Took this off someone's tumblr:

The Buddha was sitting under a tree talking to his disciples when a man came and spit on his face. He wiped it off, and he asked the man, “What next? What do you want to say next?” The man was a little puzzled because he himself never expected that when you spit on somebody’s face, he will ask, “What next?” He had no such experience in his past. He had insulted people and they had become angry and they had reacted. Or if they were cowards and weaklings, they had smiled, trying to bribe the man. But Buddha was like neither, he was not angry nor in any way offended, nor in any way cowardly. But just matter-of-factly he said, “What next?” There was no reaction on his part.

Buddha’s disciples became angry, they reacted. His closest disciple, Ananda, said, “This is too much, and we cannot tolerate it. He has to be punished for it. Otherwise everybody will start doing things like this.”

Buddha said, “You keep silent. He has not offended me, but you are offending me. He is new, a stranger. He must have heard from people something about me, that this man is an atheist, a dangerous man who is throwing people off their track, a revolutionary, a corrupter. And he may have formed some idea, a notion of me. He has not spit on me, he has spit on his notion. He has spit on his idea of me because he does not know me at all, so how can he spit on me?

“If you think on it deeply,” Buddha said, “he has spit on his own mind. I am not part of it, and I can see that this poor man must have something else to say because this is a way of saying something. Spitting is a way of saying something. There are moments when you feel that language is impotent: in deep love, in intense anger, in hate, in prayer. There are intense moments when language is impotent. Then you have to do something. When you are angry, intensely angry, you hit the person, you spit on him, you are saying something. I can understand him. He must have something more to say, that’s why I’m asking, ‘What next?’”

The man was even more puzzled! And Buddha said to his disciples, “I am more offended by you because you know me, and you have lived for years with me, and still you react.”

Puzzled, confused, the man returned home. He could not sleep the whole night. When you see a Buddha, it is difficult, impossible to sleep again the way you used to sleep before. Again and again he was haunted by the experience. He could not explain it to himself, what had happened. He was trembling all over and perspiring. He had never come across such a man; he shattered his whole mind and his whole pattern, his whole past.

The next morning he was back there. He threw himself at Buddha’s feet. Buddha asked him again, “What next? This, too, is a way of saying something that cannot be said in language. When you come and touch my feet, you are saying something that cannot be said ordinarily, for which all words are a little narrow; it cannot be contained in them.” Buddha said, “Look, Ananda, this man is again here, he is saying something. This man is a man of deep emotions.”

The man looked at Buddha and said, “Forgive me for what I did yesterday.”

Buddha said, “Forgive? But I am not the same man to whom you did it. The Ganges goes on flowing, it is never the same Ganges again. Every man is a river. The man you spit upon is no longer here. I look just like him, but I am not the same, much has happened in these twenty-four hours! The river has flowed so much. So I cannot forgive you because I have no grudge against you.”

“And you also are new. I can see you are not the same man who came yesterday because that man was angry and he spit, whereas you are bowing at my feet, touching my feet. How can you be the same man? You are not the same man, so let us forget about it. Those two people, the man who spit and the man on whom he spit, both are no more. Come closer. Let us talk of something else.”

Can’t say I believe this is a factual, but I like the idea.

All I would comment upon is the poster's last bit about not necessarily believing that this account actually happened.

I don't know, but I've never heard this story and there are elements in the substance that make me doubt that it's one of the authentic accounts of conversations the Buddha may have had. It sounds to me like a more advanced version of Buddhist philosophy, and worded in a way that the Buddha wouldn't have in his day.

That said, it's a good story and it is a good reflection of the teachings of the Buddha. So I would say it doesn't matter whether it actually happened or not. Facts are perhaps a matter of faith, but the important thing about Buddhism isn't the facts, but the inspiration and the teachings and any enduring truth that resonates through generations.

There's a certain flexibility regarding the "facts" when it comes to Buddhism, but the bottom line is that if the teaching is good and holds up under personal meditation and scrutiny, then it should be accepted, whether the source is the Buddha or not.

I give the story a thumbs up, as well as the poster's skepticism. And if he or she likes the idea, then that, I think, is a successful propagation of the teachings.

The first song that came up on shuffle play just past midnight was Half Past April by Rainer Maria. Sometimes I think iTunes has a mind.

I think I've already enumerated all the things I've lost interest in, things that used to comprise my identity. Music is gone, photography is gone, physical activities all gone.

While trying to find my way to my next attempt, things that interest me now reveal themselves in what I find interesting to read in the bookstores or libraries. And things that interest me to watch on TV.

I still have base, gross, human attachments, indicated by an ongoing appreciation of listening to my music collection. It's an attachment in that it's something hard to let go of. It's hard to just stop doing it.

I used to be a coffee drinker, a caffeine addict, but when I decided I just wanted to stop doing it, I did. I'm sure it would be the same for alcohol if I ever needed to make that decision. Stopping listening to music is just not an option.

Another attachment I have is towards food, indicated by my attraction to food programs on the Travel & Living Channel. But I think I can give up that attachment pretty easily. It's really simple desire. I can drool, drool, drool, but if I can't have the food, I have no problem with that.

