MONDAY MUSE (27 April 2009)
CARRYING?
One of my favourite Zen Stories tells the tale of two monks travelling
together. As usual, they walked in deep silence. They came across a shallow
spring on the way. A lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash was standing there,
obviously worried about spoiling her clothes while crossing the stream. One of
the monks lifted her in his arms and carried her over the stream.
His companion was shocked with his colleague’s act of sacrilege. Yet, he
maintained his silence until the night when they halted to rest. Now he could
no longer restrain himself. “We monks have sworn not to touch women,” he burst
out, “Yet how could you carry her?” The first monk replied peacefully, “I left
that girl on the other side of the stream. It is you who still carries her in
your mind!”
So often we hold on to thoughts that are irrelevant in the larger scope of the
situation. So often we carry emotions which are nothing but a burden that
weighs heavy on us. So often we hold on so tight to past experiences that we
fail to understand that those very experiences hold us in a tighter vice that
chokes progressive thinking. It seizes our mind and clouds our perspective.
It is said so well by someone, “forget learning, learn forgetting”. We need to
let go the unnecessary if we want to move on in life. For every harvested crop
of experience, we need to be better at sifting the grain of understanding from
the chaff of misapprehension and misinterpretation. Let’s learn to let go of
the superfluous and hold on to the more significant aspects of life.
To BE BETTER at moving ahead in life…
let’s let go of irrelevant mental strife!
- Pravin K. Sabnis
27 April 2009, Goa, India.
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