The Monk, the Sparrow, and the Young Man
In a quiet monastery garden, a monk sat beneath an old tree, watching a
sparrow. For a while, the little bird busily pecked at grains scattered on the
ground. Then, it paused and looked back at the monk — as if observing him in
return.
A young man who had been watching this scene from a distance walked
closer and asked, "What is happening between you and the sparrow?"
The monk lifted his head and replied calmly, "I am a human being.
That is a sparrow."
Puzzled, the young man said, "I don't understand your answer."
The monk smiled gently. "How did you know something was happening
between us?"
The young man fell silent, realizing he had already made an assumption.
"Observe," the monk continued. "Don't judge."
Sensing something profound in those words, the young man asked,
"Can you elaborate?"
The monk chuckled softly. "That would take ages."
"Then how do I understand your message?" the young man
persisted.
"When a message is profound," the monk said, "you have
already found something in it. Why not simply take that?"
The young man smiled and replied, "I know you can at least share a
few thoughts on what you said."
The monk nodded and spoke:
"Neither am I the sparrow, so I cannot know what it thought of me.
Nor is the sparrow me, so it cannot know what I was observing. The moment we
think we understand, we begin to interpret. And interpretation is the enemy of
pure observation.
Whatever you observe, you will filter through your own judgments. But
those judgments do not reflect reality — they reflect your meaning of
reality. We are all judgmental beings. We sit on our judgments like thrones,
and in doing so, we fail to truly understand one another. That failure
eventually turns into hostility, hatred, and conflict.
So just observe. Be a good observer — long enough to understand fully,
before the judge inside you grabs the hammer."
M.L. Narendra Kumar
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