The Strawberry [and two tigers] koan

I was a 19-year-old student of marketing when I first read “the strawberry” koan.

It has captured my mind. It was a marker, the pinnacle of the art of truly living. It brought home the point of being present, enjoying-life-no-matter-what beautifully. Little did I know it’s been a herald of my lifelong “roadmap to Emotional Intelligence” project.

Here it is, the Buddha’s parable (also a Zen koan):

“A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away at the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!”