Two Birds in the Same Tree

 

He whom I have described to you as the Life of this universe, as present in the atom, and in the suns and moons - He is the basis of our own life, the Soul of our soul. Nay, thou art that.

Vivekananda

There is a lovely analogy I heard many times that research tells me comes from both the Rig Veda Samhita, the greatest of all the Vedas (writings that help to preserve the rites and traditions of Hinduism) and the Upanishads (writings about the philosophy of enlightenment associated with the Hindu religion [Jainism and Sikhism as well?] ) Vivekananda shares this story many times in his "Great Works" which I am reading from every night before I go to bed. It is a long, long, collection.  I am sure I will still be reading from it when I am 75 if I am still here on this planet lol. 

I read this story again last night and knew it was perfect timing to do so. I am going to share it in my own words. 

Two Birds in the Same Tree

Two birds sat on the same fruit tree.  One, a restless and hungry bird, jumped around on the lower branches from fruit to fruit attempting to quench a hunger it could not seem to quench.  It rustled the branches and created disturbance for all other insects, birds, and rodents that attempted to nest or feed on those branches. It broke off twigs and destroyed the growth of new leaves with its never-ending restlessness. It created a lot of noise. 

Another bird sat on the top branches with its colorful plumage radiating the day's golden light, especially around its stately head as if it was being coronated to high ranks by the sun itself. This bird was quiet and still for the most part but when the wind blew from the north it moved gracefully to the south; when the wind blew from the south it moved gracefully to the north. It did not jump around.  It did not make a lot of noise.  It simply sat there in its majestic pose and with its head up high taking in the rain when the rain fell; basking in the sun when the sun shone. It was a magnificent thing to see.

At first, the bird on the lower branch was completely unaware of the other bird above it.  It was too busy tasting the abundant fruit that grew in plenty on the lower branches.  Most of this fruit was sweet and quenching and the bird ate in delight, finding happiness with each bite, but only to find minutes afterwards that it was still hungry and thirsty again for more. So, it would jump noisily around from one fruit to another in search of that sweetness it came to prefer. Not all the fruit, however, was sweet. Despite its similar appearance, some of the fruit the bird hungrily dug its beak into turned out to be bitter and distasteful, making the little bird recoil and spit out the flesh as quickly as it took it into its mouth.  

The bird's restlessness increased.  It was desperate to eat only from the sweet fruit and to avoid tasting the bitter but there was no way to tell what the fruit would offer until its beak was already sunk well into the flesh of the fruit it had chosen and it had no choice, then, but to taste what was there. There was then, a lot of sucking in for this bird on the lower branches and a lot of spitting out, a lot of trial and error, and a lot of hopping between happiness and misery. There was very little calm or peace for this little bird living on the lower branches. Sigh!

Then one day the bird on the lower branches bit into an exceptionally bitter fruit that burned its throat and made its stomach turn with disgust.  No matter how much it spit out it could not get rid of the taste of the bitter fruit and the sickening feeling it left him with. In fact, with every attempt to spit out it was actually drawing in the bitterness to be stored in its cells, a reminder for the body not to ingest such fruit again. 

The bird was miserable. Recoiling from the onslaught to its senses it looked up and was suddenly taken by the golden aura of the bird on the top branches. This bird, the lower bird noticed, did not seem to be disturbed by bitter fruit.  It seemed satisfied and healthy. It was not restlessly jumping around. It was still and calm. There must be, the lower bird decided, an abundance of sweet fruit and an absence of bitter on those top branches where this majestic bird sat so satisfied and so stately. 

"I must move up," the bird exclaimed. "This other bird is quite high above me.  I must begin my climb one branch up at a time to a better life." 

The bird on the lower branches climbed to the branches above it, seeking the sweetness it was longing for and an end to bitterness.  It was still hungry, so it began to peck away at the fruit that was there.  At first, there indeed seemed to be nothing but sweet fruit and the bird was happy. It forgot all about the majestic bird on the top branches and its commitment to climb to the top.  It happily jumped from one fruit to another thinking to itself that this branch was paradise. This was where all the sweetness and the freedom from bitterness was. The bird thought it could indeed be happy here. That is until, it bit into another fruit that was more bitter, more repugnant than the one it had eaten on the lower branches.  Sick and miserable, it once again looked up at the bird on the top branches. glowing in the sun light.  This bird it noticed, had not moved since the last time the lower bird looked up.  The bird on the upper branches was not jumping from sweet to bitter fruit because it wasn't jumping at all.  It was not moving from wellness to sickness, from happiness to misery.  It was stable and calm where it was.  

