A Lambkin's Tools

Mystical Series : XV

 

 

 

I first came to meet the lambkin in my youth. He told me that knowledge is not a self possession but should be shared with everyone. He has been very persuasive.

 

But more than anyone else, I realized later that he was actually referring to himself and his thirst for understanding. A kid? He plays with knowledge like a toy! I was bewildered. But as I grew up I realized I had a greater difficulty. How to communicate to the subtle senses in us the vast, immense nature of adult experience in the world.

 

I thought perhaps I might refer to somethings as good and some as bad. I could do cowboys and Indians. The idea was to communicate in a way as to create a separation in his sensation of events, so that he'll identify with one part and view the other from his perspective. Well, in some cases it was bound to cause a certain absolute right in what he was doing but that could be corrected later.

 

I realized later that our cultures are very learned in the way they solve the problem. Where a kid is fastidious about always being right, in his own way, our children's literature raises stories of witches who would punish and eat little boys who are stubborn. Macbeth is certainly a fine example.

 

In other writings, they encourage the kid to make a fool of the other and teach him to be a bully. Someday when he has to defend his actions, he finds that he is not the only one who is right. They are many, many others so designed as to draw the kid to act in a way as to create a learning experience. 

 

The one that I like best of all is the subtle way that an individual might guide the kid to bend the rules a little. A little fib, some shenaniganism, a trick or a play on puns, can sometimes go a long way. The fact that we are doing it to our own fastidious correctness must have occured to us, but when we do find out later, it brings a ruinous attitude of bad humor to us. We are forced to review our motives.

 

The process is not difficult but it is tedious. Covered up by all manner of defenses, detours, sideroads and the usual fan club, we find it hard sometimes to get to what we want to face up to. Here's where Zen buddhism brings in a little help. A thorn is taken out with a thorn they say, meaning you must engage the same humorous attitude to heal yourself as when you were smiling when you dug the grave for a friend. Unmindfully!

 

It may take a while to cotton onto the practice and we borrow that term that was born out of slavery, because we can. We realize that it has made us share in the pain and glory of others. Perhaps we deigned to do so. Who knows.