An Old Story

There was once a boy who was extremely poor. His father had to work nearly every waking hour while his mother, he and his siblings had to beg on the streets to make enough money to survive. From a young age the greatest pain in his world was poverty and so he vowed to be a rich man one day...

20 years came and went and the boy, now a man, had achieved all his childhood dreams and more. He had worked from the ground up and ended up opening a chain of very successful restaurants. Unlike his father he had made enough money to feed his wife and children, and this brought him peace of mind. But before long his mind began to wander. Once he realized that he had more money than he needed, he found his calm again by helping others. He opened schools for the children, shelters for the homeless, and even a hospital for the sick. But after all of this was done his emptiness, like a hunger, returned to him. It was something that he could neither understand himself nor explain to his wife. And so one day, while looking outside, a strong desire to leave overcame him...

The man trekked for days on end and before long he had left his city, the cities nearby, and even the villages on the outskirts of those cities. Soon he ended up lost in a thick jungle and began regretting ever leaving his comfortable home.

His shoes were torn,
clothes tattered,
mouth parched,
stomach empty,
body tired,
mind weary,
and spirit broken...

All of a sudden in the middle of the thicket, appeared a shedevil grasping a bloody sword, she let out a shriek and looked him dead in the eyes with a menacing gaze.

"You will never escape my clutches!" is what she said to him

Before the man could respond a trumpeting from behind him erupted like a cannon. He turned to face a divine elephant. Painted for war and wielding tusks as long as fully grown men the elephant stomped its feet impatiently, let out another trumpet and charged the man with thunderous strides.

Absolutely desperate, the man turned and ran as fast as he could towards a mighty banyan tree. But when he got to its base he let out a cry! It was so wide around that even a python could not wrap around it, and it was so tall that even the birds could not fly over it. Unable to climb and desperate to live, if only for a few moments longer, the man jumped into a dry well that was nearby.

Luckily the man was able to break his fall by grasping a handful of reeds that were growing at the mouth of the well. But as he looked down his heart sank, for at the bottom of the pit lay hundreds of venomous snakes, and curled around all of them, with gleaming eyes like two rubies was an enormous python.

"I will surely only live so long as these reeds hold" Said the man, but even as he said that he heard the chattering of mice. To his absolute horror he saw a white and black mouse steadily gnawing away at the base of the reeds!

At this same moment the elephant, out of sheer frustration, rammed the base of the banyan tree with such force that a honey comb from the very top fell all the way into the well. And from the comb emerged hundreds of angry bees stinging and swarming the man relentlessly.

As the comb fell, a single drop of honey landed on the mans forehead, trickled down his brow, rolled down his cheek, and barely made it to his lips. In that tiny moment of sweet bliss, the man suddenly forgot all about his horrible predicament, thinking only of the delicious honey and how to get more.



The man represents all of humankind.
The devil represents time.
The elephant represents a sudden and unpredictable death.
The banyan tree represents a salvation that many will never achieve but that is supreme in its protection for those who do.
The well represents what we settle for just to continue living.
The reeds represent each persons alloted time to live.
The black and white mice represent the days and nights that "gnaw" our lives away.
The snakes represent the passions that consume us should we fall for them.
The bees and their stings represent all the ailments the human body is susceptible to.
Finally the drop of honey represents bodily pleasure.

This story is an ancient Jain allegory. The point of the story is to show us how bodily pleasure can distract an individual into a state of ignorance. The original author claims that only the sage of the trained mind can climb the banyan tree. There is great wisdom in this fable and although I didn't do it justice I hope you all took something away.

Peace to All

 

That is the point GGRass. It shows you just how irrational we are in our desire of material possessions. Of course no rational person would forget their problems in such a circumstance for a single drop of honey, but remember this is a metaphor for life. The Jains claim that most of us do the equivalent of what the man does in our own lives with our own troubles. We ignore them by shifting our attention onto physical pleasure.

This allegory goes far deeper than you would originally suspect and deals with life in an abstract way although its applications to the real world are crystal clear, so dont be overly critical. It is after all only a story, and an ancient one at that.

 

Take an extreme example. Put yourself in the shoes of a hardcore heroine addict, your life may be falling apart from the seems but instead of confronting this you choose to ignore it and indulge yourself with your drug. Is that not hugely irrational?

Heres a more common one. Fundamentally, why do we love watching movies? Is it not a brief escape from reality? For that matter what is the obsession we seem to all have with that escape? That is our "drop of honey" so-to-speak.

Remember it is a metaphor...it seems exaggerated but if you really think about it, you realize it is not farfetched.