Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), This week again let me bring to your attention an interesting excerpt from this thought provoking work, ‘Knowing How to Know’, by Idries Shah. In this work the author draws our attention to concealed patterns, normally invisible to our customary modes of thought.
Excerpt:
The Wise Man
‘Wise’ is one of those words which people have not been wise enough to define clearly. One constantly meets people who are called wise, but who seem only to have impressed others. ‘Wise’ is evidently not an absolute; someone can be wise about some things and not about others.
So, how wise is wise? How relevant is someone’s wisdom to your own life? How clever, for that matter is clever?
I think that it is worth looking at the story of the clever bird. There is a very old tale. What it tells you will depend a great deal upon where you are at the time you hear it:
Each year a peaceable bird laid a clutch of eggs. Just as regularly, a fox in whose territory she made her home appeared and made her throw down two of her chicks, which he then ate.
‘This is my right,’ he would say, and if you refuse me I shall climb up and eat all your little ones.’
One day, when the miserable hen was sitting with her fledglings, waiting sadly for the fox to come, a wiser bird flew down and perched near her. She told him her troubles.
‘The solution is easy;’ said the wiser bird. ‘Foxes don’t climb trees. Call his bluff!’
Although frightened, the mother bird did as he advised. The Fox was furious.
‘Who told you I can’t climb trees?’ he asked.
‘The clever bird. He’s very wise.’
The Fox went off and prowled around until he found the clever bird perched on a branch, and engaged him in conversation.
‘Tell me,’ he said, after exchanging some general observations, ‘What do you do in winter? Foxes have burrows to shelter in, but birds don’t seem to have proper shelters.’
‘That’s easy enough,’ the bird told him, we go down into the hedges and put our heads under our wings.’
The Fox shook his head, as if perplexed. ‘How exactly is that done? It must be a very clever thing to do…’
‘I’ll show you, if you like,’ said the bird.
He flew down into the hedge which, as it was Summer, was very thin, and sat there with his head under his wing.
The Fox leapt on him and gobbled him up.
Everyone can be clever when it is a matter of other people’s problems – so says one interpretation of this story – but it is not easy to apply wisdom to oneself.
You can buy your copy from any of the bookstores near you or via any on-line portal selling books or also by clicking the following link:
https://www.amazon.in/Knowing-How-Know-Idries-Shah/dp/1784791806
Concluding today’s session.
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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