This week there is a story pulling my hair, sleeping on my pillow, it wants to be told so badly that it creates static in my mind like an untuned radio.
So I’ll tell it to you, maybe then it will leave me alone like a satisfied ghost, and maybe by telling it, I’ll hear it really for the first time and understand what it is trying to tell me.
One day a teacher was taking his morning walk by the lake, slowly meditating on the way of life, and the needs of his students, when he noticed that one of his student was following him. He invited the young student to walk by his side, and asked him why he had been following him thus. “Well” replied the student, “I was hoping that if I spent a little more time in your presence I would learn something, that maybe you would teach me how to get further on the way.” Touched by such dedication the teacher asked: “I admire you thirst for knowledge, but knowledge is only as good as what you intend to do with it, tell me, why have you chosen to become a student of the way?” The student proudly inflated his chest and declared: “I wish to bring peace to the world;” then he proudly turned around, hoping to catch a glint of admiration in his teacher’s eye. However all he saw was his teacher’s hand as he grabbed his hair, pulled his head, and plunged it in the cold waters of the lake. As the teacher held the student’s head under the water, the student tried to pull back, kicked, shook, nothing worked, the teacher was strong and held fast, the student panicked, thirty seconds, one minute…finally the hand let go, and the student came up, gasping for air, coughing and confused. He heard the question: “what did you most want during the last minute?” “AIR of course” “Remember, replied the teacher, this, is what wanting is, you will only attain your goal, when you want and need peace as much and as completely as you wanted air during the last minute.”
What this story is telling me, is a bit unpleasant for me to hear. These days, I open the newspaper, and read of children dying, here in the country where I live, and my eyes fill up, my heart aches, I want peace. Then, the next moment, I go to the fridge open it and make myself a sandwich, and all I want then, is mustard.
I feel helpless to stop the war, so I put it out of my mind. Yet, I still say that I want peace. That I want safety for the children of this world. What would I do if I really wanted peace as if my next gulp air depended on it? What one step could I take? What seed could I plant?
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