Thieves, Scorpions, Frogs and the Nature of the Mind

On the confusion of Sattva or Purity, with God or Divinity

The following happened in 2004, when I lived in India :

Today, my house was broken into, and things were stolen. I saw who did it. There were three of them just to the left of my door when I came home. I saw their faces. Two were young, and one was older. I especially liked the older one's face when I first saw him. He had a sort of nobility to him, and I had no idea that he would go after my things. It seemed he had a look of disinterest, but I had been purposefully fooled.

After purchasing some things in town, I was dropped off at my house by a three-wheeled rickshaw. I got out and unloaded a desk from the top of the taxi, which I would later use for writing. I set it on the ground outside my steps and went to open the door of my house to let myself in. As I returned to pick up the desk and carry it in, they went for it; really, only the older one went for it.

I had unlocked my front door and pushed it open, then, as I turned my back to carry in my desk, he ran past me into the house. He was so quick and quiet that I did not see him go by. When I turned around with the desk in hand, I saw him exiting my house with a bag of something in his hands. I dropped the desk and yelled at him, but he only ran faster. He was amazingly quick. I took off after him as he ran up the outside stairs onto my roof. I thought I could trap him there and force him to give up what he had taken. The younger two had been scared and ran off in another direction. When we reached the top of the stairs, I confronted him; he was still holding the bag. We looked at each other, eye to eye, and then, before I could do anything else, still clutching the bag, he leaped off the edge of my house across the open space to the house next door, which was a good twelve feet. I would not even try to duplicate that jump. He got away.

The thieves were monkeys, and the largest one had stolen a bag of fresh apples from the market. He took it right off the shelf inside the door. His speed was impressive. He was bold and extremely good at ‘taking everything’ as it comes. He entered my house through the only entrance, so he must have been prepared to go out the same way. He knew that I was out there. He gave it not a thought; he was ‘winging it.’ I believe they do that all the time and are extremely good at it. In mere seconds, he found food, a bag with four apples, grabbed it, and was out the door.

It all happened suddenly. There was the quality of an 'accident' about it. ‘Shit happens’ like that. You are walking along, and all of a sudden, you step in it, fall on it, it hits you, your car is stolen, or somebody holds you up and robs you. I was reminded of a story that Sri Ramakrishna told about three thieves. It goes like this:

The Three Robbers

A man is returning from the market, carrying his purchases, and walking through the jungle, when he is set upon by three robbers. The first robber says, “Let's kill him”. The second robber says, “No, let's just steal his things, tie him up, and leave him here.” They decide to follow this advice, so they take his things, tie him up, and leave him alive and bound in the jungle. After a while, the third thief returns. He unties the poor man and says, “I am not going to hurt you. Let me set you free. I will not steal anything else from you, and here is what I have stolen back. I am sorry about what we have done to you.”

The man who had just been set free was beside himself with joy. He thanked his liberator profusely and wanting to show his appreciation, told the thief, “Dear sir, please come to my home, which is nearby, so I can give you food or drink and properly thank you for your kindness.” The robber replied, “Thank you, sir, but I cannot take you up on your offer. I am a thief and a robber, and I cannot come to your home with you”.

Ramakrishna said that in this story, the 'three thieves' or 'robbers' represent the three Gunas or qualities of life itself. These Gunas represent the subtle elemental forces inherent in differing combinations in absolutely every aspect of life. The first thief or robber, who wants to kill the man, portrays the quality of Tamas, which represents dullness or inertia. When predominant, Tamas will tend to deaden or even kill a person. The second thief, who suggests leaving the man alive but bound, represents the quality or Guna of Rajas or desire. This quality leaves a man alive but bound and ultimately takes away all his 'possessions.' The third Guna or quality is Sattva or purity; it sets a person free from the bonds of Rajas and Tamas, but is still a robber or a thief. Sattva, too, robs us of our Divine nature. Because it is a thief, it cannot come home with us.

Ramakrishna always pointed out that to confuse Sattva with God or Divinity is a big mistake. Sattva is a result of God Communion or Realization; it is not the cause of it. If this confusion of cause and effect is not clarified, spiritual life turns into an attempt to gain purity or Sattva, and the transcendence and surrender of all and everything becomes a manipulative attempt by the ego to be pure and Sattvic. It is like saying that living in the wealthiest part of town is ‘True happiness’ and everybody should strive to live there. We all know this is not the case and that not all rich people are happy. Ramakrishna was pointing out a similar thing relative to Sattva or purity; it looks good, it is a nicer part of town, but it is not God-Realization, and to treat it as such is to delude oneself and others and prolong suffering.

