Daily Meditation: Thursday, April 2, 1998

A sage is in his garden picking fruit. Suddenly he hears a …

04/02/1998

A sage is in his garden picking fruit. Suddenly he hears a noise and sees a man running towards him. – ‘But where are you going in such a hurry?' the sage asks the man. – ‘My neighbour is chasing me with a gun,' he answers. ‘He says I was the one who set fire to his attic.' – ‘Go quickly,' says the sage, ‘I'll take care of everything.' And when the neighbour arrives, the sage asks him, ‘Where are you rushing off to like that? You seem quite out of breath. Why not sit down with me for a moment. Look at this fruit; it is delicious, taste it.' The man sits down and regales himself with the fruit. The sage also asks him to admire the flowers and the trees in the garden, the blue sky, and so on. The brief pause changes the man's mood, so he abandons the chase and even offers to help the sage harvest the fruit. You may well say this is an unlikely story. Well, not really. The sage knew that if he stood in the man's path and commanded the angry man to stop, the man would have pushed him out of the way, refusing to listen, and the sage would have been obliged to use force. So what did he do instead? He diverted the man's attention by offering him some fruit. This means that in order to stop human beings from doing wrong, it is best to try and divert their energy rather than to oppose them.