The day the leapord lied down with the baboon...

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(you might want to watch the video before reading on)

This video hits me *so hard* emotionally. It was nature's answer for the question "What do you do when you have no clue what needs to be done?". So when I see a hurt dog on the road, or some men about to kill another man, I know what to do, yet I do not know what to do. Totally ironic, yet makes so much sense. It is another way to say "You can be responsible even though your actions can be limited or nil".


Sadly, by morning, the baby baboon passed away, mostly because it was famished I think. Consider these:

* The leopard notices the baby baboon after it killed its mother
* The leopard stayed with the baby until morning (all through the night) even though it had no clue what to do with it - until the baboon went still.

I put the behavior by the leopard on the same lines of the behavior by Hakuin, the great zen master below. BTW, the narration of the story is by Osho. Osho is talking about detachment below, but there is another aspect. Hakuin wasn't expecting the baby, yet he did what was required to be done. The first time I read this narration of the story (there are other versions on the net, but it doesn't have the same impact as when I read it in Osho's words), tears welled up in my eyes, and I did not even know why!

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In a village where the great Zen master Hakuin was living, a girl became pregnant. Her father bullied her for the name of her lover and, in the end, to escape punishment she told him it was Hakuin. The father said no more, but when the time came and the child was born, he at once took the baby to Hakuin and threw it down. "It seems that this is your child," he said, and he piled on every insult and sneer at the disgrace of the affair.

Hakuin only said, "Oh, is that so?" and took the baby in his arms. Wherever he went thereafter, he took the baby, wrapped in the sleeve of his ragged robe. During rainy days and stormy nights he would go out to beg milk from the neighboring houses. Many of his disciples, considering him fallen, turned against him and left. And Hakuin said not a word.

Meantime, the mother found she could not bear the agony of separation from her child. She confessed the name of the real father, and her own father rushed to Hakuin and prostrated himself, begging over and over for forgiveness. Hakuin said only, "Oh, is that so?" and gave him the child back.

For the ordinary man what others say matters too much, because he has nothing of his own. Whatever he thinks he is, is just a collection of opinions of other people. Somebody has said, "You are beautiful," somebody has said, "You are intelligent," and he has been collecting all these. Hence he's always afraid: he should not behave in such a way that he loses his reputation, respectability. He is always afraid of public opinion, what people will say, because all that he knows about himself is what people have said about him. If they take it back, they leave him naked. Then he does not know who he is, ugly, beautiful, intelligent, unintelligent. He has no idea, even vaguely, of his own being; he depends on others.

But the man of meditation has no need of others' opinions. He knows himself, so it does not matter what others say. Even if the whole world says something that goes against his own experience, he will simply laugh. At the most, that can be the only response. But he is not going to take any step to change people's opinion. Who are they? They don't know themselves and they are trying to label him. He will reject labeling. He will simply say, "Whatever I am, I am, and this is the way I am going to be."

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