Two Monks And A Woman

All knowledge is belief, but not all belief is knowledge

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“Two monks and a woman” is a well-known “Buddhist” story (although Taoists also view it as theirs). Let me recount one version of the story, and its most common explanation. Then I will add that there is much more to this version of the story than said “explanation”. The usual explanation criticizes the younger monk, whereas I will explain the older one’s motivations. Trust my devious mind for twisting fairy tales into other dimensions!

Two Monks and a Woman – a Zen Lesson

A senior monk and a junior monk were traveling together. At one point, they came to a river with a strong current. As the monks were preparing to cross the river, they saw a very young and beautiful woman also attempting to cross. The young woman asked if they could help her cross to the other side.

Women Caused Lots Of Problems To The Wisdom Of Old

The two monks glanced at one another because they had taken vows not to touch a woman.

Then, without a word, the older monk picked up the woman, carried her across the river, placed her gently on the other side, and carried on his 
journey.

The younger monk couldn’t believe what had just happened. After rejoining his companion, he was speechless, and an hour passed without a word between them.

Two more hours passed, then three, finally the younger monk could contain himself any longer, and blurted out “As monks, we are not permitted a woman, how could you then carry that woman on your shoulders?”

The older monk looked at him and replied, “Brother, I set her down on the other side of the river, why are you still carrying her?”

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Here is the traditional pious comment on this story:

This Zen story reveals a message about living in the present moment. How often do we carry around past hurts, holding onto resentments when the only person we are really hurting is ourselves? We all go through times in life when other people say things or behave in a way that is hurtful towards us. We can chose to ruminate over past actions or events, but it will ultimately weigh us down and sap our energy. Instead we can choose to let go of what doesn’t serve us anymore and concentrate on the present moment. Until we can find a level of peace and happiness in the present circumstances of our lives, we will never be content, because ‘now’ is all we will ever have.

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There is much more to this story than just that it feels good to let go of resentment, and thus that eschewing resentment maximizes contentment: The older monk exerts judgment. He goes meta, comes out of the box: the senior monk captures the fundamental meaning of “not touching women”. Clearly crossing a dangerous river does not engage the same neurology and neurohormones as those involved in sex and reproduction. Instead, the older monk realizes that this is all about engaging the mental machinery of survival and care, a completely different mindset, noble and human in the best way.

(The preceding, realizing which neurology is appropriate to a situation at hand, relates to the problem of US healthcare: it conflates fundamentally two opposite mentalities, two neurologies which hate and contradict each other, care and greed.)

Thus the older monk sees the higher purpose, and sets himself to accomplish it. As it has only to do with surviving a river, it’s easy to forget, when the river is long gone.

However, the mind of the younger monk focused on the woman being a woman, and what monks are not supposed to do with women, although he wants very much to do it; the junior monk does not focus on the noble observation that the woman is in danger from the river.

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Don’t Make Fun Of War, It Will Always Win, And Some:  

One can go one step further in the meta-analysis: why should we resent resentment? Resentment is a mental agency. It’s not exactly the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, but it has a somewhat similar inner purpose, providing a motivation to find out what really is going on. As all mental agencies, resentment evolved because it responded to some purpose. Here is a little Taoist story to enlighten us here:

All the people in the world are gathered in one room, and God asks, “Who wants world peace?” Everybody raises their hand except one man. God asks, “Who wants a war?” The one man raises his hand. God points at him and says, “He wins!”

Right, mosquitoes don’t care: their social interactions with human are limited to bloody penetration. Lack of enlightenment is only a problem to those who are evolved enough, who are already enlightened, and suffering from the actions of the unenlightened… or a problem to those in the process of enlightening themselves and perceiving their inadequacy. Mosquitoes don’t resent, either: they don’t have enough of a brain to relive old emotions. However, slightly more advanced insects  have more advanced emotional machinery: even flies know fear, recent stories show!

The older monk crosses the river with a woman on his back, because he cares about her in a non-gender, non-sexual, non-prurient, non-predatory way. Mosquitoes care only about one thing. When men think only of penetrating a woman, they are behaving like mosquitoes. The older monk cares about accomplishing a good action, which will make him feel good, enlightened, and light, thereafter. The younger monk cares too, but not the sort of care which is just a gift to the other: he is reliving issues surrounding penetration… as if he were just a self-glorifying mosquito.

Resentment can be good when it leads us to feel again (that’s what re-sentment means!) what the emotional landscape was, and whether it was handled optimally thereafter. Not just handled optimally by us, but by others, and by the hand of fate. Amusingly, modern neurology is on the side of resentment: most of “feelings” felt by the brain actually originate in re-entrant circuitry. So most perception can be looked at as resentment! (Roll over, Friedrich Nietzsche!)

Homo is a thinking being, or is not. A wise human explains things, makes theories about them. A wise cockroach, with its million neurons takes care of number one, itself! Munching over what happened, and why, and whether it could have been different, and better, if it had been different is not necessary idle thinking, because establishing theories is what humans do, and what human culture is made of. If resentment helps, so be it. Just as, if lower principles obstruct higher principles, they have to make way.

Patrice Ayme’ 

Tags: Resentment, Two Monks & A Woman