The strawberry story
There’s a famous zen story that you may have heard before. It’s a very old story. I’ll put a woman in it instead of a man, just because.
A woman is running from a tiger that’s chasing her. She runs through the woods until she gets to the edge of a cliff. The tiger is still behind her, so she climbs down a vine. The tiger reaches the top of the cliff and paces back and forth, licking its chops. Midway down the cliff, hanging onto the vine, she sees another tiger below her, pacing back and forth, licking its chops. As she’s hanging there, two mice come out and start gnawing on the vine. She tries to shoo them away, but they won’t go.
Just then she sees, growing out of the face of the cliff in front of her, a wild strawberry. She picks it and eats it. It’s delicious.
Some interpretations of the story are simply that, when your life is in danger, life never tastes sweeter. While that’s true, I think that reading entirely misses the point. This story, of course, being a Buddhist story, is about being in the moment.
The tiger at the top may represent the pain of the past, the tiger at the bottom the worries of the future; the precarious vine may symbolize the stresses of the now, and the mice signify the passage of time. In the midst of life, be present enough to notice the strawberry and enjoy its sweetness. I read one interpretation that said the answer lies in hanging on and reaching out, as the woman on the cliff hangs onto the vine and reaches out to the strawberry. I like that. But I don’t know that this story – or any zen story – is supposed to be taken as advice. It’s just an observation of the way things are.
So many of these stories, or the interpretations of them, seem to be about seeking pleasure, though. It’s a part of modern Buddhism that bugs me. So many people apparently interpret the teachings as encouragement to seek the pleasurable, strawberry-enjoying moments, as if that were the goal. It’s not a bad goal, and it’s certainly a better one than religions that teach hatred and intolerance. But one of the things that rings truest for me about Buddhism is that pleasure and pain are both illusions. Sometimes I get the feeling, from reading contemporary Buddhist articles, that people think you’re not really in the moment unless you’re feeling pleasure. I don’t get that.
As a person whose body doesn’t necessarily produce enough chemicals for feelings of happiness even when they’re warranted, I would much prefer if the story were told like this:
A woman is caught on the face of a cliff between two hungry tigers. As she’s hanging there, on the mouse-chewed vine, she notices a fossil embedded in the rock in front of her. She rubs it with her finger and examines it more closely. Hm, interesting, she thinks.
I don’t know if it matters what the thing-in-the-moment is. It would be a different story, though, if the thing noticed were something painful, say a splinter under her fingernail. Or if it were a dead pigeon, or a winning lottery ticket. I think, in order to convey what I believe the story is trying to convey, the object noticed has to be more or less emotionally neutral.
But here’s what makes me love this story: According to Thomas Cleary, D.T. Suzuki changed the ending of the story because he thought it wouldn’t appeal to westerners. In the original version, every element is there, except for one difference – the berry turns out to be deadly poison.
I love that.
What does it mean? Well, grasshopper. Maybe it means that life sucks, and then you eat a poison strawberry and you die. Or that life will kill you, whether you live it or not. Or that, when you’re stressed out, eating for comfort is a bad idea.
Or maybe it means that taking refuge in sensual experience is an illusion.
Or even more simply: don’t get distracted.
It’s hard to explain what I mean by this. I don’t mean the American “keep your eye on the ball” thing. Maybe “don’t be seduced by illusion” comes closer. That’s how it is with a koan, and all these zen stories are koans, stories or questions meant to provoke an awakening. There is no correct response, apart from that.
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