One day the young man decided to leave his hometown to go in search of great knowledge. His teacher advised him to go south and said:
— If you meet a peacock and a snake, find out their meaning.
All the way the young man thought about the words of his teacher. And at the end of the path he saw a snake and a peacock. The young man spoke to them.
“I would like to compare your merits,” he said.
“I think that I am much more important than a snake,” the peacock began. “I personify inspiration, aspiration to heaven, heavenly beauty, in other words, knowledge of lofty things. My purpose is to remind a person of his own qualities hidden within him.
“My purpose is the same,” hissed the snake. “Like a person, I am tied to the earth and in this way I remind him of himself.” I am as flexible as he is, because I crawl on the ground wriggling.
People often forget about this. According to legend, I am the guardian of underground treasures.
- The notes are disgusting! - exclaimed the peacock. - You are cunning, secretive, poisonous.
“You are listing my human traits,” answered the snake, “while I just want to point out my purpose, which I just described.” But look at yourself. You are vain, disgustingly fat, your voice is disgusting and squeaky, your legs are prohibitively large, and your feathers are too long.
Here the young man intervened in the conversation:
“Watching you, I realized that none of you are completely right.” And yet, personal prejudices aside, you can clearly see that together you are an instructive example for humanity.
And he explained to them what their purpose was:
- A person is tied to the earth, like a snake. He has the ability to fly up like a bird. But, having something of a greedy snake in him, he remains selfish even in this high aspiration and becomes like a peacock inflated with pride. In the peacock we see great human capabilities that were never able to develop correctly. The sparkling scales of a snake speak of possible beauty, and in the peacock this possibility is manifested in the flashy variegation of the tail.
As soon as the young man said this, he heard a voice inside himself that said to him:
“But that’s not all.” The two creatures you see in front of you are endowed with life. This basically represents their properties. They argue with each other because each of them is attached to his own way of life, believing that by his existence he creates something true. However, the snake guards the treasure, but cannot use it. The peacock, reflecting beauty, reminds of treasures, but this does not help him change at all. Although they themselves are unable to derive any benefit from what they have, their example serves as an edification to those who can see and hear.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru