Observations

Meditating is a way to escape. A form of meditation is trying to focus on a mental puzzle (koan) as one sits quietly. Example of a koan: What is the sound of one hand clapping?
Another example. A man walking in the countryside is suddenly confronted with a tiger. He starts running, trying to escape for his dear life. But the tiger keeps coming at him.
Suddenly the man finds himself on the border of a precipice with no escape. Luckily he notices a vine going down the rocks and he grabs it as quickly as possible and starts his descent while the tiger is firmly in place above him. So the man starts his descent.
But no sooner he looks down that he notices another tiger waiting for him under the vine. Bewildered he stops his descent. A tiger on top, a tiger below. What can he do? Terrified he looks up and realizes the vine is slowly breaking up.
What are his options? The vine will eventually break and he will end up being eaten by the tiger below.
In desperate terror he looks around but the only thing he notices is a wild strawberry growing against the wall … lush and ripe. So holding himself with one hand, he reaches for the strawberry, gets it, and calmly eats it.
Now stop reading. What is the point of this koan? What is the lesson?
The lesson is simple. We tend to worry about everything surrounding us. We are prone to recognize the risks of daily events and worry about their implications. We should not, and when everything around us seems to fall apart, well….we should eat a strawberry.
It is an interesting answer. The problem I have is that we cannot put aside the complications of our lives. What keeps us mentally young is what Nietzsche calls “the will to power”. It is about our motivation to achieve, to overcome obstacles, to keep our brain challenged by pleasant and unpleasant happenings. Eating the strawberry should be a reward, not an escape.

George Dagnino