Almost everybody knows this Buddhist tale…
A man is strolling in the forest, when he sees a tiger, bounding down the track towards him. As the tiger closes upon him, the track comes to an end at the edge of a cliff, man jumps. Luckily, he is able to grab a hold of a vine, which brings him up short against the cliff. Below him another tiger is waiting for him to fall down… While thanking God for the vine, he sees two little mice, begin to gnaw at its root. At this point, he notices a strawberry, reaches out, picks the strawberry, and puts it into his mouth.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
I see the tigers and the mice as my past and future—my before and after. All I have now is the strawberry. I can choose to either be scared or worry about the past or future or enjoy the now… Choice, what a wonderful human ability.
We are so used to living in two fake realities—the past and the future. The past is the past and may never be reached; it only exists in our memories. The future (tomorrow) will never come. It’s an imaginary reality. So, both the past and the future are purely a mental chimera. The only reality we have available for us to live in is the present. The present moment. A Strawberry moment, that we are constantly giving away to feel pain about the past or worry about the future.
This is amazing, but every day we actually choose between tigers and mice and the strawberries—between being scared or worried or being happy seizing the moment. Unfortunately, very often we don’t choose the moment of Life. We don’t even notice we have made a choice because it already became a part of our existence, turned into transparent cells in our blood. So transparent that during some tough times, we keep forgetting that we can always turn everything around and choose the strawberry. We completely forget that we are able to make a choice, and this is the cause of all human suffering. Choosing the strawberry—this is all I should do while living my life.
Choose the strawberry, and that’s it. Feeling it bursting on your tongue. Sweet and a bit sour taste, smooth surface. Feeling the strawberry of life means exactly living your life to the fullest, feeling it with all your senses. If you get back to your tigers and mice—and you’ve lost it, lost your reality, lost your life.
Get back to the strawberry. Let every moment be a new strawberry and be transformed into whatever you pick to choose. Just be in the moment. Because everything else is just a mind game, thoughts about the past and the future.
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