Tiger and strawberry parable
Daiyu
tiger/strawberry parable is? (Man hanging from cliff being chased by a
tiger spots strawberry--Oooooh so sweet) I've seen it attributed to
Buddha but somehow it doesn't seem like his style. Of course it's also
called a Zen koan and a parable. I know it was retold in Zen Flesh Zen
Bones but I'm looking for its origin. (yes, I know, looking a
strawberry in the mouth....) Thanks for any help.
punnadhammo
<jhod...@home.com> wrote:
This is a fascinating topic because it points up a difference in
attitude between the Theravada and the Mahayana. There is a Theravada
version, not so well known in the west, that comes from one of the
commentaries. In this version, the man falls over a cliff and is
hanging on to a branch. There is a tiger below, and mice are gnawing
at the branch. At that point another man appears and offers to save
him, and he also sees some delicious honey on his branch. The question
is then asked; wouldn't he be foolish to waste time tasting the honey?
Note that in this version there is a way out (Third Noble Truth) and
that the tasting of the sweet is criticized as foolishness. It only
becomes a sensible option if there is really no escape!
DharmaTroll
Tolstoy mentions it, and here is quoted by William James:
--DT
http://www.human-nature.com/reason/james/chap5.html
<<
[Tolstoy writes:]
If the natural world is so double-faced and unhomelike, what world, what thing
is real? An urgent wondering and questioning is set up, a poring theoretic
activity, and in the desperate effort to get into right relations with the
matter, the sufferer is often led to what becomes for him a satisfying religious
solution.
At about the age of fifty, Tolstoy relates that he began to have moments of
perplexity, of what he calls arrest, as if he knew not "how to live," or what to
do. It is obvious that these were moments in which the excitement and interest
which our functions naturally bring had ceased. Life had been enchanting, it was
now flat sober, more than <150> sober, dead. Things were meaningless whose
meaning had always been self-evident. The questions "Why?" and "What next?"
began to beset him more and more frequently. At first it seemed as if such
questions must be answerable, and as if he could easily find the answers if he
would take the time; but as they ever became more urgent, he perceived that it
was like those first discomforts of a sick man, to which he pays but little
attention till they run into one continuous suffering, and then he realizes that
what he took for a passing disorder means the most momentous thing in the world
for him, means his death.
These questions "Why?" "Wherefore?" "What for?" found no response.
"I felt," says Tolstoy, "that something had broken within me on which my life
had always rested, that I had nothing left to hold on to, and that morally my
life had stopped. An invincible force impelled me to get rid of my existence, in
one way or another. It cannot be said exactly that I WISHED to kill myself, for
the force which drew me away from life was fuller, more powerful, more general
than any mere desire. It was a force like my old aspiration to live, only it
impelled me in the opposite direction. It was an aspiration of my whole being to
get out of life.
"Behold me then, a man happy and in good health, hiding the rope in order not to
hang myself to the rafters of the room where every night I went to sleep alone;
behold me no longer going shooting, lest I should yield to the too easy
temptation of putting an end to myself with my gun.
"I did not know what I wanted. I was afraid of life; I was driven to leave it;
and in spite of that I still hoped something from it.
"All this took place at a time when so far as all my outer circumstances went, I
ought to have been completely happy. I had a good wife who loved me and whom I
loved; good children and a large property which was increasing with no pains
taken on my part. I was more respected by my kinsfolk and acquaintance than I
had ever been; I was loaded with praise by strangers; and without exaggeration I
could believe my name already famous. Moreover I was neither insane nor ill. On
the contrary, I possessed a physical and mental strength which I have rarely met
in persons of my age. I could mow as well as the peasants, I could work with my
brain eight hours uninterruptedly and feel no bad effects.
"And yet I could give no reasonable meaning to any actions of my life. And I was
surprised that I had not understood this from the very beginning. My state of
mind was as if some wicked and stupid jest was being played upon me by some one.
One can live only so long as one is intoxicated, drunk with life; but when one
grows sober one cannot fail to see that it is all a stupid cheat.
What is truest about it is that there is nothing even funny or silly in it; it
is cruel and stupid, purely and simply.
"The oriental fable of the traveler surprised in the desert by a wild beast is
very old.
"Seeking to save himself from the fierce animal, the traveler jumps into a well
with no water in it; but at the bottom of this well he sees a dragon waiting
with open mouth to devour him. And the unhappy man, not daring to go out lest he
should be the prey of the beast, not daring to jump to the bottom lest he should
be devoured by the dragon, clings to the branches of a wild bush which grows out
of one of the cracks of the well. His hands weaken, and he feels that he must
soon give way to certain fate; but still he clings, and see two mice, one white,
the other black, evenly moving round the bush to which he hangs, and gnawing off
its roots
"The traveler sees this and knows that he must inevitably perish; but while thus
hanging he looks about him and finds on the leaves of the bush some drops of
honey. These he reaches with his tongue and licks them off with rapture.
