Four Parablesby Mikhayah ben David

בשם יהוה הרחמן הרחם/بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

The Colonists and the King...

There once were colonialists who travelled to a far away land. When they arrived they asked, in their own language, to be taken to the king of the land where they had arrived. They spoke a strange language and the people did not understand so they took them to the shaman…

The shaman was a magical person, and he could learn the languages of birds, beasts or any tribe of man. He quickly deduced the language of these colonists and told them he would take them to his king…

But he did not go to a palace, mansion or castle as the invaders expected. He took them instead to the forest where they saw a man sitting almost as if in a trance, looking straight through them. Curiously, he was not the same color as the invaders, nor the natives. They had never seen skin like he had. It was almost as if this king was green from sitting in the forest so long! The shaman, however, told them that it was the reverse; that the forest was green from the man!

The invaders interrogated him, first directly and with cordiality but the king did not reply. He just stared right through them! They grew frustrated – their cordial introductions turned to rage and demanding - and they threatened to decapitate him if he did not respond.

But this king of the shaman’s people did not reply to their demands. As they erupted in anger, and lashed out at him with their swords, it happened that he was no longer in the space which they had lunged towards. The king tapped them on the back of their shoulders. As they turned around he gave them a huge smile. With each subsequent attempt to attack him, it seemed that the king would either move so quickly that it looked as though he had dematerialized, or he actually had dematerialized. This is what the colonists asserted…

“Which is it!?!” They demanded of the shaman. “Is he some sort of magician like you, able to manipulate things, or does he just possess uncanny speed!?! Is this why you regard him as your king?”

“It is neither,” the shaman replied. “He is actually in both places. He cannot be cut with any objects, nor killed. He simply stopped allowing you to see him in the place where you attacked him, and now he is showing you that he was also behind you all along.”

The Thieves in the Kingdom...

There once was a King. In his kingdom there were many villages, many people, many animals, hills, valleys, rivers, lakes and streams… Within this kingdom the King built an enormous house for his servants to live in. The house was beautiful and abundant, so far beyond mere sufficiency that there was room to spare in everyone's living quarters. The only request that the King had was that while the servants lived there free of charge they run the Kingdom; gathering and grinding their harvest into bread, adding the leaven, waiting patiently for its rise, and producing enormous loaves to feed everyone in the kingdom without asking for additional payment in return, from him or from others…

The servants lived there happily, as the surrounding areas were not nearly as nice, either far too hot or far too cold. They lived there for many years but over time the house was over taken by robbers who would come periodically; taking what they wanted and leaving; coming and going when they felt the whim.

In time the robbers returned... But by the time they returned there was nothing left to steal and so the servants were confused at their presence. “You already have everything you could possibly want. All we have left here are scraps of food. What more do you expect to find by ransacking us again?”

But the robbers said that they were there to inform the servants of good news; that they no longer needed to live in these servant’s quarters; that they no longer needed to even work! “The king has now decided that you may live without doing any work unless you want to.”

“What do you mean?” the servants replied, “the King no longer wants us to work for him?”

“No, no, no! The king, of course would like to see you still devoted to him but there is no need to do so, he will not punish you if you do not work and you will be rewarded either way.”

This came as quite a shock to the servants. First of all the King had promised a very special son would come one day. This son would protect them from those who might harm them while they worked; people like the thieves... He would liberate them; saving them from oppression. But they had not met this son yet. Perhaps he was alive but it had not come to their attention if he was. Perhaps he was born and was growing to maturity. They had met many close to the King who they referred to as his sons. Yet, conversely, they had also met many imposters pretending to be the King’s son, it was in fact a common thing to hear from the deranged and from the charlatans who sought personal gain. Yet here was another one who they had not even heard of but from these robbers? It seemed difficult for them to believe on its own, and coming from these robbers it seemed a certainty that it was fabricated.

The servants were confused and ask about this. “How could this be? Why wouldn't he be concerned with work being done? In the Kingdom there is always much work to be done or everything would fall into disarray and all would suffer.”

But the robbers explained that the King’s own son had done all of the work in the Kingdom and this was because he was so immensely powerful that he did it all in one afternoon and then died from exhaustion! However, they asserted, the King had used his royal power to magically raise his son back to life, never to need to work again either. It was only that he needed to do this work for everyone, just this one time, this one day and then no one actually needed to work again!

The servants however explain that they were not overworked; that they served the King not only because they loved the King but because the Kingdom itself is entrusted to them.

“When I work hard I benefit from it. I am not worked to death by the King, I work enough that my muscles grow stronger and I shed fat from my body. If working is no longer important for me then how could this be from the King? Does he want me to sit around and get fat and weak.”

The thieves replied: “No, no, no! You see, in the mansion there are weight rooms, gymnasiums… Just come with us and you will see. You can get strong and lean there! We all meet there every Sunday and workout a little before lunch. But there are some who like the weight rooms so much that they get very big and strong. We have teams for them to fight against one another in pretend battles and after we all gather on Sundays we have lunch and then watch them! It is so much better than this yolk of slavery that you have been bound to! Don’t you see that this is good news!?!”

Yet the people were still largely unconvinced… “But in the Kingdom we simply live our lives and are strengthened throughout the day with normal activities. Why bother with a gymnasium if your daily bread is gained through sufficient work to strengthen you?”

The thieves interrupted angrily: “Well if you do not come with us then your house will be destroyed and you will be left on the street!”

