Yogi Stories and Others
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- Get more aware - do it yourself
- See the ugly foot (Norse)
- Deep sigh, deep sight
- Grimaldi
- A Little Pessimistic?
- Twenty Monks and One Nun
- Squealing - An Ancient Fable
Get more aware - do it yourself
AN OLD KING that lived under the Jotunheimen mountains in Hardanger, used to have the latter half of Snorre's Heimskringla read in front of him every day instead of having a daily shave. The jolly servant who read it for him, used to round off each session by asking, "King, have you understood this text as I do?"  |
| She, thinking, "He had better use the dear "sword"" |
The servant would then go to his private quarters and say to himself, "Why does the king talk to me that way? Doesn't he understand a word I say? I read and try to explain so plainly, and all he says is, 'One had better understand using the sword and fist first.'"
To ponder and puzzle greatly in this way became the fixed mental discipline of the servant as years went by. Then one morning he noticed that everything outside wasn't there, not even fame and the ordinary world, so he tried to stop living in the ordinary world. He left home and dropped an unreal note to the king, "Now I see clearly!"
But the king muttered, "If he continues to believe and behave like that, he will have to scratch for his daily bread like a fool."
- Outside is the ordinary world, no matter how unreal it is called by some.
See the ugly foot (From the Norse)
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| No remarkably ugly man - a Picasso |
One morning early the king awoke while the others were still sleeping. The sun had newly risen in the sky, and there was much light within. The king saw that Thorarin had stretched out one of his feet from under the bed-clothes, and he looked at the foot a while. In the meantime the others in the lodging awoke; and the king said to Thorarin, "I have been awake for a while, and have seen a sight which was worth seeing; and that is a man's foot so ugly that I do not think an uglier can be found in this merchant town." Thereupon he told the others to look at it, and see if it was not so; and all agreed with the king.
When Thorarin observed what they were talking about, he said, "There are few things for which you cannot find a match, and that may be the case here."
The king said, "I would rather say that such another ugly foot cannot be found in the town, and I would lay any wager on it."
Then said Thorarin, "I am willing to bet that I shall find an uglier foot still in the town."
The king: "Then he who wins shall have the right to get any demand from the other he chooses to make."
"Be it so," said Thorarin. Thereupon he stretched out his other foot from under the bed-clothes, and it was in no way handsomer than the other, and moreover, wanted the little toe. "There," said Thorarin, "see now, king, my other foot, which is so much uglier; and, besides, has no little toe. Now I have won."
The king replied, "That other foot was so much uglier than this one by having five ugly toes on it, and this has only four; and now I have won the choice of asking something from you."
"The sovereign's decision must be right," said Thorarin. [From Saga of Olav Haraldson (St. Olaf), Ch. 86.]
- Great confidence does not always depend on how we look like.
Deep sigh, deep sight
IN HIS eighty-seventh year Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935) was out walking
with another elderly friend when a pretty girl passed them. The judge turned to watch her
and sighed,"Oh, to be seventy again!"
Grimaldi
ONE DAY someone presented himself to the formerly well-known and even celebrated
British Dr. Abernathy and appeared to suffer from melancholy. Abernathy carefully examined
the man and then said,"You need amusement; go and hear the comedian Grimaldi; he will make you laugh, and that will be good for you - better than any drugs."
The patient, "But I am Grimaldi!"
- A person in this situation must keep his mind alert and not feel split.
A Little Pessimistic?
AT A PARIS RAILROAD station on the way to one of his numerous duels, the French
statesman Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) surprised his second by asking for a one-way
ticket."Isn't that a little pessimistic?" asked the second.
"Not at all," replied Clemenceau. "I always use my opponent's return ticket for the trip back."
Twenty Monks and One Nun
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| "If you really love me, embrace me!" |
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| Eshun was very pretty - Embrace me too, someone! |
"If you really love me so much, come and embrace me now." [From 101 Zen Stories. [Check] [Cf. Zf 20-21]
- A particular privilege may bode inconvenience, after all.
Squealing. A Fable of Aesop's
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| In many polite ways of Western, affluent societies there is not deep enough consideration. |
This report being spread about made a great stir, and the theatre was crowded in every part. The clown appeared alone upon the platform, without any apparatus or confederates. The very sense of expectation caused an intense silence. He suddenly bent his head towards his bosom and imitated the squeaking of a little pig so admirably with his voice that the audience declared he had a porker under his cloak, and demanded that it should be shaken out.
That was done and nothing was found. Then they cheered the actor, and loaded him with the loudest applause.
A countryman in the crowd, observing all that has passed, said,
"So help me, he shan't beat me at that trick!".
All of a sudden he proclaimed that he would do the same thing next day, but in a far more natural way. That day a still larger crowd assembled in the theatre, but now favourite partiality had set in. Yes, the audience even began to ridicule the countryman before he had shoed what he was good for. And at last both of the performers appeared on the stage.
The clown grunted and squeaked away first, and was heartily applauded and cheered by the spectators. Next the countryman set about. He purported that he concealed a little pig beneath his clothes. He also contrived to take hold of and pull the pig's ear so that the pig squeaked. But the crowd cried out with one consent that the clown had given a far more exact imitation.
"Let the countryman be kicked out of the theatre," they demanded.
Here the rustic took out a little pig from his cloak and showed by how terribly mistaken they had been.
"Look here," he said, "this shows what sort of judges you are." [From Aesop: "The buffoon and the countryman"]
- To do seemingly "lesser things" for recognition helps public recognition too.
Literature
Til: Evans-Wentz, Walter Yeeling, ed. The Tibetan Book of the Dead: After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane, according to Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup's English Rendering. London: Oxford University Press, 1927.
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