The Terrible

In Subtle Wisdom, Master Sheng Yen relates a story where, as a boy, he observes a frog succumbing to a snake. Master Sheng Yen initially wants to save the frog from the snake, but then he starts to wonder, how else would the snake be able to eat. He muses:




I watched the shape of the frog travel from the mouth of the snake through the throat and into the body. It made a vivid impression. Because I could still see the frog, I wondered, "What happens to the frog? Do the frog and the snake merge into one life? If I were the frog, where would I be now?"

What also confused me was that the frog had clearly been afraid of the snake initially. He tried to escape and obviously did not want to be eaten. Why, then, did the frog finally crawl toward the mouth of the snake and let himself be eaten? I could not figure it out, and it left me deeply puzzled.


What interests me about this passage is the theme of something that seems so inevitable and how the frog seems to realize it has no choice but to embrace what was unavoidable to itself. It makes me relate to how I myself relate to what seems 'terrible' in life.


I am reading Albert Ellis's theories of REBT, and I quite enjoy how he uses the idea of 'not awful-izing' to defuse the tensions of life. If you don't make something seem 'awful' or 'terrible' then it will see that this is just a judgment that one makes about what is otherwise only a sad or regrettable experience. To put it in a different way: once a person is able to at least accept the fact that she or he will not die from a terribly awkward experience, then they can learn to face it in a realistic and creative way. Rather than damning oneself or punishing themselves through self-defeating thoughts or behaviors, there is a space to just accept this present moment in all its terrifying ways. 


While I agree with Ellis that there are definitely ways to defuse the tension by not focusing on self-blame or belief in a permanent state of things, there are times when things can seem so severe that one often isn't able to talk herself out of thinking that things are 'awful' or just plain 'terrible'. In these times, we may have to be like the frog and just let ourselves succumb naturally to the snake, seeing it as one with ourselves. But again, it doesn't have to be done in a way that a person feels that they are dying: instead it can be a kind of wholehearted seeing that the snake isn't separate from our being, and is in fact a phenomena of our being.


Can we change this feeling of 'terrible' into a feeling of exhilaration? Well, I think one has to experience being eaten many, many, many times, before they truly can. So...bon appetit! 


Master Sheng Yen, Subtle Wisdom : excerpt from: http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/165637/subtle-wisdom-by-master-sheng-yen/excerpt