reposted from: spiritual-short-stories.com
Freedom Parrot
Spiritual Story by Osho
A man, a great man, a fighter for freedom was traveling in the mountains. He stayed in a caravanserai for the night. He was amazed that in the caravanserai there was a beautiful parrot in a golden cage, continually repeating "Freedom! Freedom!" And it was such a place that when the parrot repeated the word "Freedom!" it would go on echoing in the valleys, in the mountains.
The man thought: "I have seen many parrots, and I have thought they must want to be free from those cages... but I have never seen such a parrot whose whole day, from the morning to the evening when he goes to sleep, is spent in calling out for freedom." He had an idea. In the middle of the night, when the owner was fast asleep, he got up and opened the door of the cage. He whispered to the parrot, "Now get out."
But he was very surprised that the parrot was clinging to the bars of the cage. He said to him again and again, "Have you forgotten about freedom? Just get out! The door is open and the owner is fast asleep; nobody will ever know. You just fly into the sky; the whole sky is yours."
But the parrot was clinging so deeply, so hard, that the man said, "What is the matter? Are you mad?" He tried to take the parrot out with his own hands, but the parrot started pecking at him, and at the same time he was shouting "Freedom! Freedom!" The valleys in the night echoed and re-echoed, but the man was also stubborn; he was a freedom fighter.
He pulled the parrot out and threw him into the sky; and he was very satisfied, although his hand was hurt. The parrot had attacked him as forcefully as he could, but the man was immensely satisfied that he had made a soul free. He went to sleep.
In the morning, as the man was waking up, he heart the parrot shouting, "Freedom! Freedom!" He thought perhaps the parrot must be sitting on a tree or on a rock. But when he came out, the parrot was sitting in the cage. The door was open.
Ooops! Put this on the wrong pos initially.
ReplyDeletedog gone said...
I love the Freedom Parrot story. It is consistent with the excessive use of the term 'our freedoms' that the political right is fond of shreiking at every opportunity to try to justify their positions.
The reality is that the right does more to curtail our freedom, to undermine and undo the constitution, and to intrude on people's lives than the policies they use to inflame fear in their base.
They would turn our proud bald eagle symbol (I can see one out my window, and there should be another mated pair nearby, but they are beyond my line of vision) into a naked, well-plucked frightened chicken.
Sort of along the same lines William Hogeland said this:
ReplyDeleteAs for the Antifederalists before ratification: sure, they opposed many aspects of nationalism, including funding a public debt, but the “constitutional conservatives” whose reading of history my piece criticizes don’t cite the Antifederalists in seeking founding support for their anti-tax policies. It’s actually a point of my piece that intellectual honesty would dictate that they should! If they’d only call themselves “anti-constitutional conservatives,” we’d all know what we’re talking about.
See also: Why Debt Ceilings and Balanced-Budget Requirements Violate the Original Intent of the Constitution
That's pretty neat. You could apply this to the freedom that the pro-gun guys think they have. More gun rights means less freedom, but try to get them to see it.
ReplyDeleteThat's the point, MikeB.
ReplyDeleteThey say "freedom", but AztecRed fails to see the threat in the post where I point out what a big player the NRA is in ALEC.
"FREEDOM, FREEDOM"