In the Indian tradition, transcendence or surrender of everything is the root or ‘cause’ of true Sattva. At the same time, the attempt to gain purity via even righteous acts (Sattva), although thought to be better than Tamas or Rajas, creates bondage and inevitably leads to suffering. Of course, Sattva is a unique 'type' of suffering. The 'chains' are made of gold, not steel or lead, but they are chains and bind just as surely nonetheless.

As this story points out, Sattva, or purity, is a thief and cannot come home with us. The most serious aspect of this suffering is that people, or more specifically, spiritual seekers, may waste their lives in a fruitless attempt putting the cart before the horse, and purity. One cannot break into heaven through willful action. It does not work. It is the same with renunciation; renunciation does not lead to God-Realization. True renunciation is the result of God Realization . . . if I gave you a billion dollars, you will spontaneously be renounced of the need for money.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi once said this principle was why people who practice Hatha Yoga in India (he meant people who took up Hatha Yoga to realize God) are known to have a lot of anger. They have tried to force (one of the meanings of the word 'Hatha' is ‘force’) their way to Liberation and God-Realization. They will ultimately fail, as one cannot force his way to God, and the failure of this desire for freedom and escape from suffering, is the cause of their anger.

The monkeys represented the Gunas. They were just there. When I first came home, they seemed innocent enough, sitting outside my door. They gave no signs of malice or intent to steal, but their minds were fixed one-pointedly on getting something, anything. As soon as the door was opened, they went for it, come what may. It is their 'nature.' Many of us have heard the term, ‘monkey mind’ and like so many things, it is a term that comes out of India . . . let me tell you a story about it:

One of the ways they trap monkeys here is to take a hollowed-out, dried-up whole coconut. A hole of about 3/8” is drilled in one side of the coconut and then another hole of about 1-1/4” directly opposite the first hole on the other side. Then, you pass a six-foot rope, which is tied with a large knot at one end. The unknotted end is passed through the large hole going into the coconut and then pulled out through the small hole on the other side of the coconut. It is pulled all the way through until the knot on the rope's end catches on the inside of the small hole in the coconut. Then, the rope is tied to a tree, anchoring the coconut to the tree.

The coconut is placed on the ground, and some food is placed inside the hollowed-out shell. At this point, the humans go away. After a while, a monkey comes up, sees the coconut, smells the food inside, reaches his hand through the hole, and grabs the food, making a fist of what he has taken. When the monkey tries to withdraw his hand from the coconut, he cannot do it, as his fist makes his hand too big to fit back through the hole. He screams and jumps about, smashing and bashing the coconut on the ground, but he cannot escape. The coconut is tied to the tree, and the monkey will not let go of the food that he is holding in his fist; this is what is called ‘Monkey mind.’

All beings tend to try and get what they want, to obtain pleasure by means of our emotions, mind, and senses, and once we get it, just like a monkey, we will not let go or surrender what we have and are subsequently trapped by our own desire. Usually, like the monkey, we complain, protest, and scream instead of unclenching our fist and letting go. Now, let me return to the monkeys at my house . . .

The older monkey had taken the apples off a shelf. My cook, who purchases my food, had left them there. The apples were sitting right next to some recording equipment and my camera. I was concerned that the monkeys could have stolen expensive electronic equipment, shoes, tools, or any thing I had left inside or outside. Furthermore, because of the heat accumulation in the house, I had been hoping to sleep on my roof; I now saw that area as open territory that I 'shared' with the monkeys.

I asked my Tamil friends if the monkeys would ever steal a computer or camera or anything like that. They said, “No, the monkey only wants food.” That put me at ease. But, then again, these same friends had not warned me about the monkeys in the first place. They had seen them when the taxi pulled up, so, considering what had occurred, what I heard went something like this: ‘Sort of, kind of, not really,’ and what happened next will let you understand what this, ‘sort of, kind of, not really,’ actually meant.

That same day, I later brought back from town a large mosquito net, about 10’ by 12’. I wanted to put it up on the roof so I could sit there and meditate in the early morning and evening, enjoying a wonderful view of the holy mountain Arunachala and not be bothered by mosquitoes that would swarm at those hours.

The mosquito net set up on the roof of my house in Tiruvannamalai

When the house got too hot, the electricity went off, and the fans did not work, which happened frequently; as I wanted to sleep on the roof, I had the netting made by tailors in town and set it up, tying it to the bamboo thatched roof erected by the owners to provide relief from the sun. I set up the netting with the help of several friends and went down to rest in my room through the heat of the afternoon.

A few hours later, I heard some noise on the roof above my head. I thought my friends who helped me erect the net had returned to place large rocks around the outside edges of the net to keep it from blowing in the wind. I got up, washed my face, and went up the stairs to see what was going on . . . I found about 12 monkeys using the mosquito net as a playground. They were running across the top of it and climbing the walls. It was a playland for them.

