I found an interesting parable I would like to share with BlogHer folks. This is one of my favorites. The text is based on a literal translation from the Chinese, found in an appendix to I.A. Richard's Mencius on the Mind.

The Ox Mountain Parable

i

Master Meng said: There was once a fine forest on the Ox Mountain, Near the capital of a populous country. The people came out with axes and cut down the trees. Was it still a fine forest? Yet, resting in the alternation of days and nights, moistened by the dew, The stumps sprouted, the trees began to grow again. Then out came goats and cattle to browse on the young shoots. The Ox Mountain was stripped utterly bare. And the people, seeing it stripped utterly bare, Think the Ox Mountain never had any woods on it at all.

ii

Our mind too, stripped bare, like the mountains, Still cannot be without some tendency to love. But just as humans with axes, cutting down the trees every morning, Destroy the beauty of the forest, So we by our daily actions, destroy our right mind.

Day follows night, giving rest to the murdered forest, The moisture of the dawn spirit Awakens in us the right loves, the right aversions.

With the actions of one morning we cut down this love, And destroy it again. At last the night spirit Is no longer able to revive our right mind.

Where, then, do our likes and dislikes differ from those of animals? In nothing much. People see us, and say we never had in us anything but evil. Is this our nature?

iii

Whatever is cultivated rightly, will surely grow. Whatever in not cultivated rightly must surely perish. Master Kung (Confucius) said: Grasp it firmly and you will keep it. Grasp it loosely, and it will vanish out of your hand. Its comings and goings have no fixed times: No one knows its Country!

Of our right mind, of this only should we speak!