Yesterday's Fable
The interesting thing about fables and parables is that you can extract from them a variety of truths. Yesterday's Tiger Fable stems from ancient India and, while all interpretations are equally valid, was most likely originally intended to mean something along these lines:
There is a familiar proverb that says, "We are not human beings having spiritual experiences. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." Who are we inbetween breaths? Who are we between thoughts? Who are we in deep sleep? After we die? Before we are born?
From literally all world traditions we learn that we are both this body and not this body. The Greeks would say that our bodies are a container (of sorts) for our souls. Most other traditions - Christianity included - would say that the body is in the soul (that's right... read your Bibles... there's nothing about the soul 'leaving' the body... it talks about resurrection of the BODY in every instance). Much of Hinduism would say that this world is maya, or illusion, and that our bodies are a barrier (of sorts) to the soul (Atman).
REGARDLESS OF WHICH WAY YOU LEAN - from studying tradition and from gaining experience and Wisdom, we can come to understand that who we really are is WAY more than this body, this life. We spend so much damn time working on our "goat-nature" that we ignore the endless possibilities and power of our true Tiger self. And when we are first fed this truth, we choke on it, and spit it back out. But over time, and through various methods, we come to accept and find complete bliss in this new way of seeing ourselves and the world.
2 comments:
good good...
your blog is like my daily "let's think about something real" moment. kind of like a devotion, if you will. keep it up!
~allison
yeah, what they said. after dicing it up a bit and hearing more than one person's point of view (always a good idea), it reminded me of the "layering effect" that is a cool thing to me about the bible. so many different ways to interpret what one sentence says, but one solid, unwavering truth inside it all the time. "let the reader understand." groovy.
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