The lower bird, so sick of going back and forth between the extremes of its experience, longed for that condition the upper bird was glowing with.  "I must keep climbing," it said. "I must get to the top." 

With every branch higher the little bird climbed, the canopy became thinner, and the sunlight was able to ripen and sweeten the fruit in an amazingly tempting way.  The little bird began to eat the fruit on every higher branch to find it even sweeter than the one below.  Its hunger intensified and once again it would begin to jump from fruit to fruit, thinking it was already in paradise, forgetting all about the bird on the top branches above it. That is until it hit that bitter fruit and became consumed with the suffering of it. Then it would look up and see a higher state of being reflected in the golden bird in the upper branches and it would begin once again to climb up higher towards it. 

The little bird climbed and climbed and climbed....it ate and ate, and it ate. It forgot its mission again, and again. And it remembered with every bit of suffering it endured...again, and again, and again. 

When the little bird from the lower branches was near the top but still too far away to touch the golden bird at the very top, it moved up to another branch where the fruit was even more abundant and tempting to its still hungry belly. From this high up, it could smell the sweetness coming from the sun ripened fruit and the lowly hunger stirring within became so intense the bird could not resist. It began to eat of the most divine tasting fruit it had ever tasted. Sweet, sweet, sweet... and was once again, convinced that it had reached the top, forgetting all about the bird above it.   But as on all the other branches, once again it bit into a bitter fruit.  This time the bitterness was so intense, the juice so toxic it made the bird so sick and miserable, it longed for death. It lay on the branch writhing in pain and once again looked up. It saw the still, calm, majestic bird on the top branches that was neither searching for the sweet or avoiding the bitter; that was neither dependent on the body being well or succumbing to the feeling of the body being ill; and that was not desperately trying to be happy nor desperately trying to avoid misery. 

"That is what I want and need," the lower bird said once again. "I must stop chasing after sweetness and running from the bitterness. I must get up there." 

The lower bird pulled himself up from the high branch it was laying on and moved slowly and painfully up to the branch above. Instead of eating there, it climbed to the next branch and then the next.  As it got closer to the top, the lower bird noticed how the golden reflection from the higher bird was now landing on its own feathers making them dance with delight. The little bird became inspired to keep climbing.  It then felt its body getting lighter and lighter the higher it climbed toward the magnificent bird at the top of the tree they shared for years. It noticed how its own claws that were grasping for the branches began to melt away, its beak seemed to disappear from its vision as it got closer to its destination. Then just as it approached the top branch ...the lower bird felt itself slowly melting away as it was absorbed into the body of the majestic golden lighted bird that sat so peacefully at the top of this tree.  The lower bird suddenly realized there was only one bird in the tree the whole time.  The little bird from the lower branches was and has always been the higher bird.

Now, I could summarize that and explain it but it could never be as clear as to how Vivekananda explains it in the below:

The lower bird was, as it were, only the substantial-looking shadow, the reflection of the higher; he himself was in essence the upper bird all the time. This eating of fruits, sweet and bitter, this lower, little bird, weeping and happy by turns, was a vain chimera, a dream: all along, the real bird was there above, calm and silent, glorious and majestic, beyond grief, beyond sorrow.  

The upper bird is God, the Lord of the universe; and the lower bird is the human soul, eating the sweet and bitter fruits of this world. Now and then comes a heavy blow to the soul. For a time, he stops the eating and goes towards the unknown God, and a flood of light comes. He thinks that the world is a vain show. Yet again the senses drag him down, and he begins as before to eat the sweet and bitter fruits of the world. Again an exceptionally hard blow comes. His heart becomes open again to divine light; thus gradually he approaches God, and as he gets nearer and nearer, he finds his old self melting away. When he comes near enough, he sees he is no other than God, and he exclaims, "He whom I have described to you as the Life of this universe, as present in the atom, and in the suns and moons - He is the basis of our own life, the Soul of our soul. Nay, thou art that."

All is well in my world.

Swami Vivekananda ( n.d.) 2.6 Practical Vednata and other Lectures. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Kindle Edition