The Essence of Faiths
Whispers from everywhere
Spiritual Lion or Ordinary Goat?
There was once a female lion who was heavily pregnant. It had been hunting unsuccessfully for some time and was very weak. Then it came across a herd of goats. It gathered all its strength and sprang upon them, but it was so weak that it died in mid air and fell dead amongst them.
But the lion cub was born alive and well and the goats, being of a maternal nature, adopted it and nursed it. So the lion cub grew up to think of itself as a goat; it ate grass like a goat and bleated like a goat.
After a long time the herd was attacked again. But this time the attacker was a huge lion in the prime of its power. All the goats ran away but the lion/goat, much to its surprise, stood its ground. The huge lion stopped and asked, “What are you doing here?” The lion/goat pawed at the ground, bleated meekly, and nibbled some grass.
So the huge lion grabbed the lion/goat by the scruff of the neck, dragged it to a pool of water, and held its face over it. “Look you have the face of a lion just like mine”, it said. The lion/goat just bleated again. The huge lion then dragged the lion/goat to a place where some freshly killed meat was hidden. It tore off a piece and pushed it into the mouth of the lion/goat.
At first the lion/goat felt a bit sick but then it noticed the warmth of the blood as it trickled down its throat into its belly - no grass had ever tasted like this. It began to feel elated and almost drunk. It smacked its lips and licked its jaws. It got up and opened its mouth with a mighty yawn as if it had just woken from a night of sleep - a night that had held it in its dreamy spell for many years. It stretched, arched its back and extended its claws. It lashed the ground with its tail and then from its throat there burst the triumphant roar of a lion.
When the roar was finished the huge lion asked, “Now do you know what you really are?”
The above fable is adapted from Heinrich Zimmer’s book “The Philosophies of India” in which he says,
“The primary concern of Indian Philosophy has always been a radical changing of man’s nature and, therewith, a renovation of his understanding both of the outer world and of his own existence; a change as complete as possible, such as will amount, when successful, to a total conversion or rebirth.”
Christians also talk of being “born again”. What are we to understand by this? What does the fable say to you? Are you ready to be a spiritual lion or are you content to be an ordinary goat?