Hello there.
Thank you so much for joining me for this reading of another classic old parable.
This one is a Zen story about a man who's running from a tiger.
And to me,
It really exemplifies one of my favourite phrases in life,
Which is,
Enjoy yourself.
It's later than you think.
As we know,
The only moment that we ever truly have is right now,
Right here,
This moment.
Everything is temporary.
Everything changes.
Everything passes.
And rather than being overly focused on the past or the possible future.
May we be fortunate enough to enjoy the moment,
Each moment,
As much as we can while we still can.
So before we get into this little story here,
Let's just take a moment to have a nice deep exhale.
Letting go of the day.
Letting go of whichever baggage we might be bringing along with us into this moment.
For right now.
There's nowhere else we have to go.
Nothing else we have to be doing.
So we can just relax,
Get ourselves comfortable and enjoy this next classic parable.
The tiger and the strawberry.
A man was walking through the forest when he suddenly came face to face with a tiger.
The tiger saw him.
The man saw the tiger.
And.
.
.
He ran.
The tiger chased him through the trees until the man came to the edge of a steep cliff.
With nowhere else to go,
He grabbed hold of a vine growing over the side of the cliff and lowered himself down.
Above him,
The tiger was waiting.
Below him,
There was a long drop to the rocks.
The man clung to the vine.
He didn't know what to do.
He looked down.
And bear growing right beside him.
Was a little strawberry.
It was bright red.
And perfectly ripe.
He reached out.
Picked it,
And.
.
.
Eat it.
For that moment.
The strawberry was all there was.
It's sweetness.
It's fragrance.
It's taste.
The tiger was still above him.
The rocks were still below.
Nothing about his situation had changed.
And yet,
For one brief moment,
He was completely present.
He simply enjoyed the strawberry.
We may spend so much of our lives worrying about the tiger above us and the rocks below us.
We worry about what might happen tomorrow or what happened yesterday.
We worry about things we cannot control.
Problems we haven't even encountered yet.
Endings we cannot possibly know.
And all the while There might be a strawberry.
Right in front of us.
A warm cup of tea.
Sunlight through a window.
A great conversation.
The sound of rain.
Someone laughing in the next room.
A beautiful song.
The feeling of clean sheets.
A walk outside on a lovely day.
Tiny,
Ordinary pleasures that are available to us right now.
We can miss those completely when we're too busy worrying about something else.
This story doesn't ask us to pretend that difficulties don't exist.
The tiger is real.
The rocks are real.
Life can be difficult.
Sometimes there really is nothing we can do to change what's happening and yet there is a strawberry.
We don't have to wait until everything is sorted out to enjoy ourselves.
We don't have to solve the future before we allow ourselves to be happy.
We don't have to know what is around every curve in the path ahead of us or how the story ends.
We can simply notice what is sweet while it is sweet.
If we find ourselves worrying about something,
We can pause for a moment.
Look around and ask ourselves,
Where is my strawberry?
What here,
Right now,
Could I enjoy?
The tiger can wait.
For this moment.
There is.
A strobe.
