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Today’s Zen Reading:
A man walking across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger chasing after him. Coming to a cliff, he caught hold of a wild vine and swung himself over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Terrified, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger had come, waiting to eat him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little began 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!
Zen Parable
My Thoughts Elevating to Another Plane:
That’s it? That’s all? Our story seems a little short on denouement, here…
Have you ever noticed that parables sound a lot like jokes? “This guy walks into a bar with a tiger and a couple of mice…”
And why are there so many tigers in these parables? You can’t swing a dead cat (pardon the expression) in a zen parable without hitting a tiger or three. Here’s some zen for you—move to a town that doesn't have tigers!
More importantly, this parable serves to show us that, no matter how bizarre and tortured the sequence of events must be (Tigers? Vines? Mice?), sometimes when you’re the strawberry, fate/God/karma simply screws you over.
A man walking across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger chasing after him. Coming to a cliff, he caught hold of a wild vine and swung himself over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Terrified, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger had come, waiting to eat him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little began 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!
Zen Parable
My Thoughts Elevating to Another Plane:
That’s it? That’s all? Our story seems a little short on denouement, here…
Have you ever noticed that parables sound a lot like jokes? “This guy walks into a bar with a tiger and a couple of mice…”
And why are there so many tigers in these parables? You can’t swing a dead cat (pardon the expression) in a zen parable without hitting a tiger or three. Here’s some zen for you—move to a town that doesn't have tigers!
More importantly, this parable serves to show us that, no matter how bizarre and tortured the sequence of events must be (Tigers? Vines? Mice?), sometimes when you’re the strawberry, fate/God/karma simply screws you over.
posted by Nick | 9:24 PM
1 Comments:
what the hells wrong with you?
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