A beautiful zen story (koan) that I read recently – so simple, so true, so inspiring…
“Once there was a man walking across an open field, when suddenly a tiger appeared and began to give chase. At the edge of the field there was a cliff. In order to escape the jaws of the tiger, the man caught hold of a vine and swung himself over the edge of the cliff. Dangling down, he saw, to his dismay, there were more tigers on the ground below him! And, furthermore, two little mice were gnawing on the vine to which he clung. He knew that at any moment he would fall to certain death. That’s when he noticed a wild strawberry growing on the cliff wall. Clutching the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other and put it in his mouth.
He never before realized how sweet a strawberry could taste.”
So next time, when the pressure of the now, the traumas of the past and the worries of tomorrow appear, try to see the fresh strawberry that is actually always there…only sometimes it hides in the recesses of our minds…
And maybe the sweet taste of the strawberry is experienced just because of us being present with what is, with no relations to the content of the specific event in time…
Alit