Opening The Door Of Your Heart

[camerata]

Somebody lent me this book to read on my vacation (in the USA for some reason it is titled Who Ordered this Truckload of Dung?) and it's a good one. A mixed bag of 108 short stories that illustrate the Dhamma, it's a good one to give to non-Buddhists. Anyone can see the wisdom in the stories.

The theme for much of the book is taken from an early story about Aj Brahm building a wall and then finding two bricks were out of alignment. The two misaligned bricks drove him crazy until someone pointed out to him that all the other bricks were perfect. In a later story he points out that we shouldn't focus on the faults (i.e. the bad bricks) of our spouses because if they didn't have those faults they would be with someone much better than us!

The book has been made into a musical that is showing in Singapore. Truckload of Dung is one of the stories in the book but I don't know why the American publisher thought it would make a better title for the book. Presumably it's more eye-catching.