Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Lumberjack and Devil

I know I have been lazy and couldn't write for a while.

Yesterday it was a chilly night in İstanbul and as usual we were taking our lessons at the backyard of the philosopy school. Even the topic of the lecture was the "Sound of Silience" (an article from old Tibetian text) it was ended with a sufi story which I want to recite here.

Once upon a time there was a lumberjack who was a very good man in good faith. And there were living a viceous tribe next to his village and they were slitting people's head tieing them to a so called sacred tree.

One day, lumberjack decides to log that tree down in order to save innocent people. He takes his axe and runs to the village. On his way he comes across with devil. Lumberjack makes a ring round with devil, rises his axe to terminate him and devil starts begging: "Come on lumberjack! You'll log that tree and they'll find another, then another and this battle will last forever. Instead of this meaningless battle, I'll give you two pieces of gold every morning. So you won't need to work again and with the rest of the money you could help people". Lumberjack thinks about this offer and says "Oh that makes sense" and he goes his home wakes up in the morning and finds two pieces of gold. He prooves his family's needs and helps other people with the rest of his money. However, next day he cannot find two pieces of gold. He becomes frustrated and set off to find the devil. They come across again this time he cannot beat the it. So; lumberjack asks "Yesterday, I just beat you in a minute, I was about to kill you easily. But today, I cannot do anything." Devil says: "Yesterday you were so powerful because you were going to log that tree down for other people's sake. However, today you want something for yourself. That's why I could beat you now."

I think, life goes similar to that story. When we want something for other people's benefit, it generally realize. But we always wishing things for only ourselves.

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