Truth and the cabbage

Truth and the cabbage



by…Kalidas Sawkar



The boy said “My father says this is not the truth he meant, he knows truth is truth; its size does not matter. He wants to know what the ‘Eternal Truth’ is.”
The teacher took him to the garden and picked up a cabbage. “Look, with this you will understand how the eternal truth is.”

The boy took the cabbage and peeled off its outer leaf. Under it was just as he had often seen at home. He peeled another leaf and threw it away and continued peeling and throwing them away. The teacher kept smiling. In time, all the leaves were peeled and thrown away with the boy having only the harder stalk left in his hand.
The teacher asked “Now, what do you have to say?”
“Teacher, is this the Eternal Truth? Oh, where is it?” boy asked.

The teacher swept his hand over the strewn cabbage leaves. “All this is the Eternal Truth in whose quest you came to me. Every occasion you threw a leaf away you cast aside the Truth of the Moment imagining Eternal Truth to be something dramatically different from the everyday truth arriving at the end. My child, ‘Eternal Truth’ is the description of every second that we ignore anticipating the holy moment when something hallowed will appear and introduce itself to us. In doing so, we spurn every moment and the opportunity that comes riding on it. The end is the hard reality of the moments we have not exploited and that shall not return; earlier leaves were the youthful part of this hard stalk, too. In simple words, live every moment fully, do not wait for the holy enlightenment.


From…Kaliyug ki kahania


Published in “Paths of Wisdom” in ‘Herald’ of March 25, 2011