Two Monks
Posted on Oct 07, 2009
In his collection of stories, The Song of the Bird, Father Anthony deMello re-tells this story:
“The Monk and the Woman”
Two Buddhist monks, on their way to the monastery, found an exceedingly beautiful woman at the riverbank. Like them, she wished to cross the river, but the water was too high. So one of the monks lifted her onto his back and carried her across.
His fellow monk was thoroughly scandalized. For two hours, he berated him on his negligence in keeping the rule: Had he forgotten that he was a monk? How did he dare touch a woman? And worse, carry her across the river? What would people say? Had he not brought their holy religion into disrepute? And so on.
The offending monk patiently listened to the never-ending sermon. Finally he broke in with, “Brother, I dropped that woman at the river. Are you still carrying her?”
A feature of high quality literature is that within it we find multiple readings; this story is no exception. We can wonder, questioningly, if the story would differ had the woman not been exceedingly beautiful. We can debate religiosity that falls short of service. Are there hidden reasons for the second monk’s judgmental attack? However, we will ultimately have to wrestle with the all-so-human behavior shown by the second monk when he just can’t “let it go.”
Parables catch our attention and speak to us because through them we easily relate to their imputed wisdom. In what ways and situations am I the second monk? While just as surely as there are no monks offering piggyback rides, nor rivers to cross as we traverse the RPDS campus, in the course of any school year this story is recast. Our lives away from campus offer similar challenges. The potentially healing advice of those last two sentences is hauntingly powerful; Christians call it Grace. Letting go is a vital virtue to learn.
