The Boy Who Conquered
[ A story by Amrita Brahmo ]
Long ago, and far away, there was a land blessed with a strange and magical power. No one quite knew how, but any child born in that realm was gifted with the ability to live up to his or her name. Now you might think this was mere coincidence, and believe me, so did people for a long time. Then someone did the math and deduced that there was indeed a reason as to why all the young men named after the Fire-God were setting haystacks ablaze with their slightest tantrums.
Anyway, such were the ways of the land and people took great care to choose a perfect name for their young ones, one that would seal their destiny for the years to come.
Time passed by until on the first day of winter, with the first snowflake, a baby boy was born in the family of a modest school teacher, and the entire village came to partake of their joy and to witness the ceremony of name-giving. Amidst the crowd, the teacher’s wife held up her little baby in the air as he shrieked, protesting against the cold blast, and pronounced his name “Arihant!” There was a murmur for no one quite knew what the name meant. It was the first of its kind and they stood in awe as the teacher told them what it meant- “One who has vanquished his enemies”
The years passed by and the little boy grew up under his family’s stern but loving eye. He went to school like others of his age, but his heart lay in other things, finding shapes in the clouds, building artifacts from clay and making up elaborate stories to amuse his younger siblings. The bane of his existence, in his ten year old mind, was his name. Each time someone asked him that question, he suppressed a grimace thinking of the inevitable awe that would follow. He often thought of asking his parents why.
I don’t want to kill enemies, I don’t want to conquer anyone. I’d rather make friends and make people happy, don’t you get it?
But being a polite boy, he never voiced it out loud.
One day he was sitting by the river bank, throwing stones into the water, watching as they created ripples in his reflection. Suddenly he heard a plop and saw that an old man was trying to recover his little metal pot which had just fallen into the river. In a jiffy, he waded into the stream, his wiry body underwater for a few seconds before he resurfaced with the pot and handed it over to the man with a “Pranam”.
“May God bless you, my son. What is your name?” The old man asked.
“My name is Arihant, Dadaji” The boy replied, using the form of address for grandfather. He didn’t quite mind telling this man his name, maybe because he didn’t pause in awe, he just smiled.
“And Arihant, do you know what it means?” He asked.
The boy crinkled his eyebrows for a second, ” It means one who has conquered his enemies” , he recited listlessly.
“Yes that is what they say it means. But do you know what it means?”
By now the boy was confused. “What does it mean then? I don’t know. I always thought…”
“You always thought the enemy would just be someone who attacks you with sword and spear. Someone whose blood you need to spill. Okay tell me, if you are very hungry and have only one mango and a boy your age suddenly snatches it from you ,what would you do?”
“Hit him hard!” Arihant said, a flash of outrage making way to his face at the imagined scenario
“Okay, but then, suppose he hasn’t eaten for days. Suppose he has to bring back food for family too. What then?”
“I’d not get angry, I’d let him have it.” Arihant mused
“So who was your enemy in this case? What was driving you to do something bad, an eye for an eye?” The old man smiled peacefully.
“Anger.” the boy uttered with a wide eyed look. “My enemy is not a person. It can be a thing. An emotion. Something truly bad.”
“Yes. And your destiny is to be the conqueror of your enemies, my son. Do you see now?”
The old man quenched his thirst and walked away.
Ten year old Arihant walked back to his village with his head held high, ready to embrace the power of his name.
[This post is authored by 'Amrita Brahmo', originally published at mysoulcompany ]
[Picture Credit: Caravaggio, Amor Victorious, Renaissance, Baroque]
The Zen Master and a Little Girl
Life, birth, death are the constituent questions of philosophy. The complexity of these subjects is overwhelming and hence the explanations seldom have continuity. I came across this anecdote about a Zen master (a Japanese school of Mahayana Buddhism emphasizing the value of meditation and intuition rather than ritual worship or study of scriptures) Seung Sahn Soen-sa, which channels the knowledge into a childlike simplicity. Soen-sa recounts his conversation with Gita, the seven-year-old daughter of one of his students at the Cambridge Zen Center, after the death of the center’s beloved cat, cleverly named Katz. (“Katsu!” is a shout that is described in Chán and Zen Buddhism encounter-stories, to expose the enlightened state (Japanese: satori) of the Zen-master, and/or to induce initial enlightenment experience in a student). Katz had died after a long illness and was given a traditional Buddhist burial, but the little girl remained troubled by his death. One day, she came to the him for an explanation.