Most of the monkeys were running across the top of the net, but there was a baby monkey trapped inside the net's enclosure. All the monkeys took off when I arrived except for the baby monkey, who was trapped and immediately started screaming in fear. Remaining with the baby, but on the outside of the net, was the eldest and largest male monkey, the same one who had taken my apples!

I took in the situation and went to lift the net so that the baby could get out. As I started to do this, the large monkey charged me, aggressively baring his teeth and threatening me. I turned directly towards him, spread my arms wide, bent down, and thrust my head towards him, shouting, “Hey! Back off.” I was miming his aggression. He stopped, and we both looked each other in the eyes. He continued to growl and hiss at me. I raised my arms, spread my fingers, and backed him off, but only for a moment and he only backed off a little.

I knew what was going on; he thought I was threatening his little one, and I sympathized with his feelings. But if he did not allow me to lift the net, the little one could not get out. I said clearly, in English, and I know that monkeys do not speak English, but I wanted to make an image with my voice and express that image to him that ‘I want to help the baby and do not want to hurt him,’ but, as soon as I turned to lift the net, he charged at me again. Again, I backed him off, but this time, even though he was growling and hissing at me, I tried to be calm and assuring. I told him that I wanted to free his baby and I did not want to hurt him. But, he was unconvinced by anything I said. He only saw his young baby trapped in a net, and a large human male was approaching . . . he saw the baby was screaming in terror. Perhaps the old male had seen something similar before, and it did not turn out well. It was a classic standoff: I could not approach the net without being attacked by the monkey, and the baby monkey could not escape. The scared youngster continued to run up and down the net inside, squealing in fear.

I knew what I needed . . . technology. I went back downstairs to my house, where I had a three-foot-long bamboo walking stick. Then, taking the stick with me, I returned up the stairs. The large elder monkey came to the top of the steps where he hissed and threatened me. When he did so, I smacked the stick down on the steps with great force, making a large and powerful sound, and he immediately backed off. I did this several more times as I climbed the stairs, which backed him up. When I got up on the roof, I smacked the stick again on the ground for good measure, backed him up even more, and then, holding the stick up in the air in a threatening gesture, I lifted the net to let the baby monkey out. Now that I had the stick, the elder did not move against me but only hissed at me from a distance. The baby ran out, and without either of them offering me any gratitude, they ran off together.

Before I set out to make my mosquito-free paradise up on the roof, the monkeys were not interested in being there, and I don’t think they went there to ‘mess with me’ in any way. They are just monkeys, and that is what monkeys do.

'A thing and the nature of a thing are eternal.'

They say in Ayurveda, “A thing and the nature of a thing are eternal.” Based on this principle, Ayurveda proceeds to distinguish, judge, and evaluate all things, from food to herbs, the season of the year, time of day, stage of life, body type, and genetics, just to name a few. They do this by 'judging' the qualities of all things. By doing this, a person can understand 'differences' where before he or she saw none, and then they can intelligently use those observed differences and qualities to create balance (Sattva or Sama) or health in the way a particular person eats, lives, and works.

The knowledge of different qualities is based on the principle that ‘like increases like and opposites decrease each other.’ In Ayurveda, health is defined as a state of balance or ‘Sama,’ and disease is a state of imbalance. Having been an Ayurvedic practitioner for the last twenty years, I have seen again and again how, without good judgment or discrimination regarding what to eat and how to balance oneself in the midst of the ever-changing qualities of life, people are at the mercy of their environment, trapped like the baby monkey within the net of ever-changing circumstances; and without understanding, they are unable to get out and just like the elder monkey, often become resistant to the wisdom of available help.

Ayurveda is a medical system that does not just treat disease but seeks to create health or balance, and because one person's balance or health is different from another's, one person's arthritis might need a completely different approach to bring about balance than another person's arthritis. One person might have too much air or ether like Audrey Hepburn, or another might have too much earth and water like Oprah Winfrey. Each of them, depending on factors including their elemental make-up, genetics, where they live, what they do, what they eat or have been eating, what season it is, what time of day, what period of life they are in, needs different foods, herbs, things, and different qualities to become balanced. That is why it is said that Ayurveda does not treat symptoms; it treats or balances the whole person. Ayurveda, judging the elemental qualities of a particular person, seeks, first and foremost, to balance that person, not merely suppress or treat their disease symptoms.

The Charak Samhita, one of the three ‘Bibles’ of Ayurveda and thousands of years old, put forth the relationship between the quality of the elements in a person's body at any time and the symptoms that person will express: “The nature of the thing, shows itself in the nature of the symptoms.” An example of this is if you see a person with a red face, reddish eyes, red hair, drinking alcohol, angry, and arguing, you will have a good idea of what type of symptoms that person is going to have physiologically . . . because, you have seen they have a lot of the fire element. Certain organ systems are ruled by different elements and affected in certain ways. Water is wet and flows downward. Fire is hot and burns upwards. Fire is often reddish and is in abundance in fermented things, from spices to alcohol. A person with a lot of the fire element will express different symptoms than a person with a lot of the water element, even though the Western name for the disease may be the same. There are subtle different underlying conditions for each person in a disease (their particular elemental or doshic imbalance). Thus, differing 'things' or elements are needed in each of these 'cases' to bring about balance. For all of this we need judgement and to judge correctly we need to understand the elements.

