[Zen] Taste for Life

"There was once a man who was being chased by a ferocious tiger across a field. At the edge of the field there was a cliff. In order to escape the jaws of the tiger, the man caught hold of a vine and swung himself over the edge of the cliff.

Dangling down, he saw, to his dismay, there were more tigers on the ground below him! And, furthermore, two little mice were gnawing on the vine to which he clung. He knew that at any moment he would fall to certain death.

That's when he noticed a wild strawberry growing on the cliff wall. Clutching the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other and put it in his mouth.

He never before realized how sweet a strawberry could taste."

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Following are some interpretations of this story:

"There is often a desire to complete the story, to find a way out of this predicament or that dilemma. It is easy to forget that within the limitations of the moment, there is freedom. In this story, it’s the experience of the fresh taste of the strawberry. It is different in each case. Not every day can be an easy day for anyone. The freedom of the moment is always available, even when circumstances are grim."

[Zen Master Wu Kwang] "Facing our failings and our weakness and yet still again rousing up that energy of "try" is very much connected to our view of what it really means to be alive, to enliven our environment, to enliven our relationship and to be able to really be responsible and responsive."

And here is another "interesting" interpretation for this parable from smszen:

"Take this story (which is a variation of an old Zen story).
A woman hangs below the lip of a cliff, holding onto a root
that is pulling out, tiger above, thousand-foot drop below—
and, just nearby, a strawberry.
I’ve actually always disliked this story.
It seemed to be about getting what you could out of life,
and I didn’t really think that was the point.
But if we take it in as a dream,
we are all of it: we are the tiger, hungry for flesh—we are the strawberry,
hanging ripe and sweet in the sun. We are the woman whose arm aches from
holding on and who doesn’t want to fall. We are the taste in her mouth that is
fear, hunger and strawberry—whether she gets it or not.
We are the dirt falling from where the root pulls at it.
We are the air through which we are falling.
We are the falling, and
we are the vast universe in which we fall, all together, until
the falling itself is the ground we stand on.

So then the story is not at all, anymore, about what does she do!
The story is about asking, about tasting in our own mouth
—in our own life—
the full taste of our human dilemma.

The story is about love;
because when we are it, the whole thing,
when we know we are it,
we know how it is for woman, strawberry, tiger,
cliff and chasm to be falling together through space and time.
And then, tasting each bit as we fall,
we are free to do whatever it is we must do.

Why does this matter?
It matters because when we shut our lives out
when we refuse to taste, and refuse to fall
the shutting out creates lies in and between us,
and those lies hurt us and hurt others.

Life calls to us, calls again and again
asking of us our true and loving response,
which is what we have to offer
in thanks for the joy,
for tiger, strawberry, friend and wind, the taste of falling."

- Sarah Bender, Sensei