The Blade of Grass on the Buddha’s Altar

In the courtyard of a temple, beneath the shade of an ancient bodhi tree, a group of children played around a stone statue of Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva. The afternoon sun filtered through the leaves, casting dappled light upon the statue’s face. The children ran and laughed, paying no attention to the majestic figure seated on its pedestal. They did not know who the Buddha was, nor did they understand the concept of divinity. To them, it was merely a lifeless block of stone, a place to climb up and jump down from.

Among these children was a boy of seven or eight years old. While playing, he suddenly stopped and looked up at the statue. On the pedestal, right at the feet of the image, lay a small piece of plastic waste left behind by someone, fluttering in the wind. The child did not know that this was trash meant for a bin, nor did he understand the significance of his action. He simply felt that the piece of plastic should not be there. He ran up, bent down to pick it up, and then ran back down to place it under a tree, near a pile of dry leaves. Afterward, he returned to his games, completely forgetting what had just happened.

A bodhisattva, observing from a distant realm, saw everything. He saw the child, he saw the blade of grass, and he saw the innocent mind that held a fleeting moment of reverence. The bodhisattva smiled. He knew that this tiny act, unnoticed by others, unpraised, and even forgotten by the child himself, would set in motion an endless chain of cause and effect (karmic law).

In the next life, the child died and was reborn as an ordinary person with nothing special about him. Five lives passed, then ten, and still, nothing remarkable occurred. But by the tenth life, he happened to meet someone who understood the Buddha's teachings (Dharma). That person spoke only a few words, yet a vague sense of faith arose within the child’s heart. He began visiting temples, though he gave up after only a few days.

Twenty lives later, he took monastic vows, but he returned to lay life after only one or two years. A hundred lives later, he began practicing meditation, gaining some meditative concentration, but he eventually lost his progress. Two hundred lives later, he became a teacher of the Dharma, capable of entering deeper states of concentration. Step by step, through thousands of lifetimes, he finally attained enlightenment.

A bodhisattva looking at a small act like picking up a blade of grass could see the entire progression. He clearly perceived every link in the chain, every rise and fall, every advance and retreat. Ordinary people, however, seeing the same scene, perceive only a child picking up trash, finding nothing noteworthy. They cannot assess the weight of cause and effect (karmic law), nor can they see how the seed planted by such a small action grows into a great tree over countless eons.

The Meaning of the Story

This story illustrates the vision of a bodhisattva regarding cause and effect (karmic law): from a single small action, they perceive a vast sequence unfolding across infinite lifetimes. Ordinary beings, limited by their physical eyes, cannot see this truth, so they often dismiss small deeds. Yet, in reality, every thought and every action has profound influence. The lesson is to cherish every opportunity to create merit, no matter how small, and not to become discouraged when results are not immediately visible.

Compiled from a dharma talk by Venerable Thich Chan Quang