Creating Love and Harmony Through Massage

Massage brings people together. Where there is conflict and misunderstanding, it calms tensions and creates unity by engendering feelings of closeness and tenderness.The following story illustrates this point.

In ancient Japan a recently married young woman had, according to custom, moved into her husband's home where his parents also resided. After a while she visited a Buddhist monk, and, with tears in her eyes, expressed her frustration with her mother-in-law who was constantly bullying her. She was so desperate that she asked the monk to teach her a way by which she could gradually kill her mother- in-law without arousing any suspicion. The monk replied that he knew the perfect way for her to achieve her aim, and set about teaching her a form of massage through which she could gradually kill the old woman. A few weeks later the same young woman returned to the monk in a state of great agitation. The monk inquired whether his method was working, and the woman immediately begged him to show her how to undo the harm that she might have done. The monk feigned surprise and asked what had brought about this change of heart and mind. She answered that, after a few weeks of regularly massaging her mother-in-law in the way that he had taught her, she had grown very fond of her and now they both loved each other very much. The monk then smilingly explained that it had never been his intention to show her a way to hurt anybody, quite the contrary. He had taught her massage to bring them both together, thus creating love and harmony in her family life.