Imprisonment
Parable
Manav was arrested and
thrown into a dark dungeon. No one told
him what his crime was. When they hurled
him into the dark cell whose door shut with a bang, all that he could see was a
beam of light passing through a slit-like ventilator at the top of one of the
walls. Silence and darkness enveloped
him.
He stretched his body and
touched the narrow sill of the ventilator.
He pulled himself up and looked out through the ventilator. The light outside helped dispel some of his
gloom.
He spent most of his time
and energy doing the same thing day after day, without once caring to explore
the darkness in the cell.
If only he had explored
the darkness, he would have discovered that the door was not locked.
What stood between him and
his freedom was his obstinate clinging to the narrow slit.
Wow ! Such a nice parable. I haven't read the book.. would you recommend.. what is it about ?
ReplyDeleteThe subtitle of the book is: "The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients". the author takes examples from classical literary works such as Shakespeare's Othello, Kafka's K, and Don Quixote to analyse certain psychological problems of people in quest of meaning in life. The author's basic premise is that an adult cannot be a disciple: hence kill the Buddha (that's Zen koan). Neither a spiritual guru nor a psychotherapist can reveal your truth; you have to discover it for yourself, the guru and the therapist can be lamp posts on the way...
Deletethe book is fairly good. On a scale of 5, I'd give it 3.5 rating. The problem is that there's a tendency for the author to seek popularity at times... Secondly, the book was published in 1972 and psychology has undergone much change after that.
Gosh! He could have escaped...
ReplyDeleteExactly, Anita. That's just the point. Now, please transfer the metaphor to our life!
DeleteAnd this is how we miss out.on life... We cling to one thing and forget that there's a whole different world ... a different aspect of life.
ReplyDeleteLet me quote Kopp: "... we are defeated not only by the narrowness of our perspectives, and our fear of the darkness..."
DeleteNice parable..
ReplyDeleteHow we miss things in life..sigh..
A whole big world remains unexplored because of our clinging to something...
DeleteI so agree with the author's disdain to cling to the last leaf . But that makes me wonder what pushes us into this myopia. Is it our upbringing, the society and environment or the collective acceptance of grandness of life while on the contrary it is simple.
ReplyDeletePeople have the herd mentality, Bushra. They follow the majority. And the majority view today is that wealth is the only value, external beauty is what matters, and so on. If we stand out of that, as you say, life becomes much easier - much simpler at least.
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