Centre for Vital Elders

The Stone Cutter

There was once a stone cutter who was dissatisfied with himself and with his position in life.

One day he passed a wealthy merchant’s house. Through the open gateway, he saw many fine possessions and important visitors. “How powerful that merchant must be!” thought the stone cutter. He became very envious and wished that he could be like the merchant.

To his great surprise, he suddenly became the merchant, enjoying more luxuries and power than he had ever imagined, but envied and detested by those less wealthy than himself. Soon a high official passed by, carried in a sedan chair, accompanied by attendants and escorted by soldiers beating gongs. Everyone, no matter how wealthy, had to bow low before the procession. “How powerful that official is!” he thought. “I wish that I could be a high official!”

Then he became the high official, carried everywhere in his embroidered sedan chair, feared and hated by the people all around. It was a hot summer day, so the official felt very uncomfortable in the sticky sedan chair. He looked up at the sun. It shone proudly in the sky, unaffected by his presence. “How powerful the sun is!” he thought. “I wish that I could be the sun!”

Then he became the sun, shining fiercely down on everyone, scorching the fields, cursed by the farmers and laborers. But a huge black cloud moved between him and the earth, so that his light could no longer shine on everything below. “How powerful that storm cloud is!” he thought. “I wish that I could be a cloud!”

Then he became the cloud, flooding the fields and villages, shouted at by everyone. But soon he found that he was being pushed away by some great force, and realized that it was the wind. “How powerful it is!” he thought. “I wish that I could be the wind!”

Then he became the wind, blowing tiles off the roofs of houses, uprooting trees, feared and hated by all below him. But after a while, he ran up against something that would not move, no matter how forcefully he blew against it - a huge, towering rock. “How powerful that rock is!” he thought. “I wish that I could be a rock!”

Then he became the rock, more powerful than anything else on earth. But as he stood there, he heard the sound of a hammer pounding a chisel into the hard surface, and felt himself being changed. “What could be more powerful than I, the rock?” he thought.

He looked down and saw far below him the figure of a stone cutter.
People’s reactions to this story:
“We all have great power within us. We merely need to know that.”
“This story reminds me of a quote: ‘At the end of all our searching we will arrive at the place we began and know it for the first time.’”

“If the stone cutter restart moving backwards, he go from nature in man. So, man flow out into nature, nature flow out into man.There’s a fluid , energy ranbling between objects in the earth. It is’nt human ambition;it’s simply life,moving in a circle.”

“We are all powerful in our own way…. We all have our own place”

“The Stonecutter’s story reflects the nature of the human mind and of our attachment to it. We jump from one compartment to the next, one desire to the next, one point of view to the next, never resting content with how things really are, never grasping the whole.”

“We have to learn to celebrate who or what we are. When there is a way that we can better ourselves we must work for it and not just wish and dream.”

“He should have settled for being rich and powerful. Then he could have had all the stone cutters working for him.”

“So that’s why the game of Rock Scissors Paper works….”

“The grass is always greener on the other side — until you get there. It’s a matter of perspective. Satisfaction is a personal choice. Choose to green up your own grass rather than hopping that fence.”

“This definitely proves to me that a person can achieve anything, as long as they stay focused and have a goal ahead of them. As I studied in my MBA classes, you always have to work backwards! Find the end product/result and work back on how you are going to achieve it!”

“We often meet our destiny on the road we took to avoid it.”

“Do not expect too much and you will get plenty.”

Good stories work on many levels so that when you hear the same story again after a few months or years you get something more out of it. Whilst the story remains the same, we change. I have just found this to be the case with this story that I’m sure you’ve heard before.

This is an old Hindu parable about a group of blind people who come across various different pieces of an elephant. Each one grasps a piece and attempts to describe their impression of how the entire animal would be.

The first blind person picks up a leg of the beast and proclaims with satisfaction: “It is tall straight and big; the creature must be like a tree”.

“No, no you fool! It is like a hard, thin rope!” says the one having examined the tail.

“Both of you could not be further from the truth. For you see;” says the third, who holds the elephant’s ear. “It is more like a huge, flat, leathery leaf.”

Scoffing, the fourth declares, “How can you all be both blind and stupid? An elephant is most obviously like a very thick and flexible, strong snake!” — this, of course, from the one holding the trunk.

Of course none of the four had any realistic idea of what the elephant truly was as a whole. Each person had their own partly true judgement of the giant beast. Yet none alone was sufficient as to fully unravel the mystery of its being.

I have heard this story a number of times before and I’m just starting to appreciate it on two levels.

The first is how we have a tendency to blind ourselves. We can quite easily come to the position that our view of reality is the ‘real’ one, and then we become so attached to this position that we defend it no matter what.

Just consider this in the context of religion, philosophy, science, art, etc today. And also think of it in relation to family, community and work situations. I know that my life has become much more peaceful since I stopped (well reduced!) being so attached to my ideas and beliefs.

The second level can only begin to appear when the first has been achieved. Once I am open to the possibility of there being a number of equally valid interpretations of the same ‘reality’, then there is the possibility that the elephant can emerge.

