THE LITTLE FISH

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THE LITTLE FISH

“Excuse me,” said an ocean fish,

“You are older than I so can you tell me

where to find this thing they call the Ocean?”

“The Ocean,” said the older fish, “is the thing you are in now,”

“Oh, this? But this is water.

What I’m seeking is the Ocean,”

said the disappointed fish as he swam away to search elsewhere.


He came to the Master in sannyasi robes.

And he spoke sannyasi language:

“For years I have been seeking God.

I have sought Him everywhere that He is said to be:

On mountain peaks, the vastness of the desert,

and the silence of the cloister and the dwellings of the poor.”

“Have you found him?” the Master asked.

“No. I have not. Have you?”

What could the Master say?

The evening sun was sending shafts of golden light into the room.

Hundreds of sparrows were twittering on a banyan tree.

In the distance one could hear the sound of highway traffic.

A mosquito droned a warning that it was going to strike...

And yet this man could sit there and say he had not found Him.

After a white he left, disappointed, to search elsewhere.



Stop searching, little fish.

There isn’t anything to look for.

All you have to do is look.

The Song of the Bird

Anthony de Mello

THE WORLD FAIR OF RELIGIONS

105

THE WORLD FAIR OF RELIGIONS

My friend and I went to the World Fair of Religions.

Not a trade fair.

But the competition was fierce, the propaganda loud.

The handouts at the Jewish Stall said that God was All-Compassionate and the Jews were his Chosen People.

The Jews. No other people were as Chosen as they.

At the Moslem Stall we learnt that God was All-Merciful and Mohammed his only Prophet.

Salvation comes from listening to God’s Prophet.

The message at the Christian Stall was:

God is Love and there is no salvation outside the Church.

Join the Church or risk damnation forever.

On the way out I asked my friend what he thought of God.

He replied, “He’s bigoted fanatical and cruel.”


Back home, I said to God, “How do you put up with this sort of thing?

Don’t you see they have been giving you a bad name for centuries?”

God said, “It wasn’t I who organized the Fair.

In fact, I’d be too ashamed to visit it.”

The song of the bird

Anthony de Mello

Label Makers

22

Label Makers

Life is like heady wine.

Everyone reads the label on the bottle.

Hardly anyone tastes the wine.

Buddha once pointed to a flower and asked each of his disciples to say something about it.

One pronounced a lecture.

Another a poem.

Yet another a parable.

Each outdid the other in depth and erudition.

Label-makers!


Mahakashyap smiled and held his tongue.

Only he had seen the flower.


If I could only taste a bird,

a flower,

a tree,

a human face!

But, alas, I have no time.

My energy is spent deciphering the label.

The Song of the Bird

Anthony de Mello

The Dream Contract

68

THE DREAM CONTRACT

Nasruddin was fast asleep at nine in the morning.

The sun was in the sky, the birds were singing in the trees and his breakfast was getting cold.

So his wife decided to wake him.

He woke up in a rage.

"Why did you wake me up just now?" he yelled.

"The sun has risen in the sky," said she,

"the birds are singing in the trees and your breakfast is getting cold."

"Breakfast be damned," he said,

"I was about to sign a contract worth a million grammes of gold!"

With that he closed his eyes to recapture his shattered dream and those million grammes of gold.

Now Nasruddin was cheating in that contract and his business partner was a tyrant.

If, on recapturing the dream, he stops his cheating, he will become a saint.

If he struggles to free the people from the oppression of the tyrant he will be a freedom fighter.

If, in the middle of it all,

he suddenly realizes he is dreaming,

he will become Awakened. Enlightened.

What kind of saint or freedom fighter are you if you are still asleep?

THE SONG OF THE BIRD

Anthony de Mello

THE EGG

44

THE EGG

Nasruddin earned his living selling eggs.

Someone came to his shop one day and said,

"Guess what I have in my hand."

"Give me a clue," said Nasruddin.

"I shall give you several:

It has the shape of an egg, the size of an egg.

It looks like an egg, tastes like an egg and smells like an egg.

Inside it is yellow and white.

It is liquid before it is cooked,

becomes thick when heated.

It was, moreover laid by a hen..."

"Aha! I know!" said Nasruddin.

"It is some kind of cake!"


The expert misses the obvious!

The Chief Priest misses the Messiah!

THE SONG OF THE BIRD

Anthony de Mello

WHO AM I?

74

WHO AM I?

A tale from Attar of Neishapur.

The lover knocked at his Beloved's door.

"Who knocks?" said the Beloved from within.

"It is I," said the lover.

"Go away. This house will not hold you and me."

The lover withdrew and pondered for years on the words the Beloved had said.