"Thus I hang upon the boughs of life, knowing that the inevitable dragon of
death is waiting ready to tear me, and I cannot comprehend why I am thus made a
martyr. I try to suck the honey which formerly consoled me; but the honey
pleases me no longer, and day and night the white mouse and the black mouse gnaw
the branch to which I cling. I can see but one thing: the inevitable dragon and
the mice—I cannot turn my gaze away from them.
"This is no fable, but the literal incontestable truth which every one may
understand. What will be the outcome of what I do to-day? Of what I shall do
to-morrow? What will be the outcome of all my life? Why should I live? Why
should I do anything? Is there in life any purpose which the inevitable death
which awaits me does not undo and destroy?
"These questions are the simplest in the world. From the stupid child to the
wisest old man, they are in the soul of every human being. Without an answer to
them, it is impossible, as I experienced, for life to go on.
"’But perhaps,’ I often said to myself, ‘there may be something I have failed to
notice or to comprehend. It is not possible that this condition of despair
should be natural to mankind.’ And I sought for an explanation in all the
branches of knowledge acquired by men. I questioned painfully and protractedly
and with no idle curiosity. I sought, not with indolence, but laboriously and
obstinately for days and nights together. I sought like a man who is lost and
seeks to save himself—and I found nothing. I became convinced, moreover, that
all those who before me had sought for an answer in the sciences have also found
nothing. And not only this, but that they have recognized that the very thing
which was leading me to despair—the meaningless absurdity of life—is the only
incontestable knowledge accessible to man."
To prove this point, Tolstoy quotes the Buddha, Solomon, and Schopenhauer. And
he finds only four ways in which men of his own class and society are accustomed
to meet the situation. Either mere animal blindness, sucking the honey without
seeing the dragon or the mice—"and from such a way," he says, "I can learn
nothing, after what I now know;" or reflective epicureanism, snatching what it
can while the day lasts—which is only a more deliberate sort of stupefaction
than the first; or manly suicide; or seeing the mice and dragon and yet weakly
and plaintively clinging to the bush of life. Suicide was naturally the
consistent course dictated by the logical intellect.
"Yet," says Tolstoy, "whilst my intellect was working, something else in me was
working too, and kept me from the deed—a consciousness of life, as I may call
it, which was like a force that obliged my mind to fix itself in another
direction and draw me out of my situation of despair. . . . During the whole
course of this year, when I almost unceasingly kept asking myself how to end the
business, whether by the rope or by the bullet, during all that time, alongside
of all those movements of my ideas and observations, my heart kept languishing
with another pining emotion. I can call this by no other name than that of a
thirst for God. This craving for God had nothing to do with the movement of my
ideas—in fact, it was the direct contrary of that movement—but it came from my
heart. It was like a feeling of dread that made me seem like an orphan and
isolated in the midst of all these things that were so foreign. And this feeling
of dread was mitigated by the hope of finding the assistance of some one."[80]
[80] My extracts are from the French translation by "Zonia." In abridging I
have taken the liberty of transposing one passage.
>>
DharmaTroll
>
>In article <cdfed94c.0109...@posting.google.com>, Daiyu
><jhod...@home.com> wrote:
>
>> Does anyone know actually and factually what the source of the
>> tiger/strawberry parable is? (Man hanging from cliff being chased by a
>> tiger spots strawberry--Oooooh so sweet) I've seen it attributed to
>> Buddha but somehow it doesn't seem like his style. Of course it's also
>> called a Zen koan and a parable. I know it was retold in Zen Flesh Zen
>> Bones but I'm looking for its origin. (yes, I know, looking a
>> strawberry in the mouth....) Thanks for any help.
Punnadhammo:
> This is a fascinating topic because it points up a difference in
> attitude between the Theravada and the Mahayana. There is a Theravada
> version, not so well known in the west, that comes from one of the
> commentaries. In this version, the man falls over a cliff and is
> hanging on to a branch. There is a tiger below, and mice are gnawing
> at the branch. At that point another man appears and offers to save
> him, and he also sees some delicious honey on his branch. The question
> is then asked; wouldn't he be foolish to waste time tasting the honey?
No, no, Bhante: that's the Christian version, and the guy is God.
Here is the original from the sutra:
<<
A man lost his footing and fell over the edge of a cliff. He saved himself from
certain death on the rocks far below by desperately grabbing hold of a branch
growing out of the side of the precipice.
As he dangled helplessly above the deep ravine, he called out for help.
"Help!! Is anybody out there?"
He was answered immediately by a booming voice which said, "I'll help you."
"Who are you?", asked the man.
"I am the Lord, God", was the reply.
"Oh, thank you. I have always believed in you. I have always had faith. I don't
pray as much as I should, but I go to church regularly, and give as much as I
can."
"Great", said the voice. "Now let me help."
"I always knew I could trust you." praised the man. "What do I do now?"
"Simply let go of the branch and I'll catch you", answered the voice.
"What was that?", the man asked.
"I said, let go of the branch and I will catch you," the voice repeated.
"LET GO!"
The man was silent for a moment, and then called,
"Is there anyone *else* out there?"
>>
Bwahahahahahahahaha
--DT
