the tree was stronger. So the tree carried him higher and higher and higher, and when he was very high, he was so afraid of letting go, because if he let go he would drop down and die. So the tree carried him higher and higher until it reached the moon. So that is why every time you look at the moon you see a tree with a man underneath—Cuoi, who is still clinging to the tree. That is the belief of so many generations of Vietnamese children. Cuoi, because of his failure to practice the Five Mindfulness Trainings, was exiled from Earth, and had to live a life of seclusion on the moon. It”s not very warm up there during the night, and not very fresh during the day. The tree surviv…

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