Then he returned and knocked again.

"Who knocks?"

"It is you."

The door was immediately opened.

THE SONG OF THE BIRD

Anthony de Mello

DON’T CHANGE

52

DON'T CHANGE

I was a neurotic for years.

Anxious, depressed, selfish.

And everyone kept telling me to change.

And I resented them, and agreed with them, and wanted to change, but simply couldn't, no matter how I tried.

What hurt the most was that, like the others, my closest friend kept urging me to change.

So I felt powerless and trapped.

One day he said "Don't change.

I love you as you are."

Those words were music to my ears:

"Don't change. Don't change.

Don't change... I love you as you are."

I relaxed. I came alive.

And, suddenly, I changed!

Now I know that I couldn't really change till I found someone to love me whether I changed or not.

Is this how you love me, God?

THE SONG OF THE BIRD

Anthony de Mello S. J.

DID YOU HEAR THAT BIRD SING?

12

DID YOU HEAR THAT BIRD SING?

Hindu India developed a magnificent image to describe God's relationship with Creation.

God 'dances' Creation. He is the Dancer, Creation is his Dance.

The dance is different from the dancer,

yet it has no existence apart from him.

You cannot take it home in a box,

if it pleases you.

The moment the dancer stops, the dance ceases to be.

In our quest for God, we think too much, reflect too much, and talk too much.

Even when we look at this dance that we call creation,

we are the whole time thinking,

talking (to ourselves and others) reflecting,

analyzing, philosophizing. Words. Noise.

Be silent and contemplate the Dance.

Just look: a star, a flower, a fading leaf, a bird, a stone...

any fragment of the Dance will do.

Look. Listen. Smell. Touch. Taste.

And, hopefully, it won't be long before you see Him—the Dancer Himself!

The disciple was always complaining to his Master,

"You are hiding the final secret of Zen from me."

And he would not accept the Master's denials.

One day they were walking in the hills when they heard a bird sing.

"Did you hear that bird sing?" said the Master.

"Yes," said the disciple.

"Well, now you know that I have hidden nothing from you."

"Yes."

If you really heard a bird sing,

if you really saw a tree...

you would know.

Beyond words and concepts.

What was that you said?

You have heard dozens of birds sing and seen hundreds of trees?

Ah, was it the tree you saw or the label?

If you look at a tree and see a tree,

you have really not seen the tree.

When you look at the tree and see a miracle—

then, at last, you have seen!

Did your heart never fill with wordless wonder when you heard a bird in song?

THE SONG OF THE BIRD

Anthony de Mello S. J.

MONKEY SALVATION FOR A FISH

7

MONKEY SALVATION FOR A FISH

"What on earth are you doing?"

said I to the monkey

when I saw him Hit a fish from the water

and place it on a tree.

"I am saving it from drowning'," was the reply.

The sun that gives sight to the eagle blinds the owl.

THE SONG OF THE BIRD

Anthony de Mello S. J.

THE SONG OF THE BIRD

3

THE SONG OF THE BIRD

The disciples were full of questions about God.

Said the Master, "God is Unknown, the Unknowable.

Every statement about Him,

every answer to your questions,

is a distortion of the Truth."

The disciples were bewildered.

"Then why do you speak about Him at all?"

"Why does the bird sing?" said the Master.

Not because he has a statement, but because he has a song.

The words of the Scholar are to be understood.

The words of the Master are not to be understood.

They are to be listened to as one listens to the wind in the trees and the sound of the river and the song of the bird.

They will awaken something within the heart that is beyond all knowledge.

THE SONG OF THE BIRD

Anthony de Mello

IDEOLOGY

IDEOLOGY

Here is a newspaper account of torture practised in modern concentration camps.
The victim is bound to a metal chair then electric shocks ore administered to him in increasing intensity till he confesses.
The torturer cups his hands and slaps the victim on the ear repeatedly till the eardrum breaks.
A dentist straps the prisoner to a chair and drills till he strikes a nerve.
The drilling goes on till the victim agrees to cooperate.

Human beings are not naturally cruel.
They become cruel when they are unhappy —
Or when they succumb to an ideology.
One ideology against another;
one religion against another.
And people crushed in between them.
The men who crucified Jesus could very well have bean gentle husbands and loving fathers who practised cruelty to maintain a religion or an ideology.
If religious people had always followed the instinct of their heart rather than the logic of their religion we would have been spared the sight of heretics burning at stakes, widows walking into funeral pyres and innocent people slaughtered in wars that are waged in’ the name of God.

Compassion has no ideology.


THE SONG OF THE BIRD

Anthony de Mello S. J.