"Meditation"

Once upon a time, a travelling monk was passing through a village and he heard that there was a very accomplished ascetic living on an island. So the monk asked a ferryman to take him to the island.

Upon arrival, he heard a voice repeating the words:

"Oh money buy me ham".

He followed the sound which led him to an ascetic meditating and chanting those words like a mantra. When the ascetic stopped chanting, he opened his eyes and was very delighted to see the monk.

They struck up a conversation and the monk asked the ascetic, "what is the meaning of that chant?" When the ascetic finished explaining the mantra, the monk immediately recognised the words and told the ascetic he was meditating incorrectly and that the right pronunciation was: "Om Mani Padme Hung".

The ascetic was visibly upset that he had wasted 30 years meditating on a meaningless mantra.

The monk then went back to the waiting ferryman, to row back to the mainland. When he was in the middle of the sea, he got a tap on the shoulder and it was the ascetic asking the monk, "It's 'Om Mani Padme Hung', right?"

When the monk answered in the affirmative, the ascetic turned and walked back to the island.

He was indeed an accomplished meditator.

This story illustrates that there is no such thing as a bad meditation.