RITUAL
A Story
By
VIKRAM KARVE
We perform so many rituals without understanding the spirit behind the ritual.
A ritual is an action performed purely for symbolic value.
In many cases there is no logic or rational explanation for the ritual.
This apocryphal story from ancient wisdom "The Mystical Cat" illustrates how rituals begin and are established and then how rituals are blindly followed for years and years ...
THE MYSTICAL CAT
A seeker joined a monastery to learn meditation and the art of living.
Every evening all students and disciples assembled in the large meditation hall for a discourse by the Spiritual Guru followed by group meditation.
Just before the meditation session commenced the disciples would catch a cat, tie it up and place it on the lap of the Spiritual Guru, who would then start caressing the cat and begin the discourse and meditation session. After the event was over, the cat would be untied and set free.
This was the established daily ritual and the Guru would start the meditation session only after the tied up cat was placed on his lap, so much so that once when the cat could not be found, the meditation session was delayed and all the seekers launched a desperate hunt till they found the cat which was duly tied up and placed on the Guru’s lap and only then did he start his discourse-cum-meditation session.
The seeker was quite perplexed at the mystery of the tied up cat and the significance of this ritual. He wondered: "What is the significance of the tied up cat placed on the Guru's lap and what is its correlation with meditation?"
He asked around but no one knew the answer till someone told him to ask a wise old man who lived in a cave up the hills, so our curious seeker trudged up the hills to meet the wise old man and ask him the significance of this time-honoured ritual.
“It is like this,” the wise old man said, “one evening, many years ago, when the then Spiritual Guru and his disciples began their evening meditation, a cat that lived in the monastery made so much noise that it distracted them and disturbed their meditation pratice. So the Guru ordered that the cat be tied up during the evening discourse-cum-meditation practice. This practice of tying up the cat before meditation practice continued, so much so that even when the teacher died, the next Guru continued this tradition and a cat continued to be tied up during the meditation session.
When the cat died, another cat was brought to the monastery to be tied up during the evening meditation session, and when that cat too died they brought another cat to be tied up during meditation practice, and with the passage of time this has become such an established ritual that now no one can dare to start the meditation session without the tied up cat."
So, Dear Reader, if you see any ritual, custom or tradition for which there seems to be no rational or logical explanation, remember this story of the Mystical Cat...
VIKRAM KARVE
Copyright © Vikram Karve 2011
Vikram Karve has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
Vikram Karve has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
© vikram karve., all rights reserved.
VIKRAM KARVE educated at IIT Delhi, ITBHU Varanasi, The Lawrence School Lovedale, and Bishop's School Pune, is an Electronics and Communications Engineer by profession, a Human Resource Manager and Trainer by occupation, a Teacher by vocation, a Creative Writer by inclination and a Foodie by passion. An avid blogger, he has written a number of fiction short stories and creative non-fiction articles in magazines and journals for many years before the advent of blogging. His delicious foodie blogs have been compiled in a book "Appetite for a Stroll". A collection of his short stories about relationships titled COCKTAIL has been published and Vikram is currently busy writing his first novel and with his teaching and training assignments. Vikram lives in Pune with his family and his muse – his pet DobermanX girl Sherry, with whom he takes long walks thinking creative thoughts.
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