The Tigers and the Strawberry
There was a man walking across an open field, when suddenly a tiger appeared and began to give chase. The man began to run, but the tiger was closing in. As he approached a cliff at the edge of the field, the man grabbed a vine and jumped over the cliff. Holding on as tight as he could, he looked up and saw the angry tiger prowling out of range ten feet above him. He looked down. In the gully below, there were two tigers also angry and prowling. He had to wait it out. He looked up again and saw that two mice, one white, the other black, had come out of the bushes and had begun gnawing on the vine, his lifeline. As they chewed the vine thinner and thinner, he knew that he could break at any time. Then, he saw a single strawberry growing just an arms length away. Holding the vine with one hand, he reached out, picked the strawberry, and put it in his mouth. It was delicious.
Koans, of course, are meant to be enigmatic. This particular one is not just mysterious, it is an open-ended story – we are left with the man neither up nor down, hanging on by a thread which is visibly being nibbled away, with danger above and below.
One interpretation is that the cliff is life. We cannot reverse time and go back to the womb, and at the bottom is death. We hang on to the vine, all of the things that sustain our lives from day to day – our jobs, the cooking, the cleaning, the caring for others, knowing that climbing is useless, because at the top is a tiger, that letting go is useless, because at the bottom are more tigers – stuck in the middle again. And we see the mice, nibbling at the vine.
But there is the strawberry. Why not, in that moment, enjoy that strawberry? Eating it, or not eating it, will not make one bit of difference to the situation – it will not make the vine thicker. It will not make the tigers go away. It will not make the mice go away. Neither will it make the vine thinner, or bring on more tigers – and more tigers would not make the situation worse.
Maybe the key to this story is that we are here, somewhere on a cliff, with no much that we can do about it but hang on. The ending, bar a miracle, is inevitable.
In a time when much is driven by anger and fear, this service will consider the teachings of the Buddha, the Stoics, Jesus, and modern psychologists and theologians such as Alfred Adler and Reinhold Niebuhr about the cause of suffering and how we can find strength and comfort.. Lisa deGruyter will lead the service.
Please join us for Worship:
Our services are Sundays at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time on ZOOM and in person at the Progressive Women’s Association Event Center, 305 Washington Ave. in downtown Clarksburg, behind the Courthouse.
**If you wish to join by ZOOM and do not already have the link, please email us at westforkuu@gmail.com**
Children are welcome. The building is wheelchair accessible, with an accessible restroom. You may park in the lot on the west side of the building; DO NOT PARK in the Washington Avenue pay lot. Please enter through the door at the back on the west side of the building.
A coffee hour, a time for discussion and socializing, including those who attend through ZOOM, follows from the end of the service until 12:00 noon. More about us.
If you are a regular attendee, we have added you to our Google Group if we had an email address. If you have not gotten a group email already, please email westforkuu@gmail.com so that we can add you to the group.
Email westforkuu@gmail.com or use our contact form for more information or write to us at PO Box 523, Clarksburg WV 26302
West Fork Unitarian Universalists 