Another of the people retorted: “All of this because of the King supposedly wanting to work his son to death? This does not sound like our King; the King of our ancestors and the King that we know still today. He would not subject his son to death just to do our work! If the work was so great that he must die then he would first call upon his servants to share in the toil and then say ‘Look, my own son is working alongside of you so you know that there is no favoritism!’ He would not send he son to die so that we should recline on sofas all day, eating rich food and then forced to work off the excess in the gymnasium instead of in the fields, harvesting our own sustenance and playing ridiculous games of make believe battles while the kingdom lies in disarray! I believe that you have a different King than us, and that your king is not at all like our King. For starters, our King would never solicit robbers to command his own servants. What sign do you have from the King as authentication?”

The thieves replied: “We saw the sign of the King’s son in the clouds and it told us that we would be victorious in the slaughter our enemies! We then killed every last one of them just as the sign alluded and by this we know that we are the true servants of the King, his new chosen, and that the sign of the King for us is the sword stuck blade down in your fallen bodies.”

As they said this the people saw that they had been discussing all of this while others amongst the thieves had ransacked the kingdom and burnt the King’s own house to the ground...

The Carpenter and the Absent Workers...

There once was a carpenter who wanted to build a great house...

This house, however, was not like any other house. This house existed in a land where there were a myriad of apartments; high-priced, high-rise apartments that packed people in where they barely had room to live. Still, the people had little options but to live in such an environment.

It was this situation that caused the carpenter to seek to build a mansion with many apartments; a mansion that his father was actually the architect of. It wasn't long before the man had met a number of individuals who wanted to help...

“First,” he said, “we will need to obtain more specialized skills and workers. What we do not know we must learn, and in the meantime, while we are learning, we must save and buy materials for this complex.”

The carpenter estimated, in accordance with what his father had told him, that it would take 300 workers and a dozen overseers of another supervisor, who would himself manage a dozen workers, as the overseer would manage both this supervisor and a dozen of his own workers. The first task, therefore, was to acquire and train these dozen overseers, and then these secondary managers. They would then each find and train a dozen suitable workers of their own...

In the mean time they would have to work very hard, both in training for the project and in investing their time towards obtaining the necessary materials for the building.

After a few years it seemed that there were approximately one dozen of such individuals and even some secondary managers. “At this rate,” the carpenter said, “it should only be a short while before we have the necessary workers, training and funding for this project!”

But even this short while seemed like an eternity for many of the workers who had been training on job sites where much smaller buildings were thrown up much more quickly, by financers who had virtually unlimited funds due to their hands being dipped in the coffers of the high-rise apartment industry. But the carpenter would not get involved in this dirty business, and reasserted to his helpers that such was the direct antithesis of their project. “We must be patient,” he said, “and follow my father's plans exactly. If we do,” he continued, “then it will only be a short while longer...”

...but those who said they came to help stopped showing up for work. They stopped their training to obtain the necessary skills for the project, “What does this guy know about anything anyway?” They said. “Where the hell is this grand architect of a father anyway? We should follow what he says we need to train in when he is not even telling us!?! Instead his son, who himself is still training, is telling us what we need to know? Between all of us we've worked a lot of jobs and had a lot of training. i think we know enough to go off on our own and work on our own projects, or on more fruitful projects around; projects that are actually doing something now.”

So many of them, most even, went their separate ways and did their own things. Years later they remarked to him “Where is your project now? Where is that house you were supposed to build? Didn't you say it would only be a short while now?”

“My friends, don’t you see that this was with your help, and with all of us sticking to my father’s plan. I had many brothers before me who tried this same project and each of them faced the same problem. This project will only come about when the necessary people step up and help exactly as my father’s plan specifies. If this does not happen now then I will pass these blueprints on to a younger brother or even to my children. Eventually the project will be completed. My father is a great architect and he has assured me of this, and that is enough for me to be patient. The tasks are many that need to be done for such a project, but the workers are few. Pray then for more workers if you wish to see this all come to pass.”

The Master and His Son...

There was once a great Kung Fu fighter... as years went by he learned much not only about his own system but about the systems of other fights.

He realized that many techniques, qi kung, ideas about fighting, energy and the like were held in common, but there was not a single form that was the same from one style to the next.

One day the fighter had an epiphany; that forms were nonsense, styles were nonsense, and even adherence to techniques were nonsense. So many different styles had developed so many different types of techniques - after the method of any animal or anything to be mimicked - that any part of the body could be used as a striking surface. This reality was in fact a great secret that the most advanced masters guarded from their disciples; believing that knowledge of this would cause them much trouble before they attained the highest levels of understanding with wisdom.

The fighter began to teach this way and though he had been heir to a great system of Kung Fu, he taught his own son this method of formlessness.

...but this reality, while true, was unattainable to the son who did not have the years of form that his father had as foundation. He believed his father, that all of this was unnecessary, until he found himself in need of martial skill. Yet the teachings of his father failed him because he did not have form as a foundation.

...the father too, over many years, came to see all of his top students - those who originally learned form, styles, techniques, and so on - diminish in skill. In the past he had scoffed at the old fools who gathered together in the parks and ran the same form over and over, every morning; who did the same qi kung exercise over and over in ma bu, for one hour every day.

But as the man got older he learned much about the nature of fighting itself, but never developed the high level of skill that those repetitive old men developed. He came to learn too late, after squandering many years without form and system, that had he fused his understanding of formlessness with the framework of form then he would have attained completion. This is because formlessness without form is useless and form without formlessness is a prisoner. Yet merely understanding this was not enough to produce any accomplishment. He then, at the end, imparted this to his son, but he son would no longer listen to him or trust in his advice; seeing as how it had failed him in the past.

Let us learn the lessons upon hearing the story of this man, so that we do not walk in his footsteps.