Proverbs, parables, stories. I read these sometimes, displace myself…. And dream my way to bettyland.
Kudos to a dear friend who gave me this one particular parable and commentary by Buechner that is incessantly unwavering in beauty and metaphor. So overwhelming that I couldn’t help but share—
Sri Ramakrishna, the great Hindu saint of the nineteenth century, told a parable regarding a grass-eating tiger:
“Once a tigress attacked a herd of goats. A hunter saw her from a distance and killed her.
The tigress was pregnant and gave birth to a cub as she expired. The cub began to grow in the company of the goats. At first it was nursed by the she-goats, and later on, as it grew bigger, it began to eat grass like the goats. Gradually the cub became a big tiger; but still it loved and ate grass. When attacked by other animals, it would run away, like the goats. One day a fierce-looking tiger attacked the herd. It was amazed to see a tiger in the herd eating grass and running away with the goats at its approach. It left the goats and caught hold of the grass-eating tiger, which he began to nervously bleat and continued nibbling at the grass.
But the fierce tiger dragged it to the water and said: 'Now look at your face in the water. You see, you have the face of a tiger; it is exactly like mine.' The tiger refused to recognize the similar reflections. Next the fierce tiger pressed a piece of meat into the grass eating tiger's mouth. At first the grass-eating tiger refused to eat the meat. Then it got the taste of the meat and relished it. Finally as he ate and ate, the truth gradually became clear to him. As he forcefully dug his muscular claws into the ground, the young beast raised his head as he unleashed an exultant roar that trembled the Earth and flooded the jungle with awe.”
That was the shortened version. So there seems to be this idea that all the religions in the world recognize the simple basic understanding that humans in how they exist now are not what they were created or even evolved to be. The tiger is not really a goat at all—he is actually a tiger--- but perceives himself as a goat. Just like the tiger, maybe the image we were to reflect never was clear, or invariably distorted. Maybe here we get insight into the tiger’s problem and so it may be: the human condition problem. If the tiger who thinks he is a goat could convert himself into an actual goat, everything could be fine. But I mean come on, what do we do with ourselves when we find out we’re really another type of species other than we thought? Besides piss our pants in disbelief? IF we even find this out? We may even realize that we are tigers but just keep a nibblin’ the grass because we don’t know what the hell else to do, or how the hell to start to living like as a tiger. We eat the grass. We bleat well. But by God, Heaven knows we feel the roar inside our bones. But some say, “Oh just accept what you know!” because maybe this was what was to happen and that goathood is all we are supposed to know. And maybe this is true and right but sometimes still the deep cries out from the deep…
Others rage “Might as well get living as a goat! Enjoy it, try new grasses, drink crazy kinds of water. Get cute little luxuries to make you feel warm and tingly and nice.” But maybe the ache, the intuition of the waking up and life within as yourself, as a tiger, remains.
And then our stomachs really begin to ache because we know. God, we know! We have seen the Tiger—the terrible roaring mighty fella who people call Jesus—this explosion of a man, this explosion of Life itself into actual life. We can only glance up for a fleeting moment from our grazing to see what a real human being looks like. And if we aren’t terribly paralyzed or pissing our pants in rolling amounts of fear, then the rippling painful tide of contrast becomes inevitably clear.
Speechless. “Oh shit,” we think. “If this is what it means to be human, then what am I? If this is what it is to be alive, am I even living?” The thought lingers--that terrible quality of full life that resonates from that magnificent being—--what will it do to us?
We could all just feel miserable and sub-par and be grumpy groany goats and feel like the way of that Tiger is ultimately the way of despair.
But the beauty of this Tiger, of this Christ, of the many thousand names that all just try to convey so messily and beautifully is this: that this man has power to give. To give life to the half-alive. To give tigerhood back to the tigers. “To them I will give a white stone with a new name written on the stone”—and this new name is the life, the self, that in our moments of truth we as humans yearn, above all else perhaps, to find. What he gives us is ourselves. What he tells us is our names and who we really are—our brother’s keeper, God’s children. And he offers us food and drink to warm our blood and make us drunk with the mystery and joy of it all.
--Buechner (though semi-edited with curse words and questions by yours truly, :D betty)
