The
Tiger’s Whisker
Jeremy
Dehut
In
the last month a friend of mine shared this illustration
with me, and I thought it was powerful. After reading it,
meditate on verses such as...
Luke 6:35, “But love ye your enemies, and do good,
and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall
be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for
he is kind unto the unthankful and to the
evil.”
And
Matt. 5:43-48 “Ye have heard that it hath been said,
Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I
say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you,
do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which
despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the
children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh
his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth
rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them
which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the
publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only,
what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in
heaven is perfect.”
The story is of Yun Ok, a married girl who came to the
house of a wise sage for counsel. Her problem was this:
“It is my husband, wise one,” she said.
“He is very dear to me. For the past three years he
has been away fighting in the wars. Now that he has
returned, he hardly speaks to me, or to anyone else. If I
speak, he doesn’t seem to hear. When he talks at all,
it is roughly. If I serve him food not to his liking, he
pushes it aside and angrily leaves the room. Sometimes when
he should be working in the rice field, I see him sitting
idly on top of the hill, looking towards the sea! I want a
potion,” she said, “so he will be loving and
gentle as he used to be.”
The wise sage instructed the young woman to get for him the
whisker of a living tiger, from which he would make the
magic potion. At night, when her husband was asleep, she
crept from her house with a bowl of rice and meat sauce in
her hand. She went to the place on the mountainside where a
tiger was known to live. Standing far off from the
tiger’s cave, she held out her bowl of food, calling
the tiger to come and eat, but the tiger did not come. Each
night she returned, doing the same thing, and each time a
few steps closer. Although the tiger did not come to eat,
he did become accustomed to seeing her there.
One night she approached within a stone’s throw of
the cave. This time the tiger came a few steps toward her
and stopped. The two of them stood looking at one another
in the moon light. It happened again the following night,
and this time they were so close that she could talk to him
in a soft soothing voice. The next night, after looking
carefully into her eyes, the tiger ate the food that she
held out for him. After that, when Yun Ok came in the night
she found the tiger waiting for her on the trail. Nearly
six months had passed since the night of her first visit.
At last, one night after caressing the animal’s head,
she said, “Oh generous animal, I must have one of
your whiskers. Do not be angry with me.” And she
snipped off one of the whiskers.
The tiger did not become angry, as she had feared that he
might. She went down the trail, running with the whisker
tightly clutched in her hand. When she brought it to the
wise sage, he examined it to see if it was real, and then
tossed it into the fire, causing the poor girl to become
disheartened. Then the sage said, “Yun Ok, is a man
more vicious than a tiger? Is he less responsive to
kindness and understanding? If you can win the love and
confidence or a wild and bloodthirsty animal by gentleness
and patience, surely you can do the same with your
husband.”