I still waste a lot of time watching superficial South Korean entertainment media. I am a master of wasting time. All my life I've been good at occupying myself doing mindless, repetitive shit. I would probably be happy as a clam working on some assembly line that my mind might take as some kind of meditative environment.

I guess another ongoing interest is human mortality. I'm attracted to books and TV programs that deal with the human life cycle, death, and any investigations involving death. Even criminal investigations are a meditation on life, mortality and extreme human behavior.

I mentioned before getting wrapped up in people climbing the world's highest peaks. To me, that's a habitually suicidal activity. If you do it, no matter what the reason, there's a high risk that you either might die, or face a life or death experience.

You can't climb the world's highest peaks assuming you'll make it down alive. All the stories of people who've died on the peaks attest to that as fact. No one goes up assuming they will die, but no one can go up and assume they won't.

I'm still interested in Buddhist teachings, which is closely related to death, since the ultimate teachings of Buddhism regard death as the ultimate meditation on life. There are a lot of feel-good teachings of Buddhism on living that are propagated because that's all what most people can handle.

But a real challenge of Buddhism, I find, is the facing of mortality and contemplating what it is, or what one believes it is. Tibetan Buddhism outlines what past practitioners have discovered about it, but none if it is provable, so it's a matter of what makes sense to any one of us.

At least Tibetan Buddhism takes a good, hard challenge of the experience and what it is. It's not just some fairy tale of some mythic heaven or hell which seem an awful lot like human psychological projection. Human psychology = not ultimate reality. It's a created reality.

Also related to Buddhism, I'm still interested in cosmology, astronomy and astrophysics. Any ultimate spirituality must take the entire universe into account (most organized religions aren't universal, they are "us vs. them and we're right, they're wrong"), so any valid spirituality must investigate scientific findings on the universe, or be open to such an investigation somewhere down the line.

I don't mean blindly accepting scientific findings in the realm of spirituality. Science is by its own design unqualified to deal with spiritual questions. But as science limits its scope, it does what it does very well, and spiritual seekers would do themselves well by looking into those findings.

There's a lot that's scientifically unprovable in cosmological theory, but it's interesting how there's a lot of crossover with Buddhist conceptual thought. Likewise, it's interesting how concepts that have been taught in Buddhism for centuries match descriptions of reality by quantum mechanics.

Quantum mechanics and astrophysics have been finding there's a lot of real fucking strange shit when dealing with reality. Buddhism has been describing reality as some real fucking strange shit for quite a while.

On DVD I have Columbia University physicist Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe which dealt with string theory. National Geographic in Taiwan has recently started airing what seems to be another Brian Greene series called Beyond the Cosmos, which I think might be a TV presentation of his book The Fabric of the Cosmos.

When I was at Deer Park monastery, one of the monks was reading The Fabric of the Cosmos, but I wasn't able to get some of the esoteric concepts he was trying to explain. With this TV presentation, I think I'm starting to get it, and so I'm giving the book a shot at the library.

It's pretty mind-blowing stuff. It's interesting how Buddhist descriptions of reality are affirmed by scientific cosmology, but scientific cosmology is also on shaky ground as it's ever-evolving and can't rely on the scientific method to prove itself.

It's interesting how findings in quantum mechanics are no surprise to Buddhist cosmology. Buddhism has been saying those things for centuries but had no way to prove them. And quantum mechanics prove them.

In the end, the ultimate thesis is that the universe and reality are a pretty bizarre place, and that counteracts our daily conception of living and reality that it's . . . just normal.

My parents seem to be laying off. They haven't called in a while, and I didn't even snap at them or anything to put them off. In fact, I did the exact opposite.

They recently went on one of their twice annual vacations, which I think may have been a part of their life plan. They work diligently, make their fortune, and in their old age they travel the world on . . .  package tours. This time they went to Alaska to see the aurora borealis. Good for them.

The day before they left, I feel I got the better of them in a phone call that didn't get cut off, and entreated them to focus on their own happiness and stop getting wrapped up in unhappiness of worrying about what their children will do.

They're old, they've done their job. Whatever they've done, their parenting job good or bad is not the issue. We're all adults now, the decisions we make now are our own.

I emphatically encouraged them to enjoy what they were doing now – going on vacation – and not get worked up about what any of us are doing with our lives. They've done their part, there's little they can do to change any of it now.

They can try to "help", but because of the foundation they laid, or lack of, it's possible whatever help they hope to offer is futile. Whatever advice or encouragement or "help" they try to give, all of us are likely to go against it simply because it's them giving it. That's how poorly they failed as parents.

The only way to rectify it now is to stop. Let it go. They fucked up, they don't have the means to turn anything around or reflection to contemplate a new strategy, so the best thing to do is stop. Stop nagging, stop trying to control things, stop trying to impose a vision that is, by nature of them giving it, unacceptable.

If my oldest brother loses patients or the business he inherited from our father because of his anger management issues, or if my older brother ends up in a second divorce, this time with children being affected, or if I succeed in committing suicide, none are our parents' issue.

And I don't think my oldest brother will lose his business, and I don't think my older brother will fail in saving his marriage, and I don't think I'll fail in committing suicide, but whatever happens I strongly encouraged my parents to just concentrate on their own happiness, and not base it on what we're doing with our lives.

I think she listened.