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 Greedy Jackal’
In a certain country there lived a man of the Pulinda tribe who set out one day in search of more sins to add to his stock. As he walked along he encountered a wild boar who seemed the very image of the peak of the Great Sooty Mountain. Seeing the boar the hunter drew his bowstring right back to his ear as he recited this verse:
‘He sees my bow and the fitted arrow,
Yet no signs of alarm does he show.
As I watch his resolve I am sure,
It is Death that has directed him here.’
The hunter then shot a sharp arrow into the animal who in turn charged in fury and tore open his entrails with the sharp point of his tusk that shone like the crescent-moon. The man drooped dead. Having killed the hunter, the wild boar convulsed with pain from the fatal arrow-wound and died.
At this juncture, a starving jackal whose death was imminent arrived at that place in the course of his wanderings here and there in search of food. When he saw a hunter and a boar both lying dead his joy knew no bounds as he reflected deeply: ‘Ah! Fortune is in my favour for she has provided this unexpected feast for me; ‘Now, I shall consume this food in such a way that it lasts for many days to sustain my life. So let me start with this nice clump of muscle caught at the bow’s curved end and eat it slowly holding it between my paws:
Bit by bit, the wise enjoy,
The wealth they earn, slowly, very slowly,
As some precious elixir is savoured
Drop by drop, not gulped unceremoniously.’
Having resolved how to do this, the jackal seized the meat hanging from the bow’s tip and started gnawing it. When the ligament he was chewing on snapped, the tip of the arrow pierced the roof of his mouth and came out through the centre of his skull forming a crest on the top of his head. Writhing in violent pain he fell dead.
The Panćatantra (Winning of Friends) – The Greedy Jackal – Vişņu Śarma
Translated from the Sanskrit by Chandra Rajan
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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