AFTER winning several archery contests, the young and rather boastful champion challenged an old saint who was also renowned for his skill as an archer. The young man demonstrated remarkable technical proficiency when he hit a distant bull’s eye on his first try, and then split that arrow with his second shot. “There,” he said to the old man, “see if you can match that!”
Undisturbed, the master did not draw his bow, but rather motioned for the young archer to follow him up the mountain until they reached a deep chasm spanned by a rather flimsy and shaky log. Calmly stepping out into the middle of the unsteady and certainly perilous bridge, the old master picked a far away tree as a target, drew his bow, and fired a clean, direct hit.
“Now it is your turn,” he said as he gracefully stepped back onto the safe ground. Staring with terror into the seemingly bottomless and beckoning abyss, the young man could not force himself to step out onto the log, no less shoot at a target. “You have much skill with your bow,” the master said, sensing his challenger’s predicament, “but you have little skill with the mind that lets loose the shot!”
Now what was the old saint actually saying? “Everyone is better when on solid ground. You’re more assertive, more sure of yourself, yes, but when your stability is taken away, you are simply a child learning everything anew!” True isn’t it, when on solid ground with home and family, city or familiar town we are confident and sure. How different when all this isn’t there?
So what did the sage have which the skilled archer didn’t? He had a solid ground inside him. Something that was not shaken or pulled apart by circumstances. That’s very important for all of us to also have, especially in a world where we don’t know how tomorrow will be. We need to have the confidence in ourselves that we have the ability to fire our arrows, even if the ground around us is slippery, or flooded or even giving way.
And how does that confidence come about? When the ground we are standing on is not the ground of the earth but we stand on a rock that is our Master above. Just look at the old sage. Not shaken by the chasm or perilous bridge, because his inner self was resting in quiet abandonment in the hands of the Master. He was on solid ground..!
