Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), 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.
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.
God is Stronger
Ibotity had climbed a tree when the wind blew, the tree split, Ibotity fell, and his leg was broken. ‘The tree is strong, for it broke my leg,’ he said.
‘It is the wind which is stronger than the tree,’ said the tree.
But the wind said that the hill was stronger, since it could stop the wind. Ibotity, of course, thought that strength was of the hill, to be able to stop the wind, which split the tree, which broke his leg.
‘No,’ said the hill, explaining the mouse was strong for it could burrow into the hill. But the mouse denied this: ‘For I can be killed by the cat’ – and so Ibotity thought that the cat must be strongest of all.
Not so; the cat explained that it could be caught by a rope, and Ibotity thought that this, then, must be the strongest thing.
The rope, however, explained that it could be cut by iron, which was therefore stronger. The iron, in its turn, denied being the strongest, since it could be made soft by fire.
Ibotity now thought that the fire must be strongest, to soften the iron: which cut the rope, which bound the cat, which caught the mouse, which undermined the hill, which stopped the wind, which split the tree – which broke the leg of Ibotity.
The fire then said the water was stronger; and the water claimed that the canoe was yet stronger, for it cleft the water. But the canoe was overcome by the rock, and the rock by man, and the man by the magician, and the magician by the ordeal by poison, and the ordeal by God, so God is the strongest of all:
Then Ibotity knew that God could beat the ordeal, which stopped the magician, who overwhelms man, who breaks the rock, which overcomes the canoe, which cleaves the water, which puts out fire, which softens iron, which severs the rope, which binds the cat, which kills the mouse, which undermines the hill, which stops the wind, which splits the tree, which breaks the leg of Ibotity.’
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
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