Extracted from the website of Association Bouddhiste Vajrayana en France and translated (心病) into English:
Hard Feelings
Six good friends (namely Greed, Hatred, Delusion, Doubt, Pride and Wisdom) went to have their physical examinations together. When they were chatting in the waiting room of the clinic, a nurse asked Doubt (as the first one among the six of them) to go to the consultation room. Doubt finished his examination in less than ten minutes, he then thought, “The consultation is quite fast, so it won’t take long to wait for my five other friends to finish their examinations before we can go to have afternoon tea together.” He went back to the waiting room to join his friends and continued to chat with them happily.
A bit later, the nurse called Greed. He stayed in the consultation room for about thirty minutes. Then Hatred, Delusion and Pride went in the consultation room successively and similarly each of them took about thirty minutes inside.
By this time, Doubt started to wonder why the doctor spent so much time to diagnose his four friends but only spared a short time for himself. Was the doctor a bit perfunctory when diagnosing him? When he was thinking of the query, he heard the nurse called Wisdom. Doubt glanced at his watch and then asked Greed, Hatred, Delusion and Pride doubtfully why they all stayed in the consultation room for such a long time.
Greed said that the doctor explained the harm of greediness to him; Hatred said that the doctor gave him methods to deal with resentment; Delusion said that the doctor advised him not to grasp on infatuation while Pride said that the doctor analyzed him the sequela of arrogance.
Knowing that the doctor had diagnosed his four friends with great care, Doubt felt upset. Why didn’t the doctor diagnose him carefully just now? The doctor simply took a look at him, checked his pulse and then asked him to leave. When Doubt kept on thinking about the doctor’s behavior, he became more and more unhappy and concluded that the doctor had a ‘conditioned-mind’ as he had not treated him equally well.
Meanwhile, the consultation room was opened again and Wisdom went out looking very relaxed. Doubt looked at his watch again and was surprised to find that Wisdom had spent an even shorter time inside the consultation room, it was only five minutes. Even so, there was no trace of unhappiness on Wisdom. Doubt wondered and asked Wisdom, “Did the doctor examine you with great care in such a short time?”
“Certainly. The doctor thought that I’m good and healthy,” answered Wisdom.
However, Doubt still minded about the diagnosing time, so he talked to Wisdom again, “Both of our diagnosing time is less than ten minutes, but for the other four, they all had half an hour’s consultation. Do you think the doctor is unfair to us as he examined us perfunctorily?” Wisdom disagreed with Doubt by shaking his head.
In the meantime, the doctor came out of his room and when he saw Doubt, he said to him, “Strange! You looked good just now but why’re you so sick at the moment?  Follow me and let me give you some antidotes.” He then grabbed Doubt into the consultation room again.
Postscript• | Doctors treat their patients equally: all they would like to do is to cure their patients’ sicknesses so that they could be free from their sufferings. As different patients are suffering from different diseases, doctors will give them different medical treatments accordingly. Doubt was jealous that his friends’ diagnosing time was longer than his, this made him suspect the doctor and thus tried to guess the reason randomly. He even questioned the doctor’s professional ethics that consequently led to his infection of ‘ignorance’ virus. It was such a tragedy. Although the diagnosing time of Wisdom and Doubt was nearly the same, their reactions were totally different. The situation was like genius versus moron; angel versus devil or enlightenment versus confusion in which they were like ‘the two sides along a line’ or ‘a separation by a piece of paper’, that is a slight dislocation resulting in two contrasting consequences. |
• | Similarly, our Guru is like a marvellous, experienced doctor curing sentient beings, viewing all sentient beings equally as well as teaching them according to their fate and level. Our Guru is in the state of ‘upekkha’ (equanimity, an ‘unconditioned’ mind). The ‘conditioned-minds’ arise only from pitiful sentient beings themselves. |