Once upon a time there was a monk and one day he decides to meditate alone away from his monastery.
So he takes a boat to the middle of the lake, closes his eyes and begins to meditate. After a few hours of undisturbed silence he suddenly feels the blow of another boat hitting his own.
With his eyes still closed, he feels his anger build. And when he opens his eyes, he is ready to yell at the boatman, who dared to disrupt his meditation.
But when he opens his eyes he saw that it was an empty boat not anchored, floating in the middle of the lake.
At that moment the monk reaches self-realization and understands that anger is within him. It simply needs a hit of an external object to trigger it.
And after that day, whenever he met someone who irritated or provoked his anger, he remembered that the other person is just an empty boat. The anger is inside of him.
You see, in life, in your life, this goes for bad and for good feelings, for bad and for good emotions. Because anger, love, happiness is all inside of you. All the other people in the world, in your life, are just empty boats.
You decide what emotion you want to attract and what emotion you trigger in your life.
So next time you get angry, next time you get sad, close your eyes and remember the empty boat story. That everything is just inside of you and everything else are empty boats