“What happened to Katzie? Where did he go?”
Soen-sa said, “Where do you come from?”
“From my mother’s belly.”
“Where does your mother come from?” Gita was silent.
Soen-sa said, “Everything in the world comes from the same one thing. It is like in a cookie factory. Many different kinds of cookies are made — lions, tigers, elephants, houses, people. They all have different shapes and different names, but they are all made from the same dough and they all taste the same. So all the different things that you see - a cat, a person, a tree, the sun, this floor - all these things are really the same.”
“What are they?”
“People give them many different names. But in themselves, they have no names. When you are thinking, all things have different names and different shapes. But when you are not thinking, all things are the same. There are no words for them. People make the words. A cat doesn’t say, ‘I am a cat.’ People say, ‘This is a cat.’ The sun doesn’t say, ‘My name is sun.’ People say, ‘This is the sun.’
So when someone asks you, ‘What is this?’, how should you answer?”
“I shouldn’t use words.”
Soen-sa said, “Very good! You shouldn’t use words. So if someone asks you, ‘What is Buddha?’, what would be a good answer?”
Gita was silent.
Soen-sa said, “Now you ask me.”
“What is Buddha?”
Soen-sa hit the floor.
Gita laughed.
Soen-sa said, “Now I ask you: What is Buddha?”
Gita hit the floor.
“What is God?”
Gita hit the floor.
“What is your mother?”
Gita hit the floor.
“What are you?”
Gita hit the floor.
“Very good! This is what all things in the world are made of. You and Buddha and God and your mother and the whole world are the same.”
Gita smiled.
Soen-sa said, “Do you have any more questions?”
“You still haven’t told me where Katz went.”
Soen-sa leaned over, looked into her eyes, and said, “You already understand.”
Gita said, “Oh!” and hit the floor very hard. Then she laughed.
Soen-sa ends the anecdote with an exchange intended to be funny, but in fact a tragic testament to contemporary Western education being a force of industrialized specialization, deliberately fragmenting the unity of all things and de-conditioning our inner wholeness:
As she was opening the door, she turned to Soen-sa and said, “But I’m not going to answer that way when I’m in school. I’m going to give regular answers!” Soen-sa laughed.
One may disagree with the explanation and have so many cross questions but there is no doubt about the strength of the single fabric answer which even a child can understand.
[This anecdote appeared originally in brainpickings ]
[Picture Credit: Octavio Ocampo, The Buddha, Surrealism]
Right To Be Wrong: First They Came For...
This poem was first mentioned to me by Dr. Anoop Kumar, Professor at NIT Hamirpur, in one of those numerous conversations that we still continue to have. We were discussing the increasing intolerance of the people and how the definition of enemy, when manufactured to suit ulterior interests of a select few, can be dangerous to the society and civilization in general. And how the escapism of the individuals, who when in face of popular evil, chose to stay a silent witness than a lone and unpopular protester. I hunted the poem down. It written by Martin Niemöller who was a supporter of Hitler's anti-communist Nazi stand until he finally became disillusioned with them. Although late, he raised his voice and was deported to Dachau death camp. He survived and repeated this poem in many versions advocating for the victims of the intolerant and the unjust in different parts of world. Below is one of the popular versions-
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—And my translation in Hindi-
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
सबसे पहले उनके निशाने पे थे साम्यवादी,
मैं खामोश रहा-
क्योंकि मैं साम्यवादी नही था;
फिर उनके निशाने पे थे समाजवादी,
मैं तब भी खामोश रहा-
क्योंकि मैं समाजवादी नही था;
फिर उन्होने श्रमिक संघवाद को अपना शिकार बनाया,
मैं कुछ नही बोला-
क्योंकि मैं किसी श्रमिक संघ में नही था;
फिर उनके हत्थे चढ़े यहूदी,
मैने आवाज़ नही उठाई-
क्योंकि मैं यहूदी नही था;
आख़िरकार एक दिन उनके निशाने पर मैं था-
मेरे लिए आवाज़ उठाने के लिए
कोई बचा ही नही था...
[ Right to be Wrong, as the name suggests are a series of short blogs that argues for the universal Human Rights ] - See more at: Right to be wrong
Picture credits : Wikipedia
