From: Phaedrus Wolff (PhaedrusWolff@carolina.rr.com)
Date: Wed Dec 15 2004 - 03:56:32 GMT
I'm not sure it was Gabriel Michael Triebstein who originated this story,
but the story seems to reflect what Pirsig is attempting.
http://www.triebstein.de/page4.htm
"Children's eyes - children's mouths"
Man searches through all the heights and depths of this Earth and no matter
how difficult the terrain might be no privation or hardship turns him back;
is it the unknown that becomes the known, the desired goal? Sometime and
somewhere we will realise this - or perhaps not. Upon my journey I once came
upon a road with a beautiful vista that led up to a mountain peak. This road
I followed and at the summit I reached a observation platform from which one
had an all encompassing view. There were two benches upon which to linger.
On one of these benches sat an elderly man and on the other sat two children
who were looking through binoculars at the town below and scanning the
horizon. I sat down and took in the view of the small town which in the glow
of the rising sun became like a painting that awakened a very reflective
mood. It is in such places that Man feels how free his soul can be when the
hectic and pressure of daily life is forgotten for a short time. To my
right, on the same bench, sat the elderly man, staring into the distance
with a small smile on his face; the two children, on the neighbouring bench,
held the binoculars before their eyes with one hand and pointed with their
index fingers at something they saw in the distance, talking to each other
at the same time. My eyes followed the direction of their binoculars, which
were pointed towards the distant horizon, but I could not see anything that
might have captured the interest of the children. Perhaps it was an
aeroplane that flew by in the distance.
The time spent upon this mountain peak was worth the strenuous climb and I
wished to preserve the thought of visiting such places in the future should
the opportunity arise. Lost deep in my thoughts, I don't know how much time
had passed when I became aware of the voice of the elderly man sitting next
to me saying: "Hello children, what is it you see that I cannot see?"
Spontaneously I looked in the direction of the children. The children
lowered their binoculars from their eyes and turned their faces in our
direction. And the elderly man next to me spoke to them: "Certainly you see
something that I cannot see, either while I no longer can see things as a
child's eyes sees them or what you see is too distant for my eyes." The
children looked at each other and whispered together, then they came over to
us.
"It's like this," began one of the two children, "we often come to this
place because it's not very far from where we live and sometimes on the
weekends our parents come with us too and they gave us the binoculars so
that we could observe everything from up here." "For example, when we look
down on the town lying below we see everything quite sharp and clear but
when we turn our binoculars to the horizon we see very remarkable things."
And the second child nodded his head and said, "Surely we see some sort of
mirage, because we see two rotating spheres that revolve in an orbit an
equal distance across from each other. Through our binoculars first we'll
see one very close and then further away. The one sphere looks like the
globe on our father's writing desk and the other, it looks like a glass
sphere that is filled with white smoke."
"And is there something else to see?" the elderly man next to me asked the
two children with a friendly smile. They looked at each other somewhat
uncertainly, nodded and rather hesitantly continued their story. "When the
small globe next appeared in our binoculars we saw miniature people who
floated from the globe to the smoky glass sphere and there turned into
smoke, uniting with the large glass sphere." "But we also noticed that not
all of the miniature people turned into smoke, some of them smashed against
the glass sphere as if they had walked into an invisible glass wall." "When
the globe moved away from us and the glass sphere came closer we saw that
these people differed in the way they were dressed from the others. First we
didn't know what people here on Earth were dressed in this manner, but we
looked in our schoolbooks and in books about different religions and
cultures and discovered that they were the priests and monks of all the
religions and cultures. We were really curious as to what would happen next,
which is why when the weather was clear we observed further." "The people
that smashed into the glass sphere gathered into small and large groups and
were busy discussing with each other. One group stood out from all the
others and this was the group of priests and monks from the different
cultures and religions."
"And why did this particular group stand out more than all of the others?"
This question to the children came from me, because their story had aroused
my curiosity. The children laughed suddenly and said, "Some of these people
tried to get rid of their clothes in an effort to enter the sphere, but that
this did not solve the problem and they had no success. We saw the sadness
reflected upon their faces and how they talked to each other, but none of
them was able to enter the glass sphere. And today we have seen something we
do not understand at all and that is why we were discussing so loudly, so
that you would notice us and ask what we had seen." The elderly man next to
me nodded to the children. "Today we saw that a few priests and monks of the
different cultures and religions conversed with each other and then suddenly
they hugged each other and exchanged their clothes. They tried again to
enter the glass sphere and this time floated in without any problem!" The
children stood with questioning faces before us and the old man rose and
stroked their heads with his hands and said, "What you have seen is the
experience that behind these people's obvious problem the[re] was a hidden
solution to be found." And to me he skilfully continued, "It is a very
beautiful day today, one that has brought me much pleasure and I hope that
it has done the same for you!"
And with these word he walked away.
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