Buffalo Wisdom.
Once upon a time there was a buffalo. As all the buffalos in stories, this buffalo also could speak! He used to drag carts, like they do in ancient India. This buffalo was very good at it. And he made a fortune for his owner. His owner was an intelligent, wise fellow. He paid the buffalo well, and took care of him well. They lived happily helping each other until one day the buffalo stopped working hard.
Owner thought about it, and the buffalo seems to be distracted for few days. He used to sit in the field day dreaming about something. And the owner thought maybe he was sick. And asked the buffalo if that is the case, he did not speak. It seem he did not want to speak. The owner followed him next day from morning and saw that there was a good looking cow, grazing in the neighboring land. The Buffalo is having a Crush! Owner smiled to himself and next day decided to speak with the Buffalo.
Owner : I saw a Cow yesterday in the other field did you see that?
Buffalo : O... Yes I did.
Owner : It seemed a nice cow. For a buffalo Like you.
Buffalo : Do you think so? Do you think she would like me?
Owner : Yes, why not. You are the biggest and richest buffalo in the district. Why do you think she wouldn't like you. She would be a foolish cow if she didn't
Buffalo : I hope so.
Owner : Listen my friend, If you want I could ask her owner, and get you married to the cow.
Buffalo : Oh that is wonderful. Would you do that?
Owner : Of course I would, anything for a friend.
Buffalo : Great, thank you. You are the best.
Owner : So, after you married you will have lot of calves I am sure of it.
Buffalo : Will I?
Owner : Yes that is how it happens. It happened to me. Look at me with three children!
Buffalo : Hmmmm..
Owner : But you know. I cannot pay you more. Cause you are doing your maximum work now. You cannot work extra. So you will have to split your salary for your cow and calves expenses.
Buffalo : I did not think that far.
Owner : Nobody thinks that far.
Buffalo : So, you mean when I have a family I would be less well fed for the same amount of work.
Owner : That is how the world works my friend.
Buffalo : In that case, I think I will stick to my current lifestyle for some time more.
Owner : It's your choice friend. I just gave you the facts!
Buffalo wisdom summary
That is the story. At the first glance it seems the owner in this case is cunning. He seemed to change the mind of the buffalo for his gain. But sometimes he may have said everything from his heart. Anyway, he was the married one. So, he should know more about married life than the buffalo. Let's leave the facts there and discuss some important philosophy, about how we solve our problems.
How do we solve problems -Trading problems.
Trading problems was the buffalo's method of problem solving. For the boredom and the feeling of love, without thinking the buffalo wanted to solve this by marrying a cow. However, only when he sees the problems of marriage life he decided to do otherwise. Of course, the buffalo has no choice, other than either having married problems or having unmarried problems. Either way he himself would know which set of problems is better. The real problem is trading his unmarried problems to the married problems is irreversible. Often would end up in disaster, and divorce with broken hearts and deserted calves.
Have you thought about how do we solve problems? More often what we are doing is trading our problems.
Imagine you are poor. And you live eating one meal per day and working hard to meet the ends of your responsibilities. And you are determined to be successful. You save little bit of money each day and then start a small business, and later in few years of time you become a big businessman (like the fisherman). Now you have enough to eat, and you get obese. Become a diabetic, due to lack of physical activity. You have taxes to pay. And you have worries that your employees are stealing from you. You do not have time to look at your kids and your young beautiful wife started an affair and filing for a divorce, with claiming half of your life earnings!
In an alternate universe, we can imagine this time you do nothing to overcome your poverty. You remain poor. Yet you work hard to teach your kids. You try to make them better human beings. You educate them. You be with them and teach them values of the world. And guess what they become successful instead of you. They marry equally successful partners and leave the country. Now you are all alone at home. Although they send you money for your treatment and everything, they have no time to visit you. Not as often as you want.
After considering all the possibilities, in another universe you decide to be selfish this time. Like a buffalo. You decide, I am not going to help with kids. I am going to let them rotten and do my work instead. I am going to have fun, doing everything fun. From drugs to prison. Guess what, your kids follow your path and they also become criminals. And you meet your son in the prison, and even bigger criminal than you.
At this point you can stop me and ask. Well, that's not true. Can anyone be both successful and happy? There can be better outcome. I cannot agree more.
As above is just to illustrate the fact that how we solve our problems, it is like trying to sleep the camels. About 99% of the time this is what we do. This is what I have done. Look at your life and mentally comment about your own life. It doesn't matter. If at one point you feel great about your life, those are momentary. Only immediately after when we trade one set of problems with another, we feel great about it and soon we start solving new problems. If you ask any successful entrepreneur, it is hard work. It is hard work to be successful. And even more to stay on top.
More ways to solve problems - Mindfulness wisdom.
There is one more way to solve problems. That is to get to the root cause. Or question the problem itself. This is the mindfulness way. For this to happen just being mindful about your day-to-day function is not enough. You have to learn how the mind works and see where real problems come from. You have to understand the world, the duality of nature and time. Once you have gained enough wisdom you can go back to the question and find out what really went wrong in the first place. And only brave men and women would be able to seek this truth.
I will give you example. Easy one. Instead of thinking about the future, what the buffalo in our story could have done was to ask the question why he was feeling unhappy. He should have noticed that there is love. He should have asked the question what is love? Why did he get it. In his case he felt it only because he saw the cow. He saw the cow only because he had eyes to see that and a mind to contemplate it. It is not the cow's fault. It is not his fault either. Could he have not felt love when he saw the cow? No, he could not, it was not by choice. So, why should he bother about something he had nothing to do with? He should have asked the question why my friend the Owner is not in love with the cow? Why he is a human and I am a buffalo? Why should I work for a salary? Instead of one future, he should have thought about hundreds of different possible futures and see the absurdity of it.
I am sure the buffalos would never ask such questions. I do not blame them. But we on the other hand have no excuses.
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