Healthy living

I read about a saintly man in north-east Tibet whose compassion was so great he opened his house at all times to the poor. When, as an old man, he knew he was about to die he gave this instruction: ‘When I die you must not move my body for a week; that is all I desire’. Soon he did die; and his body, wrapped in old clothes, was carried into a small room. The bearers noted that although the old man had been tall his body already appeared to have grown smaller. On the sixth day when the family peeped into the room they saw it had grown still smaller. On the eighth day when men came to bear the body to the cemetery they undid the coverings and found nothing inside save nails and hair. When the family reported the event to the local lama he said that this had happened in the past and was a matter of saintly people ending up being absorbed into the Light. There is a lot of wisdom in the east and it can work to remind us of Christian basics. We were made not to be full of ourselves but