The Seer

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Once upon a time, two friends were having coffee together, looking out the window at the trees. One remarked that a certain tree was called a slippery elm, and that he could identify it without fail. Suddenly, a look of sadness crossed his face. “I can’t look at that tree without seeing it as a ’slippery elm’.” He had realized that words and thinking were his only view, that something important within him had been lost.

The other had quite a different expression. He saw the trap his friend was caught in, and had a glimpse of the way out. As he gazed at the tree, he noticed he could switch back and forth between two radically different views. One, the paradigm of words, thoughts, and feelings, laid a thick veil over the tree, declaring it was a concept based on experience. This was the view in which his friend was trapped. It was nearly solid, and kept the actual perception of the ‘tree’ hidden beneath a cloud of thought and memory.

The other view, the one he realized he had almost forgotten, was one of wonder and clearness. There was no ‘tree’ or anything else, but there was. Everything was as new, but not differentiated. He knew not what he was looking at, but this in itself was all that was needed to know enough. The view was simple, obvious, and without description. It left room for possibility, being infinite in scope. There was no memory or experience to rob him of the moment.

He never forgot the gift of honesty his friend had given him. By admitting his dilemma of mind, the trap of ego and conditioning, the friend had shown him the trap of experience, and the freedom of the listening attention.

Author unknown