A Tiger That Didn’t Know Who He Was
(Adapted from the Gospel of Ramakrishna)
A pregnant tigress once jumped into the midst of a flock of sheep. As she did so, she went into labour, gave birth to a tiger cub, and died on the spot.
A kind-hearted sheep nursed the cub, gave it her milk and brought it up among them. The tiger-cub started following the sheep-cubs with whom it was growing up. It ate grass, bleated like a sheep.
One day a magnificient fierce wild tiger appeared and watched with amazement this grass-eating tiger-cub.
Running after it, the wild tiger seized the bleating tiger-cub and dragged it to the water.
The wild tiger said: “Look at your face in the water. It is just like mine. Here is a little meat. Eat it.” Saying this, it thrust some meat into the grass-eating tiger’s mouth. But the grass-eating tiger would not swallow it and began to bleat again. Gradually, however, it got the taste of blood and came to relish the meat.
The grass-eating tiger then realized he is not a sheep. He is a tiger. He roared loud and went with the wild tiger to live with him.
The message of the story is: A true teacher shows the true nature to the disciple.
If we imagine the whole story as a metaphor of our inner world, we can say such moments do arrive when the guru within us calls us out to recognize our true self. The Grace shines on us and we sense our inner guru pushing us to see our real face, our true nature in the mirror of the Eternal. It tells us we are not the sheep drudging away with our material existence, sometimes eating the grass of materialism and sometimes bleating to participate in the worldly drama. We are the tiger who is yet to recognize its magnificence. As the Shvetashvatara Upanishad says, we are nothing but “children of Immortality”. To shake off the delusion of being helpless and to roar as a tiger in the Blissful Joy of the Divine recognition within us is the true purpose of our life.