Once upon a time, a god dropped a dragon pearl into a pond deep inland by accident. The pearl later transformed into a little baby dragon. As he got older, he learned that he was actually a sea dragon, so the only way he could grow into a full adult was to be in the sea. But he looked all around and the sea was nowhere to be found. What to do? Fortunately, a wise old tortoise told him, “All you have to do is to find your way to a stream, then flow with the current, and you will eventually reach the sea. Trust me.”
The little dragon was overjoyed. He could not even begin to figure out how to find the sea, but he knew where the closest stream was. So, he made his way to the stream and entered in. Once he entered the stream, he flowed with the current and it brought him to a river, and then eventually, the river current brought him to the sea. And there, he grew into a mighty dragon and lived happily ever after.
The moral of the story is, in order to reach the sea, all the little dragon had to do was to enter a stream. The immensely difficult problem of finding the sea was reduced to a far easier problem of finding and entering a nearby stream.
That, my friends, would be how you can reach enlightenment. The next few articles show you a way.
Activities
- Reflect on this post with Angela: Breaking big problems down into smaller ones seems to make them more surmountable. What is a problem you’re facing, that you could chunk down into more manageable components? Do you believe that when we take the first step, the rest of the path will appear, and unfold in its own time.
References
Featured image by Colin Goh.
