There are a number of insightful stories in spiritual communities that involve looking at the same situation from three different perspectives. Sometimes there are three people meeting the same challenge, sometimes there is one person going through the same task three different times. Usually the first two parts of the story represent two extremes, and then the third part presents a better, more reasonable and enlightened perspective. The more enlightened perspective takes the two realities into account but points to a third possibility that commonly transcends the normal dualities we find ourselves in.
Well, the story of the monk and the three rain barrels is no different. And like any good story, it’s often told a little differently each time.
In one version, a monk is walking along the meditation path and he comes to a rain barrel. Inside of it there is an ant drowning in the water. This monk thinks to himself, “this is the natural way of things, I shouldn’t interfere,” and continues along his way.
A second monk then walks by and sees the ant. He thinks to himself, “hmm… if I save this ant, that will give me good karma, and I will have a good rebirth.” He then scoops up the ant and puts it in a safe place.
A third monk walks by, feeling his feet on the earth, the sun on his face, and the breeze across his skin. He sees the ant, scoops it up, puts it in a safe place, and continues on, without a single thought coming to his mind.
Lessons
It is a simple story, but a profound one that helps illustrate many deep concepts rooted in Eastern philosophy. If we look at the second monk, we see that most Eastern religions are steeped in a cosmology of karma and reincarnation. Karma says that we will reap what we sow, so good actions will give us good rewards and bad actions will give us bad rewards. But this monk is mistaken because the spiritual path is not one of accumulating as much good karma as possible to obtain all the riches, because no amount of material gain will provide lasting peace and happiness. Spiritual liberation is when you have no karma at all, and thus nothing to keep you in bondage in the wheel of conditioned existence.
Looking at this second monk, we can also learn that any action performed just to get a reward, whether in this life or the next, is not right action. It is in fact a selfish action. If you do not kill someone because you are worried God will judge you, that is not the correct motivation for your action.
The goal of a spiritual path is to be free of all karma, which means both burning ones accumulated karma from previous lives, and not creating any new karma in the process. This tends to look a lot like doing nothing, such as sitting in meditation or staring with eyes wide open at the sun. This is a practice seen in traditional yoga traditions, as intense austerity measures are often seen as a method to burn away one’s old karma.
So the first monk might think that if he lets the world be as it is, vis-à-vis the prime directive, he will also not accumulate any karma. However the first monk is also mistaken, because in considering whether or not to save the ant, his thought patterns generate their own karma, and in choosing to do nothing, he still creates negative karma for himself. The first monk is living in delusion, believing that he is somehow separate from the world around him, rather than co-arising with it. Even doing nothing is doing something.
The third monk has it right on a number of levels. What is most important is that he does the right thing without even thinking about it. He is practicing what is known as wu wei, a concept that is hard to translate but is most often referred to as “effortless action.” Wu wei reflects a pure way of being that involves no self-consciousness whatsoever, no second guessing of one’s decisions.
The concept of wu wei is key to the noblest kind of action according to the philosophy of Daoism. It is a state of total harmony with the world, a free-flowing spontaneity of action that arises not from deductive reasoning, nor out of duty or desire for reward, but simply from a state of emptiness. Sinologist Jean François Billeter describes it as a “state of perfect knowledge of the reality of the situation, perfect efficaciousness and the realization of a perfect economy of energy.” So the third monk practices that special, almost paradoxical way of being that naturally arises when we are living in pure harmony with all that is.
The idea of wu wei was part of the inspiration behind this poem from my latest poetry collection, Pebbles.:
When we are able to drop out our solidified sense of ego as the “doer” and realize we are all in one continuous process of “being,” we will finally find peace.
Another Version
I always loved this version of the story, and often return to it in my teachings. But just recently I heard another version. I was listening to one of Leo Buscaglia’s wonderful lectures, and he told it a different way, that illustrates many of the same points.
The first person comes across the ant in a rain barrel and becomes enraged. He exclaims, “what are you doing in MY rain barrel?” and then squishes it.
The next person comes, looks in, sees the ant there, and says, “You know, it’s a hot day here, even for ants. You’re not hurting anything. Go ahead and sit in my rain barrel.”
But the third person comes along and has a different approach. He sees the ant in the rain barrel and spontaneously feeds it a handful of sugar.
The first person does his actions out of selfishness and anger. The second does his action out of tolerance. But the third person does an entirely new action out of pure love and compassion.
I like this version of the story as well because the feeding of sugar to the ant represents bringing a level of sweetness and compassion to our life, to think about the people in our life that we can serve, and what we might be able to do to make their lives better.
And the third person does this with wu wei too. They don’t help the ant to get a reward or get good karma, they love the ant because it feels good to love. We can practice our love with that same attitude, not loving to be loved in return or get something in return, but simply loving to love.
The Moral of the Story
The fundamental moral of the story, no matter how it’s told, is that there will always be a special middle way to take. The Buddha was the first person to explain this path of the middle way, which is why all Buddhists are such big fans of non words. Concepts like non-judgment, non-attachment, and non-striving are the special way between two extremes. Non-attachment is that special middle path between getting overly attached and overly detached. This is why so many stories involve three situations, to show the two extremes that most people find themselves in, and to point out the third possibility that is always available to us.
Not only that, but the middle way is the one most loving and most at peace. It is a state of living fully from the heart, naturally doing the right thing without giving it a second thought.
