Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), Last week I drew your attention to one of many, ‘Teaching Stories’. This week I bring to your attention yet another story which is extracted from an interesting and thought provoking work, ‘World Tales’ by Idries Shah.
‘World Tales,’ is divided into five volumes and contains stories from great works like Panchatantra, Thousand and One Nights, Straparola, Boccaccio, Chaucer and Shakespeare and a dozen others which now form the basis of the classic literature of Europe and Asia.
Don’t Count Your Chickens
Once upon a time there lived a woman called Truhana. Not being very rich, she had to go yearly to the market to sell honey, the precious product of her hive.
Along the road she went, carrying the jar of honey upon her head, calculating as she walked the money she would get for the honey. ‘First,’ she thought, ‘I will sell it, and buy eggs. The eggs I shall set under my fat brown hens, and in time there will be plenty of little chicks. These in turn will become chickens, and from the sale of these, lambs could be bought.’
Truhana then began to imagine how she could become richer than her neighbours, and look forward to marrying well her sons and daughters.
Trudging along, in the hot sun, she could see her fine sons and daughter in-law, and how the people would say that it was remarkable how rich she had become, who was once so poverty-stricken.
Under the influence of these pleasurable thoughts, she began to laugh heartily, and preen herself, when, suddenly, striking the jar with her hand, it fell from her head and smashed upon the ground.
Seeing this, she was as cast down as she had been excited, on seeing all her dreams lost for illusion.
World Tales – Idries Shah
Many traditional tales have a surface meaning (perhaps just a socially uplifting one) and a secondary, inner significance, which is rarely glimpsed consciously, but which nevertheless acts powerfully upon our minds.
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As I conclude today’s episode;
I want to draw your attention to these wise words of a Storyteller which I have extracted from a monumental work ‘Kalila wa Dimna’, 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
And also let us remember: 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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