Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), today I will share yet another tale from this monumental book The Panćatantra, tradition ascribes this fabulous work to Vişņu Śarma (“Preserver of Bliss”), faced with the challenge of educating three unlettered princes, to awaken their intelligence, Vişņu Śarma (“Preserver of Bliss”) evolved a unique pedagogy – for his aim was to teach the princes how to think, not what to think.
Also as we begin today ‘let us remember this about ‘Attention’. Our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. Attention: is important and most of the times we are so indifferent to it. It is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. We feed the hunger blindly. Once the mechanism is brought to our attention and we begin to study it, it is as if a veil has been stripped off ordinary life, and we become freer in our action and choices.
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Before we embark on this wonder filled, journey I want to draw your attention to these wise words of a Storyteller which I have extracted from yet another monumental work which has been inspired from “The Panćatantra”:
My stories require, at this stage, no extra commentary, imaginings, or guesswork by you, me, or anyone else. The very worst would be that of moralizing. To explain away is to forget. Thus, let the stories which you can remember do their own work by their very diversity. Familiarize yourself with them.
Excerpt from Doctor’s orders:
Kalila Wa Dimna; Vol.1 – Ramsay Wood
The tale of ‘The Twin Parrots’
In a certain part of a mountainous region, a hen-parrot gave birth to two chicks. Once, while she had left the nest to go foraging, a fowler trapped her two sons. However, one of them, watched over by a kind fate, got away, while the other was kept in the cage by the fowler who trained him to speak. The chick who got away was found by a wandering hermit who picked him up, took him to the hermitage and tended him with care.
As time went by in this manner, one day, a king whose horse had bolted with him thus separating him from his army, came galloping into that wooded region where the band of fowlers lived. No sooner had the fowler’s parrot in the cage seen the king approaching on horseback than he started twittering melodiously, ‘Come, come, O my masters; here comes some fellow riding a horse; quick, seize him, bind him; kill him, kill him.’
As soon as the king heard this parrot-talk, he spurred his horse on and sped away. He rode on and on until he approached another forest, distant, where he saw a hermitage in which a company of hermits resided. There too, a parrot in a cage seeing the king, addressed him affably, twittering: ‘Come, O, King; come and rest yourself here. Taste our cool waters and our sweet fruit.’ Then he turned and called out, ‘Hey there! O, holy hermits! Honour this guest who has come to our hermitage; welcome him with guest offering, here under the cool shade of this tree.
Listening to the words of welcome spoken by this parrot, the king was lost in amazement. His eyes widening with wonder, he reflected, ‘How strange all this is!’ Then he questioned the parrot ‘Sir, I am amazed for, a while ago, a great distance from this place, I saw another parrot in another forest who looked exactly like you: except that he displayed a cruel nature. He kept repeating, “Seize him, bind him, kill him, kill him.”
When the virtuous parrot heard what the king said, he narrated all the events of his life in detail.
The Panćatantra (Estrangement of Friends) – The Twin Parrots – Vişņu ŚarmaTranslated from the Sanskrit by Chandra Rajan
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