Page 328 - The Secret Museum

doesn’t react well to light, so it is best if it’s kept inside its wooden box in a special

vault – where gas rather than water is sprayed in the event of a fire – kept company
by the other most precious books in the British Library.

It is strange to think this exquisite Diamond Sutra, the oldest dated printed book in
the world, only survived for 1,145 years because, back in the late 800s, it was
considered too worn-out for everyday use. Its adventure is somewhat similar to that
of the cuneiform tablets from King Ashurbanipal’s library, now in the British
Museum stores – they only survive today because they were set on fire by the
Babylonians millenia ago.

The tales of the ancient library and the Diamond Sutra remind me of a story my

meditation teacher tells called ‘Good Luck, Bad Luck, Who Knows?’
When a farmer’s horse runs away, all his fellow villagers exclaim ‘What bad

luck!’ Much to the villagers’ confusion, the farmer replies, ‘Good luck, bad luck,
who knows?’ A week later, his horse returns with a whole herd of horses it has
recruited while wandering in the hills. The villagers exclaim in wonder, ‘Oh,
Farmer! What good luck!’ The farmer just shrugs and simply says, ‘Good luck, bad
luck – who knows?’The story continues like this, with a series of things happening to
the farmer and his son. The moral of the tale is that what might seem awful could be

good fortune in disguise and we should take things as they come, without judgement.