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Once upon a time
there was a chicken
that looked like he must have come
right off the top of a weather vane.
Little half-chick had one foot,
half a beak,
and only one eye.
Everyone made such fun of Little Half-chick
for being so one-sided,
that the time came when he knew
that he would have to become
Whole.
“How does one go about becoming Whole?”
he wondered.
“Should I find a little girl chick who is just as
one-sided as I am?
If she had the eye, and the foot, and the
beak-half that I am missing,
we might be glued together
and then we would be Whole.”
After considering this solution for awhile,
he realized that it would never work.
His friends had no trouble running into
cute little chicks that suited them fine,
but his was a special case.
"You just don’t run into little half-chicks every day!”
“Why I’ve never even seen one other half-chick
my whole life long,” he thought to himself.
“And even if by some miracle I would run into one,
she would have to hop about on her one leg
at exactly the same speed as I,
or we would forever be falling down.
She would have to be hungry at exactly the same
time as I, or we could not eat.
She would have to be tired at exactly the same time
as I, or we could not sleep.”
No, that was not the answer.
“How does one become Whole?
That is the question!”
“There is nothing you can do to become Whole,”
said a voice from behind him.
“Who’s there?” asked Little Half-chick,
but as he turned around
he saw nothing but a big white chrysanthemum
growing by the side of the road.
“It doesn’t happen that way,”
said the voice again.
Little Half-chick looked up, and there
sitting in the tree above him
was a little old man with a white beard.
“What do you know about it?”
asked Little Half-chick.
“Hardly anything” said the old man.
“Attention! Attention!”
said another voice in the tree.
On a branch near the old man sat a bright-colored
parrot.
“Does the parrot know anything about it?”
asked Little Half-chick.
“Yes, he knows quite a bit,”
said the old man.
“You’ve forgotten who you are!”
screeched the parrot.
“I’m Little Half-chick.”
“No you’re not.”
“If I’m not Little Half-chick, then who am I?”
“If you knew that,” said the parrot,
"you wouldn’t have a problem.”
“What do you see,” said the old man,
“when you look around with your one eye?”
“I see the sky, and the ground, the tree
and the flower by the side of the road.”
“Would you say that all this is inside your mind
or outside?”
“Why, I don’t know,” said Little Half-chick.
“I never thought about it.”
“Don’t think,” said the old man, “LOOK.”
“Is the world in your head,
or is your head in the world?”
screeched the parrot.
“Who are you?” asked the old man.
“And where are you?”
“Are you located just in your head;
or are you Everything that you see?”
“This is very important to find out,”
said the old man.
“For if you are not really locked up inside
your skin
or inside your head,
Then being Half-chick is not a problem.
For you are not Half-chick at all.
Half-chick is just a name which has made you
feel separate. But you are really everything.
You are already Whole.”
“How do you know?” asked Half-chick.
“Look!” said the old man,
“It’s really very obvious.”
“Yes, I know,” said Little Half-chick
“but what am I to do?
You see I only have half a brain,
and if you only have half a brain, it is very
difficult to remember things.
I can’t even remember that I forgot
who I am,
but you must be right
for I do feel that I have a problem.”
“Can you tell me this?”
asked Little Half-chick,
“if I only have half a brain, how am I to remember
where my missing half went?”
“What makes you think it went anywhere?”
said the parrot.
“Well it must have, because I don’t see it.”
“Can you see your own eye?”
squacked to parrot.
“No.”
“But you do see out of it.”
“Yes.”
“Well, you use your other half every day
but you don’t know it.”
“Why don’t I know it?”
“It’s your ego” the old man chimed in.
It’s in the way of recognizing it.
You think you are just your inside,
but your other half is everything
that is outside.
And, it has been here
from the very beginning.”
“Oh.
Well, if I con’t see it because of my ego,”
said Half-chick,
“Do you see it?”
“As long as there is ‘I and you’
this makes it more difficult to see,”
said the old man.
“If there is no ‘I or you’ is it seen?”
“If there is no ‘I or you”
screeched the parrot,
“Who is here to see it?”
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From Zen
Fairytales
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by Audrey
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