Translated from the Sanskrit by Chandra Rajan
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 Foolish Heron’
In a certain woodland region there grew a banyan tree that was home to a flock of herons. In a hollow of its trunk lived a black serpent who made a regular practice of eating up the heron chicks before they sprouted wings. After a while, one of the herons, desolate at seeing his offspring destroyed by the serpent, repaired to the lakeshore and stood there downcast, weeping a flood of tears. Seeing him in such a state, a crab came up and asked the heron, ‘Uncle, what makes you weep so bitterly today?’ and the heron answered, ‘Oh, my friend, what am I to do? I am such an ill-fated person; for my children and the children of my kinsfolk are being regularly eaten up by a serpent that lives in the hollow of yonder banyan tree. Therefore, with sorrow piled on sorrow, what can I do but weep. Now tell me, is there some way of destroying this serpent?’
Listening to heron’s words, the crab reflected, ‘Ah! This fellow is the natural enemy of my race. Therefore let me give him a piece of advice that sounds good but is in fact harmful, so that rest of the herons will also perish.
The crab now addressed the heron, ‘Listen, Uncle, if this is the problem, then what you should do is to strew bits of fish all the way from the mongoose burrow out there right up to the hollow where the serpent lives, so that the mongoose following the trail will find the vicious serpent, and kill him.’ The heron did as instructed and the mongoose following the trail of fish pieces killed the serpent; and he also ate one by one, at his leisure, all the herons that had made the banyan tree their home.
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