One person's arthritis might need a completely different approach than another person's arthritis. One person might have too much air or ether, like Audrey Hepburn, while another might have too much fire (like Meryl Streep or earth and water like Oprah Winfrey. The working principles (dynamics) of the elements are a language that allows us to understand and intelligently change our health and our lives. Again, this is why it is said that Ayurveda does not merely treat symptoms; it treats the person, and it does so by balancing every element and quality that surrounds that person.

I have already mentioned how “A thing and the nature of a thing are eternal.” Well, the Indian culture has a story about that:

The Scorpion and the Frog

Once, there was a scorpion who came to a river and wanted to get over to the other side. He saw a frog floating there in the water, and he said to the frog, “Excuse me, sir, but would you be so kind as to take me across the river on your back? I cannot swim, and you can. I would be most obliged.”

The Frog heard what the scorpion said and replied, “Mr. Scorpion, I would ordinarily be very happy to help anyone across the river, but when I see you with that big stinger you carry on your back, I am most afraid that you will sting me.” The Scorpion replied, “Mr. Froggy, surely you can understand that I would not do such a thing. If I stung you when we were out on the river, then we both would drown. If only for my own sake, I would never do that.”

Image art by Tony Jarrah

The Frog thought about what the scorpion had said and reasoned it up one side and down the other. He decided it all made sense to him, and he wanted to be of service, so he swam up to the shore of the river and invited the Scorpion to climb on his back. The Scorpion did so, and the frog kicked out toward the other shore. All was going quite well until they got to the middle of the river when the Scorpion suddenly stung the frog. The frog found himself becoming paralyzed and unable to swim and now both the scorpion and frog were about to die. The frog cried out, “How could you sting me when you had told me that you would not do such a thing”? The Scorpion replied, “I cannot help it. It is my nature to sting.” They both drowned.

It is essential to know things for what they are. It is sometimes obvious and often subtle. Veda Vyasa, the great sage of ancient India, compiler of the Vedas, and author of the Mahabharata, said, “Sometimes virtue appears as sin, and sometimes sin appears as virtue. Only the wise know the difference.”

Often, I hear someone say ‘We should not judge.” I am astonished at how this ‘point of view’ ever entered our culture. It is a fantastic piece of stupidity, much like telling a child to go out and play on the freeway, often displayed in so-called - ‘Positive Thinking’. We need to judge. We need to recognize both good and bad, fight and wrong. We need to be wise. We need to be able to evaluate. We need to know what to support and what not to. We need good judgment to know how to act, who to trust, and who not to. We need to know if someone is full of shit and acting out, or if they are lying; whether they are telling the truth, or whether the truth that they are telling is not ‘true’ because they are uneducated, hypocritical, a slanderer, unintelligent, unconsciously prejudiced or unable to tell the truth even if it hit them in the face. The possibilities and combinations of such qualities are endless, and unlike the frog, we need to know about Scorpions. In South India, they do not advise you approach and pet a poisonous snake like a cobra. That is a 'judgment' they make of the character of snakes and people.

Many animals here in India, are not seen in America. Where I lived in Northern California, I was never threatened by animals, except maybe the occasional dog or the sting of a bee. In America, man is pretty firmly in control, on top of the heap, and relatively unthreatened by wild animals. In India, that is not the case to the same degree. All the windows in the houses are barred to keep monkeys out. There are poisonous centipedes which inflict a very painful bite. Fifty feet from my front door, there is a hole in the ground where a large black cobra, about 12 feet long, lives. There are stories and a few tales about such animals from the Indian tradition that I will write about in a later post.

In the meantime, as they say in the Middle East, “Trust in Allah and tie your camel.” I will keep my door locked if I turn away, even if only for a moment . . . and I learned something: Monkeys and the monkey mind are very quick, too quick for my response. It is their nature . . . but as a human being, and unlike a monkey, even though I tend to follow my nature, which is at the mercy of the three thieves (Gunas) I spoke of above, I have the opportunity as a human being to recognize the Nature of Nature, the Nature of Reality, which is another way of talking about God or the Divine and to Realize or become one with Reality or the Nature of all life; it is an opportunity, even if rarely taken, that is given to mankind; but that is a story for an another time.

"There is neither one God nor many Gods; there is only God."

– Adi Da Samraj