Wisdom Stories
I yesterday finished typing my notes from the seminar with Sri K. P. Kumar. The seminar was quite intense, but he gave a lot of illustrations and stories to make abstract thoughts more comprehensible. Here are a few examples and stories, which can be understood without the bigger context:
A businessman was in a shop selling and buying. A madman passed by and asked him: What are you doing? He said: I’m doing business. – What for? – To make profit. – What is profit? – Making 2 out of one. The madman replied: That’s not profit, that is loss. If you make 2, 3, 5, 10 out of one, it is loss. If you make One out of 10, then that is profit. The businessman was confused. He know hot to multiply. We know how to multiply thoughts, money… Multiplication is anti-yoga. Bringing to One from many is yoga. The businessman said: How? Madman: Yoga is to be One, to join, enjoy.
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The butterfly is totally different from the caterpillar. The flower is totally different from the tree, but it has come from the tree. The Master is totally different from the man, but he has come from the man. Yoga is nothing but cultivation of the field.
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This is a story related to balancing. There was a Zen master always laughing. We believe that when someone gives us a laughing Buddha we get luck, that is our own perception. The more we seek luck, the more we are in the contrary. That is our own expertise. This Zen master is always laughing like laughing Buddha. He was considered very highly accomplished. In the high land of Tibet they are scarcely habited. One day a disciple requested to be in his house. The master was in the basement, he was in the first floor. In the midnight hours the devotee found him moving on the roof of the house. He knew the master is in the basement, but he found him over there. He asked: What are you doing there, master? Dancing. How did you go there? – I fell up there. We fall down, he fell up. Wherever you keep me, I fall up.
I tell these stories, because we are all inclined to move up. Moving up is possible only when we balance the lateral, then the centripetal and centrifugal, the internalization and externalization.
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Blind following is not recommended, especially in the Aquarian Age.
On the Indian roads, in the busses, when you travel with speed it is 80 km. When you travel in such busses, there will be a lot of backbone adjustments. Traveling takes long hours, much more so in such busses. A group was traveling at night in such a bus for long hours. The bus stopped because of a problem. The driver said, it takes one hour to repair, stay in the bus and relax. You cannot relax there, so the passengers came out. One looked into the sky, then the next one did the same, then the others. The last one came out and asked: What are you looking into the sky? – I don’t know. No one knew why he was looking. The last one asked all, the first one said: I am not looking at anything; I had a back pain and was stretching, thanks to the bus and the roads.
Like that the humans visualize consciousness. We have that habit. All sheep go without knowing. Like that many people keep on doing it, not knowing what it is. Better know and do it.
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There was a man who said that rabbits have three legs. Even if you say to him, it has four legs, he would not agree. And he would demonstrate it, holing a rabbit by one leg and showing the other three legs. What do you tell him? Likewise people are fixed with their own viewpoints, they cannot see the others’ viewpoints. Be open to see some more viewpoints. Be open, but be not fixed.
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There is a nice story in Zen Buddhism:
A man was living all alone. He never had a companion to see. Once he had to travel from one place to the other. On the way when it was dark he had to take a place in a transit house. There was a group living. All sleep in a hall. They went to sleep, but he could not. He was feeling the discomfort.
In some of the side-beds his neighbor saw the person: What is the problem? – I cannot sleep. – Every day or today? – Today. – What is it today? – I am not accustomed to sleep with so many. Tomorrow when I get up, I don’t know who I am when I get up, for there are many. It is like a wave going into the ocean. How do you know it is the same wave in the ocean? When we sleep together, we all become one. When I wake up in the morning, I don’t know who I am. If there are 100 waves merging into the ocean, the waves come out again. How do you identify the waves? You cannot.
That is his problem. The next time he gets up, he has a problem, who I am. The neighbor said: Don’t worry, I shall bind a red ribbon to your body. When tomorrow you get up, by the red ribbon you know. He remembered the colour of the ribbon and comfortably slept. When he was in deep sleep, the other untied the ribbon and tied it around another person. In the morning when he woke up, the ribbon is with the other. There is a great confusion: “I know he is me, but I don’t know who I am – because our identity is by the ribbon of name, form, nationality.
We think we are these ribbons, because we don’t know who we are. There are many stories like this in India.
When we identify ourselves by our peripherals, we are lost. If we daily practice, it will be helpful to identify the wrong identities. The real identity is, I am That and That I am. Other identities are bound to mislead you.
Wisdom stories are colourful illustration for a better digestion of ideas. Photo: India 06
