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Everyone knows folk
tales, parables and allegoric fables are stories that exhibit a struggle
between good and evil using symbolic characters to portray a person’s effort
to achieve salvation by offering a moral lesson. They are usually simple –
often childishly so, as in Aesop – an easy to understand and digest. Some
however, are quite literally baffling. Consider this following one, for
example, which has been attributed to native American Indian lore.
A scorpion returning with food for her
children lost its way and found its path home barred by a river. Being
unable to swim it didn’t know what to do till it spied a fox loitering
nearby. Realizing that foxes were excellent swimmers she asked him if he
would carry her on its back to the other shore as otherwise her children
would starve. The fox agreed to carry the scorpion but knowing all about
their reputation did so only on condition that she would not sting him. But
the scorpion did indeed sting the fox when they were in midstream. As the
poison took its effect and the fox began to sink, he asked the scorpion if
she was completely nuts for doing something which not only resulted in his
death but also her own and that of her children. The drowning scorpion
replied, “It’s in my nature to sting.”
So how would a Red Indian shaman expounding
this fable outside his teepee explain the moral? That foxes are stupid, and
people are foolish who accept at face value the words of a scorpion when
they know the scorpion will sting them? Or that scorpions are evil and
people who, like leopards which cannot change their spots, should be avoided
at all costs? Or that this is how things are in the world of foxes and
scorpions and one should learn to accept that fact?
Perhaps. But perhaps the story should have
carried on a little longer. What if the drowning scorpion had then turned
around and asked the fox that if he knew all about the reputation of
scorpions then why had he offered her a ride in the first place? Was it
because he was adhering to some higher principle which says we must do
things we know could cause harm to us, because not to do so would eventually
cause us the most harm? The fox replied that it was nothing of the kind.
“It’s in my nature to help,” he said. The moral of the story would then be
that all suffering comes from trying to be something which on is not. |
