22 Mar The sheep said, “You simply eat me; there is no need to find any excuse.” (OSHO)
In one of Aesop’s fables -and those are some of the greatest fables in the world, so simple and so significant -a small sheep is drinking water from a mountain stream of crystal-clear water. A great lion comes and naturally becomes interested in the sheep -it is breakfast time, but he has to find an excuse. So he says to the sheep, “You are dirtying the stream. Don’t you understand that I am the king of the jungle?”
The poor sheep says, “I know, but Your Highness, the stream is not going toward you. I am standing below you, and even if it becomes dirty by my drinking water, the water is going downstream -not toward you. You are making it dirty and I am drinking that dirty water. So your logic is not right.”
The lion saw the point and became very angry. He said, “You don’t have respect for your elders. You have some nerve arguing with me.”
The poor sheep said, “I have not argued, I have simply said what was factual. You can see that the stream is coming toward me.”
The lion was silent for a moment and then said, “Now I remember. You belong to a very uncultured, uneducated family. Your father insulted me yesterday.” The poor sheep said, “It must have been somebody else, because my father has been dead for three months -and you must know that he is within your belly. He is no longer alive, you have made a lunch of him. How can he behave disrespectfully toward you? He is dead!”
That was too much. The lion jumped and caught hold of the sheep, saying, “You don’t know manners, you don’t know etiquette, you don’t know how to behave.”
The sheep said, “The simple fact is, it is breakfast time. You simply eat me; there is no need to find any excuse.”
In such simple parables, Aesop has done miracles. He has said so much about man.
Living on Your Own Terms
OSHO
