Leo Tolstoy's "The Three Hermits"
While on my retreat last week I finished a book titled Autobiography of a Yogi, and in that book the author shares a summary of the story The Three Hermits by Leo Tolstoy, and I'd like to share an even more abridged version of that story here:
On an island there lived three old hermits. They were very simple people, and didn't know complicated prayers. In fact they knew only one: "We are three, Thou art Thee, have mercy on us." In spite of this one and only prayer, the hermits were said to have created many great miracles.
Gathas, Kabbalah
Email to a friend:
I won't be able to write much the rest of the week, and then on Friday I head to the mountains for a week, so I wanted to send this while I was thinking about it (and while a neighbor's car alarm keeps me from sleeping).
Lately I've been using a few "mindfulness verses" that Thich Nhat Hanh calls "gathas". They are simple verses that you memorize, and then repeat silently at the appropriate time. For instance, when washing your hands his verse is:
