The Legend of the Koel

In summer in the countryside, when the lychee trees begin to redden with fruit and the noon sun pours down like fire, a bird calls from somewhere deep in the thick green leaves. Tu hú. Tu hú. The call is high, sharp and sure. Then it comes again, beat after restless beat, as if something in its heart has not yet settled. The bird is the koel, a kind of cuckoo.

Long ago, people heard that call and wondered where this bird had come from, and why it kept on calling like that. So they told a story, and handed it down through the generations.

This is a Vietnamese folktale, with no dates and no named places. There are only two friends who set out together on the path of a monk, and a very gentle lesson about patience.

Long ago, two close friends went up to a pagoda together and asked to become monks. Both wanted to make their hearts pure and to learn how to let go of anger and resentment, so that one day they might reach true peace of mind. Each was given a name that suited his nature. Both names turn on one word, nhẫn, which means patience. The first friend was named Năng Nhẫn. His name means one who has patience, who knows how to hold back and wait. The second friend was named Bất Nhẫn. His name means one who finds it hard to hold back, who runs hot and is easily annoyed.

The two studied under the same teacher, ate and slept under the same roof, and chanted the sutras together morning and evening. But their natures were very different. Năng Nhẫn was always calm and even. If someone spoke harshly to him, he only smiled. If a task was hard, he kept at it, unhurried, until it was done. Bất Nhẫn was clever and hardworking, but his heart burned like fire. A single word against his wishes, and he felt irritated. A single delay, and he grew restless.

Years went by. Then one day, because he had held on to a steady and peaceful heart for so long, Năng Nhẫn found his mind suddenly filled with light and his heart as free as air. He reached the calm that the two friends had always hoped for. Bất Nhẫn was still struggling and had not reached that place. He was very sad. And the more impatient he grew, the harder it was to quiet his heart.

The old tellers say Bất Nhẫn was advised to try sitting in meditation, very long and very still, to teach his heart to settle. If he could keep calm and let nothing outside shake him, his hot temper would soften little by little.

So Bất Nhẫn sat down at the foot of a tree, closed his eyes, and stilled his mind. He sat so long that the plants and grasses around him quietly went on living their own lives. Leaves fell on his shoulders, and he did not move. Insects crawled across his hands, and he did not move. He sat on, day after day, more patient than he had ever believed he could be.

Then something strange happened. A pair of small birds came flying up and saw him sitting there, still and gentle as a statue. So they carried in blades of grass and wisps of straw and built a nest right beside his ear. They laid their eggs and hatched their young, and still Bất Nhẫn sat without stirring. He had held back for so long. Only a few more days, and his heart would truly be at rest.

But one afternoon, the mother bird flew off to find food and came down inside a lotus flower on a pond. As the sun went down, the petals closed and held her there all night. Only the next morning, when the flower opened, could she fly back to the nest. All that night, the hungry chicks cheeped without stopping. So the two grown birds began to quarrel. The father scolded, and the mother tried her best to explain. Their squabbling went on right beside his ear, loud and ceaseless. Bất Nhẫn tried to hold back, then tried harder. But his old hot temper rose up again. At last he could bear it no longer, woke from his stillness with a start, and swept the nest down with his hand.

With that one sweep of the hand, all those days and months of sitting still came to nothing. Bất Nhẫn was stunned. He had come so close, yet because he could not bear a little noise, he had to begin all over again.

Bất Nhẫn did not lose heart. He told himself he must train his patience another way, by helping others. He asked to go down to the river landing, and every day he rowed a ferry, carrying passengers back and forth. Ferrying people was a good deed, he thought, and it would make him give way to his passengers, so it had to be the best way to train his heart. He resolved to carry 100 passengers before he rested, and to take no fare from anyone. And he truly did row with care. In two years he carried 98 people across, and nothing went wrong.

One day in mid autumn, the river suddenly rose and ran fast, and heavy rain poured down. Just then, a woman came to the landing with a small child and asked to cross. She looked like the wife of a local official. Before she even stepped aboard, she told him to row steadily and cover the boat well, and warned him what would happen if she and her child got wet. Bất Nhẫn was a little annoyed, but he held back and, with a smile, carried mother and child safely across. As they were about to step ashore, she cried out that she had left a bundle at the inn on the other bank, and made him row back to fetch it. Again he held back, rowing through wind and waves, and only near nightfall did he bring the bundle back. Yet when she opened it, she cried out that she had also forgotten the child's shoes, and told him he must go across once more.

At this, Bất Nhẫn's hot temper flared up once more. He could hold back no longer. He snapped that he had not been born to wait on her and her child forever.

The moment he finished speaking, something wondrous happened. The difficult woman suddenly took on a kind and radiant form. It was Quan Âm, the bodhisattva of compassion. She had taken on that shape to test his heart one last time. She looked at him without anger and only told him, a little sadly, that his heart had not yet truly learned to hold back. He had not yet finished learning nhẫn, the lesson of patience. Such practice, she said, was no practice at all. All it came to was tu hú. In Vietnamese, tu means to practise as a monk, and tu hú is the sound of the koel's call. Bất Nhẫn bowed his head in shame and owned his fault.

No one saw how Bất Nhẫn changed. People only knew that he was never seen at the river landing again. Instead, a strange bird began to call among the garden trees. Tu hú. Tu hú. People say that bird was Bất Nhẫn himself. His hot temper had not had time to settle, and his lesson of patience was still unfinished. Both went with him and became a bird call that goes on and on, as if still restless over something not yet done.

Every summer, when the lychees ripen red and the sun blazes down, the koel calls again. Tu hú. Tu hú. High and clear, it breaks off and rings out again, from morning to noon and from noon into the afternoon, both yearning and restless.

The koel is a real bird, heard across the gardens when the lychees and longans ripen in summer. This bird also has an odd habit. It does not build its own nest or hatch its own chicks, but lays its eggs in the nests of other birds. Vietnamese people call this the koel laying its eggs in borrowed nests.

The old tellers did not tell this story to find fault with anyone. Bất Nhẫn was not a bad man. He simply had not yet finished learning the hardest thing in the world, how to keep his heart calm.

And on summer noons, the koel's call in the gardens still sounds high and restless, like a lesson of patience still unfinished.