Insightful Parables.

These 2 parables I’ve recently come across that touched me. I hope they do the same for you. The first is a great insight. The second is a teaching from Sir Ramakrishna. “Why do you insist that my normal self is unreal?” a disciple once complained to his master. “Why not put it another way?” the master replied, “What makes you think you are real?” It’s obvious,” said the disciple. “I think and feel and act. I know myself for who I am, with all my habits, my likes and dislikes.” “Yes but what do you really know?” the master insisted. “Did you have your habits when you were asleep?” “Of course not. I am unconscious when I am asleep.” “Perhaps you are unconscious now.” “No, right now I am awake.” “Really?” The master smiled. “Can you remember everything that happened to you yesterday? Or even what you were thinking an hour ago? Isn’t your self-awareness very selective, amounting to just a partial memory? And then there are your dreams, which you lose as soon as you wake up. Not to mention that your habits and preferences are always changing and even when you do seem stable, don’t your emotions often betray you? An insult from a passing stranger can completely throw you off balance, or the news that someone close to you has died. Isn’t there also the problem of being lost in wishes, false hopes, and various mental illusions?” The disciple looked baffled. “All this may be true, but none of it makes me unreal. Perhaps I am just very confused.” The master shook his head. “If so, then everyone is just as confused. The truth is that what we call a person is constantly in flux. There are long stretches of forgotten time, not to mention our lapse of consciousness when we sleep. Memory is faulty, and only the mind’s craving for continuity keeps alive the illusion that ‘I’ is constant. ‘I’ is never constant. For every experience there is a difference experiencer.” “I am beginning to see what you mean,” said the disciple. “Although you make is seem that nothing can be trusted.” “Nothing about the changing personality can be trusted,” said the master. But there is more to life than experience. Things come and go – feelings, events, and achievements. Pleasure is inevitably followed by pain. Success is bound up with failure. Yet behind all this show of change, something remains aware at all times. Find your what that is awareness is and you will have what can be trusted. This is the way out of illusion.” ____________________________________________________________________________________ A disciple once came to a teacher to learn how to meditate on God. The teacher gave him instructions, but the disciple soon returned and said that he could not carry them out. Every time he tried to meditate he found himself thinking about his pet buffalo. “Well, then” the teacher said. “You meditate on that buffalo you are so fond of.” The disciple shut himself up in a room and began to concentrate on the buffalo. After some time, the teacher knocked on the door of the disciple’s room. The disciple answered: “Sir, I am sorry, I cannot come out to greet you. This door is too small. My horns will be in the way.” Then the teacher smiled and said:” Splendid! You have become identified with the object of your desire through concentration. Now fix that concentration on God and you will easily succeed.”