@philosophyminis

Tolstoy once argued that there was a certain Zen tale that he just couldn’t get out of his head. In fact, it changed his life. It goes like this: There was once a man out for a walk, when suddenly a tiger jumps out and starts to chase him. The man runs away until he reaches a cliff’s edge. There, he uses a vine to climb down the cliff, but now he is dangling between the tiger, snarling above, and jagged rocks below. Suddenly, two mice appear. One white, and one black, and they start nibbling at his vine. The vine is snapping, and death is certain. Suddenly, the man notices that there is a wild strawberry peeking out of the cliff in front of him. And so, with an ironic and mortal shrug, he leans forward. He puts it in his mouth, and he chews. And it is the most delicious thing he has ever tasted. In his book Confession, Tolstoy wrote that this story haunted him because he couldn’t understand how anybody could enjoy the strawberry while the mice of day and night nibbled away at the vine of life. Because the prospect of death poisons everything. But the Zen reading of this story is different. Here, the strawberry isn’t a distraction from death. It is the entire point. Because the awareness of the tiger above, and the rocks below, is what allows us to have the mortal and ironic shrug. It’s what allows us to savour the strawberry, and to savour life. Because after all, what else is there that we can do?

♬ original sound – Jonny Thomson