Buddha told a parable in a sutra:
A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away at the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other.
How sweet it tasted!
(Excerpt from Sayings and Tales of Zen Buddhism: Reflections for Every Day by William Wray)
OMG, I suuuuck at these deep thoughts. It took me a long time to ponder this one, and I still kind of don't get it. Is the strawberry sweet because he was facing death, so it was his last taste of life kind of?
ReplyDeleteThank you for exercising my brain. I spent more time pondering this than you would ever imagine. LOL. Looking forward to new ponderables to come.
Okay, so my interpretation is two-fold:
DeleteAt first, I took it as an example that, even in the face of imminent death, one can remain calm, at peace, focusing instead on the "sweetness" of the moment, of just being. It reminded me of that saying, "Peace is not the absence of chaos or conflict, but rather finding yourself in the midst of that chaos and remaining calm in your heart." (Or something like that.)
THEN, just yesterday, I was reading the Marriage Plot and one of the main characters referenced a strikingly similar story (right down to the white and black mice) that he was reading in some sort of religious (Christian) text. The interpretation they gave was this: the man in the story represents all of humankind, his circumstances represent life on Earth. The story demonstrates that life on Earth is full of suffering and inevitably ends in death. We humans are constantly trying to distract ourselves from these facts by compulsively grasping at any sweetness with our reach.
Such a strange coincidence that I posted this and then came across the same fable in our book club selection days later!
OR, there's always my dad's interpretation, that all living creatures are guided by their stomachs. :)
DeleteHa! I certainly am.
DeleteI must say, there's definitely truth in my dad's interpretation! :)
Delete