58. The Cat in the Well

A cat fell into a well once. People lowered a basket into the well to rescue the cat. The cat, which was tired because of swimming for several minutes, gladly climbed onto the basket and sat in it. People were relieved and they began drawing the basket up. But as it was being pulled up, the basket began swinging a bit in the air. The cat panicked, and jumped out of the basket!

The people lowered the basket again, cat got into it, and while pulling it up the basket swung, and the cat jumped out again. By the third time, the cat's tendencies had changed. It now knew jumping out was pointless. It just held onto the basket even when it swung.

But there was a final problem. When the basket was on level with the ground, seeing the edge of the wall, the desperate cat jumped towards it. The hanging basket was not a solid base. The calculations of the cat which had only jumped from solid surfaces, failed. The basket got pushed like a pendulum, and the cat could not reach the wall. Back into the well it went.

The next time the cat had learned all its lessons, and it was also tired probably. It got into the basket and did not move until the people took the basket out of the well.

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Swimming in the ocean of mundaneness, we look for some support to draw us out of it. Although the support does come, it is not familiar to our present understanding of life. And so we jump out of it again and again into our familiar old ways. The known devil seems better than an unknown angel. But the necessary intelligence eventually blossoms to appreciate the swinging basket.