There is a Zen koan titled, “The Giver Should Be Thankful” which has always stuck with me since I first heard it. It goes like this:

Seisetsu was the master of a Temple.
He required larger quarters, since those in which he was teaching were overcrowded. Umezu, a local merchant, decided to donate five hundred pieces of gold called ryo toward the construction of a bigger school.
This money he brought to the teacher.
Seisetsu said: “All right. I will take it.”

Umezu gave Seisetsu the sack of gold, but he was dissatisfied with the attitude of the teacher.
One might live a whole year on three ryo, and the merchant had not even been thanked for five hundred.
“In that sack are five hundred ryo,” hinted Umezu.
“You told me that before,” replied Seisetsu.
“Even if I am a wealthy merchant, five hundred ryo is a lot of money,” said Umezu.
“Do you want me to thank you for it?” asked Seisetsu.
“You ought to,” replied Uzemu.

Why should I?” inquired Seisetsu. “The giver should be thankful.”

Perhaps this makes absolutely no sense to you at this point. If that is the case, you’re not alone. The purpose of a koan is to confuse people. One of the most common one’s is: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

Editor’s note: This is an original post by Stephen Parato, and first appeared on his website at www.feelingoodfeelingreat.com. It is with his permission that this article is re-printed in its entirety.

He presents us with 15 questions to ask ourselves to find our life’s purpose. There is nothing more important than feeling passionate and inspired about the work you do in this life. I hope with this blog you are able to come to a better understanding of yourself, as I did by reading it.

You came here for a reason, didn’t you?

You can feel it in the depths of your being.

Your life is inconceivably meaningful. You arrived on Earth for a purpose. What that purpose is, you have to uncover (and create) yourself. It’s an epic quest from cradle to grave, and that’s what makes life worth living.

This is the third blog that I have attempted to start today. Twice already I’ve wrote a few paragraphs, but then quit because I couldn’t get going.

Don’t worry, if you are not a writer, this will still apply to your life. The example I’m going to be using is blogging, but really it could apply to just about any life situation.

This is a problem that a lot of people encounter when they first start waking up to spirituality. They think that they are more spiritual than others, and they also tend to think they know what is right for them.

I am speaking from personal experience. I used to be terrible about this, and wanted to change everyone’s lives. It took quite a bit of frustration and failure before I started looking at this from a different perspective.

Perhaps some of you have heard in the media recently that Obama wants to provide two years of free community college to just about everyone.

He wants to do what??? People need to work to learn a work-ethic. These free-loaders are the problem with this country. I paid for my school, so they should have to pay for theirs.

In fact, what’s with grade schoolers and high schoolers getting free school? Some of them even get a free food during the day! Don’t they know there is no such thing as a “free lunch”?

We should go back to the good-old-days. I don’t want my tax dollars going to support some 7-year-old so he or she can get free food and an education!

Put them back in the coalmines, just like how our ancestors had to work. That will teach them some real-world skills that they won’t soon forget!

How long did it take you to realize I was being sarcastic? I’ll bet it was that last paragraph that did it

Today is the Winter solstice, the shortest day of the year for the Northern Hemisphere. For thousands of years it has been a significant date for almost every civilization.

Sometimes the Winter solstice falls on December 22^nd, however, but this year it was December 21^st. Why is this significant, and why did I title this blog, “Keep Christ in Christmas?” Perhaps a better title would have been, “Put the Pagan Back in Christmas.”