I notice this particularly in relation to complex problems and how people are amazed at the often simple and elegant innovative solutions that show up once the debate, discussion and argument have been replaced by deep listening.
 

There once was a king who offered a prize to the artist who would paint the best picture of peace. Many artists tried. The king looked at all the pictures. But there were only two he really liked, and he had to choose between them.

One picture was of a calm lake. The lake was a perfect mirror for peaceful towering mountains all around it. Overhead was a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. All who saw this picture thought that it was a perfect picture of peace. The other picture had mountains, too. But these were rugged and bare. Above was an angry sky, from which rain fell and in which lightning played. Down the side of the mountain tumbled a foaming waterfall. This did not look peaceful at all.

But when the king looked closely, he saw behind the waterfall a tiny bush growing in a crack in the rock. In the bush a mother bird had built her nest. There, in the midst of the rush of angry water, sat the mother bird on her nest - in perfect peace.

Which picture do you think won the prize? The king chose the second picture. Do you know why?

“Because,” explained the king, “peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart. That is the real meaning of peace.”

I have had a number of conversations about truth and lies since I wrote a piece recently called Religion and Lies, and I have been reflecting on a number of issues that came forward, in particular, what is truth? And one person’s truth is another persons lies.

And it occurs to me that if the statement ‘one person’s truth is another persons lies’ is true, then this is probably at the root of most of the problems we face individually and in the world and it would be worth further investigation.

But how can we tell what is truth and what is lies? If someone is telling us that a particular object is a chair, then, even with beginners mind, we can assess whether this object looks like and feels like what we understand a chair to be, and we can sit on it and test whether if performs the function of a chair. And we can decide whether we am being told the truth or not.

Now, if I’m faced with something less ‘physical’ than a chair, say a thought or an opinion, what is the measure I can use? For example, what if I have the thought ‘I am not good enough’, how do I know if this is the truth or a lie. Well the first challenge is that we tend to think all our thoughts are true! But this is another story.

If I was serious about exploring my thoughts then I might ask myself ‘does this thought make me happy or not?’ (I have made an assumption here that it is our truth that we are entitled to be happy – you may not agree with this). And if it doesn’t I can decide it is a lie.

So one measure of truth could be, does this thought, idea, opinion, attitude, or belief (and the actions that result) move me closer to happiness, love, joy, compassion and inclusiveness, or does it move me further away.

If it moves me closer it’s the truth. If it moves me away from, it’s a lie.

There’s a story that started long before we were born and will continue long after we move on to the next Chapter. It’s a story of humans on this planet. Not a story about us in the sense of a history, but a story we have created and live within without really noticing.

It’s a story that has such power over us that we take it for granted and rarely question it. The story is about what it is to be human, our human nature, and it follows a similar pattern in all civilised cultures of the world. The story is passed from generation to generation in the form of attitudes, images, opinions and beliefs.

Our parents were the first to pass it to us. They taught us what was good and bad, and rewarded and punished us appropriately. They told us what we could and couldn’t do and how we should be in the world. In our schooling the next chapter of the story was told to us. We learned what we were good at and not good at, how we should behave and not behave and many other things. From our friends we learned what we had to be like to fit in, to be cool, and so we also live this chapter of the story.We were surrounded by images of what it is to be a man or a woman, father or mother in movies, on the TV, in magazines, and our religions supplied another chapter of the story.

What we never noticed. What nobody ever told us was that the story is not true. Almost everything we believe about ourselves has come from the Story of the Planet. Our opinions and beliefs are not really ours in the sense that we choose them, they are just part of the story that we have become part of.

For example we have been told that it is selfish to want to be happy. Yet who would rather spend their time with an unhappy person rather than a happy one? We all benefit if we are happy.

And the Story tells us that we can be happy by having more money, driving the right car, having a bigger house, having the ‘perfect’ partner, being beautiful and so on. Yet, while these might give us pleasure, they don’t give us lasting happiness and we keep searching for something more.

What the Story does not tell us is that happiness comes from inside us and not outside.

If we are really free to choose to be who we are, why do so many of us choose to be unhappy, to be in relationships that don’t work, to work in jobs that don’t fulfil us, to take drugs and alcohol to escape, to punish ourselves for our ‘mistakes’ and ‘failures’ over and over again, and to try live up to other people’s expectations of us?

What is it prevents us from just being who we are and knowing that this is good enough, that we are perfect? What we have not noticed is that we are the Story and the Storyteller. We have the power of self authority, literally to author our own story.

Once we begin to see the Story of the Planet then we begin to see that we can change the parts of it that don’t suit us or don’t meet our needs.

A first step in breaking free from the Story is to begin to notice how we react in our lives, the patterns of behaviour that are automatic. For example, what is it that people say or do that always makes us angry or sad or argumentative?

Then we can begin to explore what part of the Story about our self and the planet has us react this way. From this growing awareness we become better able to respond to life and see the choices open to us, rather being stuck on the same path.

We become better able to create a Story of happiness, love and peace.

I decided that this story is too long to fit in the narrow left-hand column so I have moved it to here.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Mike