The semester stumbles toward a conclusion and I with it. So creativity for today was severely inhibited. But what is a person who has the onus of a weekly column to do?
My particular solution was to use whatever talent I have at arrangement to assemble some parables from various sources.
If there is a spiritual component to this, so be it.
An effort to reform society which is not coupled with an equal effort to develop one’s spiritual self cannot bring about lasting results. It is like trying to cool a pot of boiling soup by merely stirring it, while ignoring the blazing fuel underneath.
—Parable 14, Thus Have I Heard: Buddhist parables and stories
The Parable of the Angry Horse
One day, an angry and unruly horse was left tied in a narrow but very busy alleyway. A crowd soon gathered, debating the best way to get around the restive beast. Many advocated attempting to simply run past it, but the alley proved too narrow, and they only received kicks for their troubles.
Several people tried to vault over the horse, but it simply reared up and trampled them mercilessly. One brave man even sought to crawl between its legs, but was nearly killed in the attempt.
After many hours, a young girl spotted Master K’ung approaching the alley from a nearby street. She yelled, “Master K’ung approaches! Surely he can help us get around the horse!”
Master K’ung gazed from the crowd to the horse, pausing briefly to consider. He then smiled slightly, and walked down to the next alley to continue on his way.
The Master picked up a brick and began grinding it with a stone. The student asked what he was doing, and the Master replied, “I am trying to polish this brick into a mirror.”
“But no amount of polishing will ever make a mirror out of a brick.”
“And no amount of sitting cross-legged will ever make a Buddha out of you.”
—Parable 8
The Witch, the Town, and the Wolves
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
–Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters
- Synapsis (Alan Williams):
Omelas is described in the Festival of Summer as the happiest place imaginable with child-like denizens, subject to no law, whose “victory they celebrate is that of life.” So preposterous is their pure happiness – “based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary or destructive, and what is destructive” – that Le Guin engages the reader directly: “I fear that Omelas so far strikes some of you as good-goody. Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy.”
Such bliss, as it turns out, is dependent upon the torture of a child, addressed mainly as “it,” kept in a cellar:
Three paragraphs from the story:
They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.
…
At times one of the adolescent girls or boys who go see the child does not go home to weep or rage, does not, in fact, go home at all. Sometimes also a man or a woman much older falls silent for a day or two, then leaves home. These people go out into the street, and walk down the street alone. They keep walking, and walk straight out of the city of Omelas, through the beautiful gates. They keep walking across the farmlands of Omelas. Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or woman.
Night falls; the traveler must pass down village streets, between the houses with yellow-lit windows, and on out into the darkness of the fields. Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk way from Omelas.
The Parable of the Taoist Farmer
An old Chinese farmer lost his best stallion one day and his neighbor came around to express his regrets, but the farmer just said, “Who knows what is good and what is bad?”
The next day the stallion returned bringing with him 3 wild mares. The neighbor rushed back to celebrate with the farmer, but the old farmer simply said, “Who knows what is good and what is bad?”
The following day, the farmer’s son fell from one of the wild mares while trying to break her in and broke his arm and injured his leg. The neighbor came by to check on the son and give his condolences, but the old farmer just said, “Who knows what is good and what is bad?”
The next day the army came to the farm to conscript the farmer’s son for the war, but found him invalid and left him with his father. The neighbor thought to himself, “Who knows what is good and what is bad?”
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Author
…The Brave Little Parrot — A Jataka Tale, which copyright concerns deter me from printing in its entirety.
but in reading about economic news today, it seems each alley we try has an even angrier horse in it.
And all the alleys have horseshit. Lots and lots of it.
Author
Sometimes impermanence causes us suffering because we cling to pleasurable things and they are fading and disappearing. We cling to loved ones, family who have died, we cling to pleasurable experiences that have come to an end.
But sometimes, sometimes impermanence seems an ally or a blessing. The worst things, the most horrible experiences like the most pleasurable ones also eventually fade and disappear.
The current economy included.
Author
…in Orange.