Put Down What You Carry... Buddhist Teachings to Let Go & Fall Asleep
Cedar Monk
50 views
Buddhist teachings to fall asleep for anyone still carrying a moment the rest of the world has already put down.
Tonight, a classic Zen story about two monks at a flooded river, and the long walk that followed.
One monk carries a woman across a dangerous river and sets her down without a second thought. His companion carries the moment for hours. From that old Zen tale, the narration moves through a rice porter, an imagined bridge keeper and a bag of stones by the door, gently separating what we are responsible for from what we simply never put down.
What this story draws on: The story retells the well-known Zen tale of two monks and a woman at a river crossing, whose closing line is usually rendered as "I set her down on the riverbank; why are you still carrying her?" It teaches that suffering often comes less from events themselves than from continuing to carry them in the mind long after they have ended.
Where the story goes
0:00 A Quiet Welcome
1:11 Two Monks and the Woman at the River
2:35 The Weight We Keep Carrying
4:18 Why We Keep Holding On
5:27 What You Were Never Meant to Carry
6:12 The Practice of Setting It Down
6:55 Second Story: The Rice Porter
8:40 Permission to Carry Less
9:18 Remembering Is Not Carrying
11:09 The Baggage We Learned to Recognize
13:32 The Bridge Keeper (An Imagined Scene)
17:06 Responsibility With a Beginning and an End
19:52 What Doesn't Belong in Our Hands
22:21 The Bag of Stones and Tomorrow's Clothes
24:40 When the Weight Returns
29:14 A Final Breath
If you'd like more nights like this one, you can subscribe to Cedar Monk. New stories arrive quietly, without fuss.
A gentle reminder: this is sleep audio. Please don't listen while driving or operating machinery.
#BuddhistTeachings #ZenStory #FallAsleep
Put Down What You Carry... Buddhist Teachings to Let Go & Fall Asleep
Cedar Monk
50 views
Buddhist teachings to fall asleep for anyone still carrying a moment the rest of the world has already put down.
Tonight, a classic Zen story about two monks at a flooded river, and the long walk that followed.
One monk carries a woman across a dangerous river and sets her down without a second thought. His companion carries the moment for hours. From that old Zen tale, the narration moves through a rice porter, an imagined bridge keeper and a bag of stones by the door, gently separating what we are responsible for from what we simply never put down.
What this story draws on: The story retells the well-known Zen tale of two monks and a woman at a river crossing, whose closing line is usually rendered as "I set her down on the riverbank; why are you still carrying her?" It teaches that suffering often comes less from events themselves than from continuing to carry them in the mind long after they have ended.
Where the story goes
0:00 A Quiet Welcome
1:11 Two Monks and the Woman at the River
2:35 The Weight We Keep Carrying
4:18 Why We Keep Holding On
5:27 What You Were Never Meant to Carry
6:12 The Practice of Setting It Down
6:55 Second Story: The Rice Porter
8:40 Permission to Carry Less
9:18 Remembering Is Not Carrying
11:09 The Baggage We Learned to Recognize
13:32 The Bridge Keeper (An Imagined Scene)
17:06 Responsibility With a Beginning and an End
19:52 What Doesn't Belong in Our Hands
22:21 The Bag of Stones and Tomorrow's Clothes
24:40 When the Weight Returns
29:14 A Final Breath
If you'd like more nights like this one, you can subscribe to Cedar Monk. New stories arrive quietly, without fuss.
A gentle reminder: this is sleep audio. Please don't listen while driving or operating machinery.
#BuddhistTeachings #ZenStory #FallAsleep