the eye of the bird

The teacher tied a wooden bird high in a tree and lined up the princes with their bows. Before anyone shot, he went down the line with one question: what do you see?

I see the tree, said one — the branches, the sky, the bird upon it. Step aside, said Drona. I see the garden, the tree, you, my brothers, said the next. Step aside. Prince after prince gave the same honest, sprawling inventory, and was set aside without an arrow leaving a string.

Then Arjuna. What do you see? Only the eye of the bird. Not the tree? asked Drona. There is no tree, said Arjuna. No sky, no brothers standing beside you? There is only the eye. Shoot, said the teacher, and the arrow went where the attention already was.

Two honest footnotes before this story is served at dinner. First — this page has told a harder story about this same teacher, and does not withdraw a word of it; a teacher can be right about attention and wrong about justice, and children are well served by knowing both stories. Second — the tale is not really about archery contests, or about beating the other princes at anything.

It is a description, from the inside, of what whole attention feels like: the world politely stepping back until the loved thing is the only thing. Every child already knows the state — ask the one who did not hear dinner announced three times because a drawing was almost done. The story's usefulness is that it gives the family a name for it. There is no tree — that is where the drawing was made from.

The old word for that country is where this Monday began: dhyāna. Children commute there daily. The adults have simply let their passport lapse, and the mountain up in Shravan holds the renewal office.