Living as a Tiger
There is a story that Joseph Campbell liked to tell
at the end of his lectures:
Deep in a forest a pregnant
female tiger was hunting. She was desperate and concerned for her unborn cub,
as she had not had a kill for some time, and was starving.
In her prowling
she came upon a herd of goats. She crept through the trees until she was in
striking distance and then she pounced. But she was so weak from her condition
she died in mid leap and fell among the goats. In dying, she gave birth to her
cub.
The goats, who had scattered, regrouped around the scene and saw what
had happened. Exercising their parenting instincts, they took pity on the
newborn cub and adopted it. Over the months, the goats raised the cub as one of
their own kids, and eventually it grew into a young tiger, although not a very
fine specimen, since it thought it was a goat and lived on a diet of grass.
Then one day
another hunting tiger came upon the herd of goats. This tiger was a male, and
when it pounced, the goats again scattered, but not the young tiger. Being a
tiger and not a goat, he had no instinct of fear.
The attacking
male tiger looked on this strange specimen in surprise. The young tiger was
embarrassed and nervous, and nibbled on some grass.
"What are
you?" the older tiger asked.
"I'm a goat," the young tiger replied with a "baaaaa."
"No, you're not, you're a tiger," the older tiger said.
"No, I'm a goat."
"Come with
me," the older tiger commanded as he picked up the youngster by the scruff
of the neck and carried him to a nearby stream. There he bent over the water
viewing his reflection, and pressed the youngster to do the same.
"There,"
he said, "take a look. I'm a tiger. You look like me. You're a tiger
too."
Then the older
tiger brought the youngster back to his lair where there were the remains of a
kill. He tore off piece of meat and pressed it to the youngster.
"Here, eat
this!"
"I can't," the young tiger protested. "I'm a vegetarian."
" Don 't give me that vegetarian stuff, "
the older tiger said, and forced the meat down the youngster's throat.
At first the
young tiger gagged on the unfamiliar food, as all do on true doctrine, but then
some of the blood from the meat spread into his veins and awakened a bit of his
innate tiger nature. For the first time he gave a little tiger stretch, and
then let out a little tiger roar.
"See, " the older tiger said, "you're a tiger.
Now, stop living as a goat and go out and live as a tiger."
But there
remains a question, which is how do you live as a tiger in a world of goats.
The answer is that you do not let the goats know that you are a tiger.
At the
conclusion of this story, Campbell would tell his audience to recognize their
tiger nature and go out and live as tigers. And in summary we might say
Campbell presented the world's mythology to us to help us realize our tiger
natures and live as tigers.
by John Lobell,
from
Joseph Campbell The Man & His Ideas
a publication of
the Joseph Campbell Foundation.
"Joseph Campbell Foundation Web Site"