CARRYING?

One of my favourite Zen Stories tells the tale of two monks travelling together. As usual, they walked in deep silence. They came across a shallow spring on the way. A lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash was standing there, obviously worried about spoiling her clothes while crossing the stream. One of the monks lifted her in his arms and carried her over the stream.

His companion was shocked with his colleague’s act of sacrilege. Yet, he maintained his silence until the night when they halted to rest. Now he could no longer restrain himself. “We monks have sworn not to touch women,” he burst out, “Yet how could you carry her?” The first monk replied peacefully, “I left that girl on the other side of the stream. It is you who still carries her in your mind!”

So often we hold on to thoughts that are irrelevant in the larger scope of the situation. So often we carry emotions which are nothing but a burden that weighs heavy on us. So often we hold on so tight to past experiences that we fail to understand that those very experiences hold us in a tighter vice that chokes progressive thinking. It seizes our mind and clouds our perspective.

It is said so well by someone, “forget learning… learn forgetting”. We need to let go the unnecessary if we want to move on in life. For every harvested crop of experience, we need to be better at sifting the grain of understanding from the chaff of misapprehension and misinterpretation. Let’s learn to let go of the superfluous and hold on to the more significant aspects of life.

To BE BETTER at moving ahead in life…
let’s let go of irrelevant thought-strife!

- Pravin K. Sabnis