An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy.
"It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego." He continued, "The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"
The old Cherokee simply replied...
That's great, Lewy. And how true.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Luther.
ReplyDeleteThis allegory has an interesting history; nobody seems to be able to pin the origin. Googling around I saw a version of it quoted in a Billy Graham book.
I got this version during a talk given where I practice meditation.
So it has ecumenical appeal.
I found something interesting, which may be just me, or may be more general:
It's not always necessary to feed the good wolf. The good wolf can fast longer than the bad wolf. When I'm in a crap mood and I can't manage to feed the good wolf, simply deciding not to feed the bad wolf is enough to turn things around.
Sadly the bad wolf seems to gain strength faster when fed.
In any case I've become attuned to the asymmetry between mah wolves. YMMV.
I wish comments would take blockquotes.
ReplyDelete"It's not always necessary to feed the good wolf. The good wolf can fast longer than the bad wolf. When I'm in a crap mood and I can't manage to feed the good wolf, simply deciding not to feed the bad wolf is enough to turn things around.
Sadly the bad wolf seems to gain strength faster when fed."
Insightful and I agree. Especially on the strength of the bad wolf.
Have you read Autobiography of a Yogi? An early edition.
I like that story. There are times I need to keep it in mind.
ReplyDeleteLewy14, Luther, RadioMattM....
ReplyDeleteInteresting that this old proverb is cited in these times. It is also cited on The Mustang Project website, posted here recently, by the owner, substanially Cherokee lineage herself.
See: http://themustangproject.wordpress.com/2010/01/09/cherokee-proverb/
Synchronicity? That is interesting, Ari. I still think Jung was on to something. As to the proverb I think its inherent truth is needed more than ever in these days and times. It is for me personally anyway.
ReplyDeleteAn off topic question. I was going to do a post with photos from an email and saved to my desktop. The quality is fine enough from the desktop to see small details. But in the post, after uploading with Blogger, the quality deteriorated to an extent that the details were too blurry to read even after zooming in on the page. I tried using the 'large' selection when uploading and that made no difference.
ReplyDeleteAm I doing something wrong? Is there anything I could do to fix this problem? I'm guessing not, simply a limitation of Blogger I suspect.
Oh Vikram, darling! Paging Vikram from tech support....
ReplyDelete